When should you blog?
A great way for businesses, groups, organizations and individuals to increase their online presence and authority on a subject is to start a blog.
However, after the blog is up and running, some common questions usually pop up.
Am I doing this right? When is the best time for me to put up these posts? How many am I supposed to write in a day? a week? a month?
There are a few best practices in blogging, but of course, these kinds of things will vary based on your audience and subject matter.
However, we stumbled across this great infographic from Kissmetrics, Dan Zarrella and Search Engine Land that laid out some basic ground rules. Their findings report similar data to what we’ve seen.
*Side note – The trendiness and shareability (yes, I just made that word up) of infographics make it a hot form of content right now. Not only are they easily shared on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, but they’re great for Pinterest too.
This infographic highlighted some great information for blog owners and writers. I picked out three main points that I’ve heard raised as questions recently.
1. When should I post a new blog?
In my own experience, I have found this to be true. Most readers come to blogs in the morning. If I want to have the most traffic on a blog post, I generally try to have it up by at least 8:30am. People tend to like to get their information first thing in the morning. Traffic usually starts tapering down as the day goes on. Granted, this won’t be true for certain industries targeting blog readers who work hours that don’t allow readership at those times, but for the general public, this seems to be the rule.
2. What day will get the most traffic?
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are the heavy hitters with Monday being the overall winner. Readers seem eager to play catch up after spending a leisurely weekend offline.
3. How often should I post?
The data revealed that bloggers who updated numerous times a day garnered the most unique visits. It makes sense. If your readers are used to frequent, fresh content, they’re going to regularly come back for updates.
Are you a blogger? What posting strategies have you found to be the most beneficial in building and maintaining your audience?