There is conflicting advice all over the internet about blog schedules. Some bloggers insist you write on a published blog schedule. Some say you should throw the blogging schedule out the window in favor of a more free-form, creative approach.
However, maintaining a blog schedule keeps you focused and helps you get stuff done when things come up. We have meetings. We run late. We have shifting priorities and new deadlines creeping up left and right.
All of these will get in the way of regular blogging unless we have a schedule. Over time, successful bloggers identify patterns in their writing and their weekly output and create a blogging schedule that works for them.
Understanding Your Blog Schedule
When it comes to understanding your blog schedule, there are three important considerations:
- Consider your own writing schedule: Many bloggers find that the best thing they can do is set aside regular time to write. If you wait until the time is right, blogging may quickly fall by the wayside as you deal with more urgent and pressing matters. However, if you establish a blogging routine such as writing for 30 minutes every morning or every evening, then you will find that your blogging is much more consistent.
- Prepare an editorial calendar: It’s much easier to maintain a blog schedule when you know what to write about. In fact, having a clear idea about what you will be writing about is an important part of content marketing, since the blog posts you write are obviously an important part of your online marketing. An editorial calendar is a weekly or monthly outline of what blog content you publish and when. Planning out your blog schedule in advance makes it easier to maintain because when you sit down to write, you won’t have to worry about what to write about – you will already have planned it out and know what post you need to write next.
- Find the best time to post: You’ll need to consider both your publishing frequency and when you should publish new blog posts. Publishing content more frequently is ideal, but may not be feasible for you. A full-time blogger can easily publish one more blog posts per day, but if you’re a busy professional juggling many other responsibilities, you may find that a less-frequent publishing schedule makes more sense for you. You’ll also want to consider when is the right time to post, which is an important topic.
What Does the Research Say About Blog Schedules?
It turns out that there are some tried and true times and dates for blogging that can help you find an optimal posting schedule.
Research done by Hubspot suggests that publishing early in the day is the way to go. Hubspot conducted a survey of over 1,400 blog readers asking them what time of day they read blogs. Morning was the most popular, while the rest of the day decreased in popularity.
There is more science behind the suggestion to post early in the day. According to Kissmetrics:
- The highest percentage of users read blogs in the morning.
- A higher percentage of men read blogs in the evening and at night.
- The average blog gets the most traffic on Monday.
- The average blog gets the most traffic around 11am Eastern Time.
- The average blog gets the most comments on Saturday.
- The average blog gets the most inbound links on Monday and Thursday.
- The average blog gets the most inbound links at 7am Eastern Time
Although it is tempting to throw caution to the wind and publish your blog in a free-form way, the science is in favor of following a regular blogging schedule. Pay attention to your patterns and learn your best times to write, then schedule your posts to publish in the morning hours for the most traffic.
Have you developed an editorial calendar yet?
Image Credit: jan-willem