“PB130: What Time of Day is Best to Publish to Your Blog” plus 2 more

PB130: What Time of Day is Best to Publish to Your Blog
How to Rock Instagram to Promote Your Small Business
The Top 7 Email Marketing Automation Lifecycle Triggers Every Blogger Should Implement.

PB130: What Time of Day is Best to Publish to Your Blog

Posted: 07 Jul 2016 02:00 AM PDT

When Should You Publish Your Blog Posts

Today I am talking about when you should publish your blog post. What day of the week? What time of the day? For what timezone?

Does it really matter at all? In the past when RSS feeds were popular, timing did seem to matter more.

It matters when you publish social media, but I'm not sure if it matters with blog posts that much anymore. From the studies I link to mornings do seem to be the best time.

Readers will read blog posts in the morning, but comment later in the day after business hours. Still studies need to be taken with a grain of salt. There are a lot of variables.

Note: Listen to this episode above or over on iTunes.

In Today's Episode What Time of Day is Best to Publish to Your Blog

Find where your readers live and you can time according to the dominant time zone
My readership is all over the world, but 50% is in America, so I try to time my blog posts when the bulk of my readership is waking up
Look at your analytics and facebook page insights, that can help you find out when your audience is reading, mine seems to peek at 10:00 am East Coast time
I try to position my posts right before things start to heat up, so about 7:00 am East Coast time, then I promote them on social media when things are really hot
Consider the type of post you are publishing, challenge posts are posted on weekends, engagement on blogs is higher on the weekends
We publish tutorials and heavy posts earlier in the week, we do inspirational posts at the end of the week when people are looking for light relief
If we have a key post, like a sales related post, we try to get those out on Mondays US time, plus it enables us to promote it for the rest of the week
The timing of your blog posts is less of a factor than the timing of your promotion
Timing of emails and social media matter
We send out emails early in the week
We want to get those posts in front of you earlier in the week
Because we have a global audience we separate social posts around the clock – Twitter every hour and 7 or 8 facebook posts a day
Timing and regularity and consistency matter a lot – people take notice of when you publish – We publish this podcast on Monday's and Wednesdays
Be consistent, get your content in front of your readers, and experiment to find the optimum times

Further Resources on What Time of Day is Best to Publish to Your Blog

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Hi there and welcome to Episode 130 of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rouse and today I want to talk about the question of when should you publish your blog post. What time, what day? Does it really matter at all? What are the factors that you want to consider particularly if you have an international audience as I do. That's what I’m tackling today. You can find today's show notes over at problogger.com/podcast/130 where I’m going to include some further reading for you and some links to some studies that have been done on this exact question that I’m going to talk about in a moment.

Welcome to today's podcast. I am just back from Thailand. We've in the last couple of days come back from a break of a couple of weeks over in Thailand. This is the first page of content that I've created since coming back which worries me slightly, I have to say. If I’m sounding a little bit relaxed or confused, it's probably because my head's not quite back into work mode. We just had this great time over in Thailand, beautiful weather although we did have a couple of days of rain but really warm, beautiful, sort of tropical weather. Amazing food, very friendly people. It's raining here in Melbourne when we returned, and it's cold, so I’m trying to get my head back into work mode and struggle with the variation in temperature. It is good to be back as well, I've been looking forward particularly to getting back into the podcast.

As I said in my introduction today, we're talking today about the timing of your blog posts. At what time should you publish? What day should you publish? Does it really matter at all anymore? I paid a lot of attention in the early days of my blogging to the exact time that I published and I still do think about that but I don't think about it as much as I used to. I think in days gone by back in 2005, 2006 when RSS feeds were really big, I particularly paid a lot of attention to the times that I published because it seemed to have more impact upon whether people would see my blogpost or not because they would check in the RSS feeds. If you could time your post to go live when people would be in the RSS feeds, that has an impact.

Today, I’m not sure that the timing of your blogpost being published has as much impact as the timing of your social media post and your emails. They're probably the big effectors today, but I guess there are a few things that you might want to consider when it comes to the timing of your blog post.

In today's show notes, I’m going to link to a number of studies that have been done on this particular topic over the last four or five years. I’m not going to go over them in great detail now because there's some inconsistencies between the results in them. I kind of have a problem with studies into this because I think blogs vary so much.

One of the things I will mention though in a number of studies that I'll link to in the show notes is that mornings seem to be the best time. Of course, there's some trouble with mornings because many of us have global audiences. A couple of the studies that I found, I found that most people seem to read blogs in the morning but they tend to comment in blogs outside of business hours; in the evenings, and particularly on weekends. That was one of the things that did seem to come up in a number of studies, but then there were a whole heap of other results where in there were inconsistencies. Take that idea with a bit of a grain of salt.

