Great question … I’ve often wondered if there IS a silver bullet for this, given how much comes to me all day long ;0

I’ve actually heard early morning (4a – 6a) because then your subscribers will have it in their reader / email when they get to their desk.

I’ve also heard that Saturday morning is effective because people don’t turn off their gadgets and will enjoy catching up with their Saturday morning coffee.

thanks for looking for it on google, didn’t get the link though @jgassistance Saturday? now I’d never have thought of that @readingtub

@deairbyYou can use Google Analytics or SiteMeter to see which time of day and which days you are receiving the most traffic.  TypePad and WordPress also have built-in stats you can view as well.

But once you have those tools, you will see what works best for you and your readers

I like to use the SlimStats plugin over GA. It seems to catch all of the visits and referrers better than GA.

I schedule my posts to go live at 6 a.m. Pacific time, which means my readers in the Central and Eastern time zones are already at work (and studies show people in those 2 time zones comprise 80% of the readership of blogs & social media updates among people in the U.S. and Canada).

Almost 75% of my readers subscribe to my blog via email, so I set my Feedburner feed to distribute the day’s post at around 9 a.m. Pacific Time.

As @blogsbyheather said, stats-tracking sites will provide you with excellent info about the time of day and days of the week most people visit your blog. That time will vary, depending on what industry/niche you write about, and what type of reader you’re targeting. I don’t think there are any hard-and-fast rules about “must post” times or days. Do what works best for you.

great info, thanks @tonygreene113 @laurachristianson

you will find that writing is all about re-writing! hope your launch goes well! @juleswebb

@kristi-hines That’s an amazing presentation. What I found, from viewing it, was:

• Most blogs are read in the morning
• Most views per hour are @ 10:00 am
• Most comments are posted on weenends @ 7:00 am
• Links are highest on Mondays and Thursdays @ 7:00 am
• Blog early in the morning for links
• Blog on weekends for comments

@juleswebb  Yes – writing code is easier! LOL!

The truth is, what’s good for one business isn’t going to be good for another. You have to see what works for your audience. Stay-at-home moms are going to have a different high-point of interaction then say, mobile advertisers. It really depends on the web surfing habits of who you are trying to reach. Data is enlightening to a point, but you really have to post consistently for a while and try to catch your own audience’s patterns. 

you are so welcome @juleswebb

The last time I researched this heavily for the blog I was writing for, I found the following to be true:

• I got the most readership and site traffic on Tuesdays and Thursdays
• I got the most volume of traffic early in the morning, at lunchtime, and after 6pm Pacific time (this is for a North American audience).  I’m going to assume the night traffic was due to parents screwing around on the Internet after the kids were asleep
• Traffic on weekends was REALLY light with the exception of late Sunday night.

A couple things to consider:

• Where is your audience geographically?
• What is your target reader doing on a day to day basis?  Are they at work?  Are they a stay at home parent?  This might change all of the metrics
• Consider using a traffic analyzer and plug in some information about the demographic you’re going after.  Crowd Booster, as mentioned above, is a good one.
  

All of this is anecdotal, and I haven’t done any other research.  However, I’m a firm believer that you have to update your blog with new original content twice per week in order to get a growing readership – so Tuesdays and Thursdays are my publish dates when I actively blog.  I set the posts to go live at 9am Pacific time, so I catch people sipping their coffee on the West Coast and getting ready to go to lunch in the East

All the best – Daryll

Thanks so much @dswager, I’m new to blogging so thank you for the great tips. Cheers Peta

@readingtub

I suppose it depends on your reader demographic. If it’s personal the Monday skimming fits the bill. If they’re reading for professional reasons to find material to write about themselves then early morning early week seems to fit. As a blogger your probably hoping to attract both of these demographics so maybe a sprinkle here and a sprinkle there works.  Don’t really know myself, so far I’ve only done research, no personal experience yet:)

totally agree about the danger of “doing things by the book” and ending up loosing freshness @readingtub

I’ve never thought about that but I’ve always wondered why some posts get more reaches than others. I’ll start paying attention to this and track the times that are more successful. THANKS

I will.

Our Saturday morning posts get good traffic, especially if I take the time to stumble them first thing Saturday morning.  It also helps if you use social at 8am and 5 pm to promote your post. To do that you have to post early in the morning. 

how do you use social to promote? is your blog automatically posting to your fb page? @lorraineball

love your company name, checked out the blog, too @lorraineball