Best time to publish a blog post?

by Josiah Mackenzie on May 16, 2009

I’ve been thinking a bit about blog publishing times recently – and what time of day is best to update. You may be wondering “what’s the difference?”…but for a variety of reasons, the time you publish your posts actually makes a big difference in their popularity and how far they get spread in social networks.

Looking at my Analytics statistics for this blog, my 5 largest reader groups last month were:

US (east coast) – 12%
Ireland & UK – 10.5%
US (west coast) – 10.4%
India – 5%
Australia (east coast) – 4.5%

In books like Blog Blazers, the gurus will tell you:

* The best time to publish a post (for maximum views) is between 7-10am
* The best days of the week to publish are Tuesday & Wednesday

In general, my own experiments confirm this. But I feel it is also a little simplistic and narrow-minded: for a blog with a global readership (like this one) what is ‘morning’? For that matter, what is Tuesday and Wednesday?

For this reason, I’m thinking of publishing articles here at the following times:

US (east coast) – 4am
Ireland & UK – 9am
US (west coast) – 1am
India – 1:30pm
Australia (east coast) – 6pm

This way, the majority of my readers will have a new post in their newsreader each morning.

What do you think: What’s the best time to publish a blog post? How do you take into account readers around the globe?

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

Madigan Pratt May 18, 2009 at 5:50 pm: Josiah,

Just like with email it pays to test. We are continually testing what days and times are best for sending out emails and measuring opens, click-throughs and conversions. Also test subject lines and offers.

The best time to post a blog depends on who you your primary target is. What times produce the best traffic on a consistent basis – globally, US, Europe or wherever you are targeting.

Good post and thinking.

Madigan

PS – we have found it is not the best idea to have emails waiting for a person first thing in the am. They are too easy to delete as recipients try get to work.
Josiah Mackenzie May 18, 2009 at 6:52 pm: Great advice, Madigan. Thanks for sharing.

I’ve always admired the rigorous testing that many email marketers (such as yourself) apply to the process. But to my knowledge, that same level of testing hasn’t fully been embraced in the blogosphere. I think many bloggers could achieve greater success by testing different headlines, post lengths, topics, and delivery options. I know I still have a long way to go.

It probably goes back to the key to all effective online marketing: test, test, test!
Jacques June 4, 2009 at 3:39 am: I started my blog only 2 weeks ago. I’ve been testing some times and also found that if I publish early, around 8, then I get more people reading the post. Also shorter post do better. Personally I read posts and decide in the 1st few lines if I will continue. So, if the 1st paragraph doesn’t grab me I will not read the rest. Headings also say a lot. I currently have 632 subscribers to my blog.
MUDASSAR November 25, 2009 at 1:55 am: HI GUYS i wantto start blogging i have got a little information.please guide me how i can start better blogging.thanks
Josiah Mackenzie November 25, 2009 at 1:02 pm: Hi Mudassar – check out this site we made specifically to help you get started blogging:

http://www.blogforguests.com
dandelionweb February 11, 2010 at 5:53 pm: I just published my post on this subject – I don’t think WHEN implicates smaller blogs in the same way as larger well established blogs that have a following. http://www.dandelionwebdesign.com/blog/2010/02/publish-post/