The problem with studies is that there's a lot of varying factors, it's not just about when you publish your blog post, it's also about when you share it on social media and also depends on the topic as well. I know a parenting blogger who finds that Monday mornings at 9:00AM is a great time to publish because that's the first time that their readers have a moment to themselves after they drop their kids off to school. She finds that when she publishes around 9:00 AM on a Monday morning, a lot of her readers tend to show up with a cup of coffee, read her blog once they got the kids off to school.

I know a sporting blogger who finds that Monday mornings is the worst time to publish. He actually finds that Saturday mornings is a great time because it's just before all the games that he's writing about are about to be played. He also publishes on Sunday night, at the end of the football round. He publishes about the games that have just been played.

Obviously, it's going to depend on your topic. This is where studies fall short because they don't take those factors into account.

One other piece of advice that I would give you in terms of working out the best time to publish your blog post is really to do some experimentation and it's also to really do some analysis of when your readers are online and to do some experimenting around different times about whether you published just before they get online or just after or in the peak of it, a few things I would encourage you to do.

Work out where your readers live. The bulk of your readers, where are they living? I talk to a lot of Australian bloggers who have a lot of Australian readers. Obviously, that is going to be quite helpful to know most of my readers are in Australia, in America, then you can kind of time things for that audience.

But if you’re like me and you have a very global audience, around 50% of my audience is in the US but 50% of my audience is scattered around the rest of the world. That's a factor that I need to keep in mind. That particularly is something I keep in mind with my social media updates.

In terms of my blog posts, when they go live, because 50% of my audience are based in America, that's where I’m focusing most of my attention when it comes to the timing of my blog post. I’m actually trying to time my blog post to go live just as America is waking up because that's where most of my audience is. That's not because I want to ignore the rest of the world, I’m an Aussie, I value people who live in Australia or around the world as well. That's where the bulk of my readership are. Understand where the bulk of your readership are and plan for your blog post to go live when they're most likely to be able to see it.

The second thing I encourage you to do is to look at your analytics. Look at your Google Analytics and look at your Facebook Analytics. Facebook Analytics Page Insights, you'll find in the analytics that Facebook give you, will give you some understanding of when your readers are online both in terms of the days of the week but also the time of day. That's really interesting to look at.

I find as I look at both of my Facebook insights but also my Google Analytics that my audience tends to come peak at 10:00AM at the East Coast of America, 7:00AM on the West Coast. That's the peak of when my audience is online. That is partly influenced by the times that I post on social media, so you've got to be a little bit careful there. I can see as I look at both of my analytics on Google and Facebook that that's the peak.

Then for two or three hours on either side of that time is where my readership is at its biggest. It actually starts probably about three hours before that, 7:00AM on the East Coast, and then it goes for about five hours after the 10:00AM, 3:00PM on the East Coast. I guess it's eight hours that my audience is really online.

What I’m trying to do with my blog posts, publishing my blog posts, is to position them to go live just before things really start to heat up. As a result, we publish at around 7:00AM on the East Coast of America which is usually around midnight Australian time, that's when I’m setting my blog post to go live.

That's just one of the timing factors that I’m taking into mind. A lot of the rest of what I do during that eight hour period is to promote those blog posts on social media. What I find really is to get the blogpost live just before things begin to ramp up, which then enables me to promote that blog post for the rest of that window where things are really hot. Tweets go out, Facebook updates go out for the rest of the peak. That's the strategy that I use and it works quite well for us.

One other thing to consider is the type of blog post that you’re publishing. We have on Digital Photography School, we publish discussion type posts and challenges. We give our readers a little bit of homework. We say go away and take a photo on this theme or using this technique. Those type of posts we typically do on the weekends.

One of the things that I notice in a lot of the studies that I looked at around this particular topic was that engagement on blogs is typically higher on the weekends, people leave more comments on the weekends or outside of work hours. People are more willing to have discussions and leave longer comments on the weekends as well. What we do is on the weekends we'll quite often put a blog post that is more asking a question and trying to stimulate a discussion or where we give our readers a little bit of homework and say go ahead and do this and share what you find.

If you do those type of posts, you might find that they're really go to do after hours so you might time them for 5:00PM or 7:00PM when your readers are on the couch at home or on the weekends. We typically publish our meteor longer form tutorials, the heavers posts, earlier in the week and during business hours. If we're doing more of a lighter post, more of a shareable funny post and inspirational post, we tend to do them at the end of the week, later in the week when perhaps people are looking to escape work a little bit and looking for some light relief in their lives. That might go live on a Thursday or on a Friday, sort of the end of the week. Those are some of the factors that I keep in mind as well.

