Announcing The Best Time to Blog

Your audience is the deciding factor of whether or not you will have a successful blog. Therefore it is of the utmost importance to offer relevant content that is full of value during opportune times. Because your audience is the deciding factor you have to publish your posts during the days and times that they are tuned in and receptive to what you write. This will vary from audience to audience however hopefully the following tips will help you determine a good publishing schedule for you.

There are some general guidelines that you should follow as you try to determine the best schedule for yourself. One basic guideline is that you should publish at least once a week. Another basic guideline is that you should be consistent, always publishing on the same day(s) of the week. A final basic guideline is that you should always focus on creating high quality content.

Publishing quality content at least once a week on the same day builds a trusting relationship with your readers. It also increases SEO value attracting more organic search traffic. Finally, it helps you to stay fresh because sometimes writing more often promotes writer's burnout.

Once you have settled on a day once a week to publish you may want to experiment with adding additional days and times. Before you do that you should consider your goals and the needs and wants of your audience. These two considerations are the most important when trying to decide when and how often to blog. For instance, if your goal is to be a number one news source of current events then you may want to post shorter articles more frequently like once a day or even several times a day. If your goal is to post technical information then you will probably want to post longer articles less frequently.

The first step in choosing the frequency to post is identifying a balance between what your audience wants and what you feel good about offering. Once you have come up with a tentative schedule ask yourself if it is a schedule that you can keep up with. A schedule that you can keep up with means a rate that you can actually post at and still create high quality content. It also means that you will have enough content to publish at your chosen rate. If you find that you are not able to keep up with the schedule that you have established then it is OK to change your posting frequency. Allow yourself the room to change as resources, goals and audience desires will change.

Just a note before we continue. Burnout is real and it usually surfaces unannounced. Once it hits you it is too late. So, prepare for this inconvenience before it strikes. One way to avoid burnout is to build into your schedule less frequent blogging. Another way to avoid burnout is to incorporate guest bloggers. Spend a little time coming up with other ways to prevent burnout.

Once you have come up with a comfortable blogging schedule, have identified a balance between what your readers want and what you want and have incorporated a plan for burnout it is safe to begin experimenting with the frequency of your posts. Start with the posting just one post per week. In two to four weeks add an additional post. If this is a comfortable schedule for you and you want to add another post, then it's OK to try it. If you find that you have added too much then cut back a post every two to four weeks until you feel comfortable again. Ways to determine if you have added too much to your plate includes comparing pages per visit, time on site, unique visitors, and visitor to subscriber/lead ratio. If these numbers look good then that's a green light that you may be able to add an additional post per week. When these numbers start to falter, consider eliminating a scheduled posting day.

There has been extensive studies done that show the most opportune time to post your blog. Helen Nesterenko at http://www.socialmediatoday.com/content/scheduling-your-blog-how-often-and-best-times-publish posts the following ideal times to post your blog as well as ideal times for social networking:

· The best time to blog for page views is Monday between 8 and 11 am

· The time that is best to blog for increased engagement is Saturday between 8 and 11 am

· Publishing in the morning around 9 am EST leads to more Facebook Shares

· Tweeting the post in the afternoon around 4 pm EST leads to more retweets

· Publishing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday leads to more Facebook shares

· Publishing on Friday can also lead to more retweets

· Increasing publishing frequency leads to more traffic and incoming links

The data above reveals that the most opportune time to publish a blog post is in the mornings on Monday, Friday and Saturday. To get the most social sharing, share your post on Facebook in the morning and on Twitter in the afternoons.

Don't forget that it is OK to experiment with the days and frequency that you post. If you notice that your stats are beginning to suffer then perhaps you are not able to keep up with the posting schedule and you need to tone it down a bit. If your stats look promising then perhaps it's OK to add a post per week.

Keep in mind that the data in this article is only meant to give you a guideline. Your audience is the final determiner of the best times to post. For example, generally speaking, publishing on Saturday leads to more Facebook shares but if your audience is mostly business people then publishing on Saturday might not be the best idea. Get a very good idea of who your audience is. Experiment to find out when you are getting the most views, etc. and tailor your posting schedule accordingly.