The last thing I'll say is we have a key post, like a sales related post that we really want to get in front of most of our audience. We typically try and get that out on a Monday, US time. The reason for that is that one, Mondays tends to be the day that we get a lot of traffic and a lot of the studies did find that. Two, it enables us for the rest of the week to continue to promote that and it gives us four days afterwards to drive traffic to that blogpost before the weekend comes. The weekend for us typically is a bit of a lull in traffic.

If we're launching a new ebook or a course or some software or doing an affiliate campaign, we typically launch that promotion on a Monday or a Tuesday and that gives us those three or four days to really promote that and get that promotion in front of people.

Let me cycle back to something I said earlier in the podcast and that is that the timing of your blog post being published is probably less of a factor than the timing of the promotion of that blogpost. This is where you probably do need to do some more analysis to really get things right. What's more important than the publishing of the blogpost is the timing of your social media and the time of your emails.

Let's just really briefly talk about emails. Typically on ProBlogger, we send out emails early in the week. Those of you who are subscribed to the ProBlogger Plus Newsletter know that if you’re in America, you usually get that on a Monday. If you’re in Australia, you usually see that on a Tuesday. Again, that's because we want to get those posts in front of you early in the week, they're usually meteor posts, and that enables us to get them to you when you’re looking for content.

Digital Photography School is a little bit different. We usually publish our newsletter on a Thursday night, Australian time, or Thursday morning US time. The reason for that is that we found our readers typically take most of their photos on a weekend, that's when they got most of their leisure time. We're trying to get the tutorials in front of them so that they can then read them and use them on the weekends. We actually call our newsletter in the subject line Photography Tips for the Weekend. We time our newsletters a little bit different there and that's come as a result of a lot of testing to see when people open them and when people click on the links in them.

Time your emails, really important, and then social media as well. For social media, it really does come down to experimentation. What we've actually found works best because we do have global audiences on both of my blogs is to really separate our social media updates around the clock. It's a 24/7 kind of experience. If you follow me on Twitter, you know that pretty much every hour to hour and a half, something goes live on the ProBlogger Twitter account, same happens on the Digital Photography School one.

On Facebook, particularly on Digital Photography School's Facebook page, we publish seven or eight posts per day. They are typically spread out every three or four areas although it does tend to be a few extra ones during the US day time. But again, that comes out of a lot of experimentation and watching what is working.

The last thing I'll say about the timing of your blog post is that I’m a big believer that regularity and consistency in the timing your posts really does matter a lot. People take notice of when you publish. Whether you tell them or not, they begin to take notice of it. I know for a fact that some of you who are listening to this podcast know that we publish every Monday and Thursday morning, US time. I've never announced that that's what I’m going to do but there was a couple of weeks where our posts were delayed because iTunes wasn't updating them. I got emails from people saying where is your Monday morning podcast? I'll listen to it on the way to work, or while I’m driving to work, or while I’m in the cafe after dropping my kids off.

I know for a fact that even though I've never announced it, we have listeners of this podcast who have noticed the rhythm of the publishing of this podcast and the same is true on my blogs as well. I think regularity and consistency is probably more important than the exact time. You might want to factor that in as well. I actually kind of like having a deadline. I like the fact that on Monday mornings if there's a podcast that's not ready, I feel bad about it so that gives me incentive to get that podcast recorded ahead of time.

This is in my mind not a science even though a lot of studies have been done and people have tried to wake out the optimal time. I think for me it's really about trying to be consistent, trying to position your content so that it's there when your readers are about to be there, and to experiment with that and see what works for you.

I'd love to hear your feedback on this, when do you publish your blog posts? Does it really matter to you? Do you publish them when they're ready or do you publish them at certain times of the week? What other timings do you factor in? Do you publish your emails at the same time, do you publish your social media at the same time, your podcasts. I'd love to get your feedback on this. You can find our show notes today with the links to the studies that I did find on this topic if you’re interested in reading those over at problogger.com/podcast/130.

Thanks for listening, hopefully this one went out on time and iTunes published it at the right time. I look forward to chatting with you in the next could of days on the ProBlogger podcast.

When do you publish your blog posts?

I would love to hear your strategy for publishing your blog posts. Do you publish them at certain times? What other factors do you consider? I'd love to get your feedback on this topic.

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The post PB130: What Time of Day is Best to Publish to Your Blog appeared first on ProBlogger Podcast.

How to Rock Instagram to Promote Your Small Business with Karlee Prior of Karlee’s Kupcakes

When did you get started with Karlees Kupcakes and how long have you been using Instagram to promote it?

My business started as my main career in December 2014 when I quit my full-time job as a fraud analyst, but I had been building my business for at least two years beforehand to gain enough clientele to make it a full-time role! As for the social media side of things, I have been on Instagram since its inception, but didn't really start using it to advertise my business until I went full time. Facebook was much the same with creating a business page to reach those not on Instagram.

What made you choose Instagram out of all the social media available to promote your business?

I think it just happened naturally for me and Instagram is definitely a huge part of my life, whether it be looking at other businesses or keeping up with friends and family all over the country and the world. I love the connectivity you get with Instagram and I guess how 'raw' it is in terms of being able to comment to people directly and, most importantly, instantly.

If you've got a small business and rely on social media to help promote it, don't miss this interview with cake baker extraordinaire Karlee Prior from Karlee's Kupcakes - she spills the beans on how she's built a business almost entirely through Instagram, and how you can too.

Do you use any traditional types of promotion for Karlee’s Kupcakes or is it solely online?

I've been really lucky in the sense that I haven't had to spend a lot of money on marketing. I've had some really cool clients in terms of their social status and followings online so I haven't found the need to use physical/traditional marketing techniques. I think in this day and age it is a lot more common to tag someone in a post be it on Facebook or Instagram, rather than hand out fliers or do a mail drop.

I do still love having business cards though and I think they are really effective, especially for networking with other businesses, and a few of my suppliers actually have them on their front counters which is really nice!

Do you use any other type of online platform to get the word out?

I am on Facebook with a business page and I do have a website with plenty of information about my cakes, ordering and heaps of photos. I have never joined Twitter because I just didn't think it was necessary considering my business is essentially all visually-based.

Keeping your audience interested

What do you find your followers respond to or enjoy the most on your feed?

At the moment videos seem to a big hit, especially when accounts with a bigger following repost what I have shared. I have been doing time-lapse videos just on my phone and people love seeing the process of how a cake is put together – I find it quite hypnotizing!

What doesn’t really work on your Instagram account?

My face, ha!

I definitely use my account now for business 99% of the time, but if I am posting something of a personal nature it usually involves cake anyway, so I try and combine the two! I've started doing 'cake selfies' where I take a shot of me with my cake in the background that I have just assembled. It was initially for my own sad entertainment but others seem to find it funny!

How often do you post?

I try and post at least once a day. Since my number of followers has grown I'm not as pedantic about when I post but generally speaking in the morning when people are travelling to work or later at night when people are just getting home or when it might be dessert time!

I have noticed I have a lot of international followers now too, so posting mid-morning means I'm posting sort of early evening in the US, which works well too. My biggest days for cake are Friday and Saturday so I might have as many as five or six posts a day on those days it just depends on the work load.

Business Basics

How do you manage to post and engage with your followers when you’re busy in the kitchen? do you have a strategy or certain times of day you spend on social media?

This is something I have struggled with since the beginning. I have slowly learnt how to manage my time and how long I should be spending doing each thing.

For instance, I only bake on certain days of the week, I have set days for emailing as well as planning my classes and attending consults with clients as well as doing deliveries! On my busier cake days (Friday/Saturday) I usually don't post until after I am finished as that allows me to respond to people or see who reposts my work, as I have missed a lot of those lately!

I am totally guilty of throwing all of the above out the window though, and just doing what works at the time – otherwise I'd lose my mind!

What has been the most helpful thing for you getting your business in front of potential clients?

Honestly, 100% word of mouth. I'm not just saying this, but I actually have the best clients and wholesalers who all genuinely care about my business and me and are all amazing advocates for Karlee's Kupcakes. Nine times out of 10 a new client will come to me and say they saw one of my cakes at a friend’s or relative’s event and just had to have one for themselves.

Also people tagging friends and family online on my pictures so they can see for themselves the style I offer has been really helpful.

How important is Instagram to your business and how do you think you would have found it getting the word out without it?

I absolutely would not have the business I do without Instagram.

While there are always going to be negatives with being online and ‘exposed’ as they say, the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. As I mentioned, word of mouth has been the main driver for my success and this is usually done by friends tagging friends rather than actually physically speaking about it in person like the good old days, ha!

What lessons have you learned from running a business online?

The main one is probably being able to mentally switch off from it. I would always try and justify what I was doing on my phone be it emails, Instagram, Facebook etc. In the beginning I felt like I had to reply to people straight away where as now I tend to stick more to business hours and set myself some boundaries so I get some down time too. In saying that, I do love the ability to be able to run my business from my phone/laptop and I am definitely more of an email lover than talking on the phone!

Instagram Know-How

How did you grow your followers?

My followers have definitely be a work in progress! Over time I’ve had a few friends with bigger accounts reposting things for me which is great, and I have also created cakes for a lot of Australian Rugby League players and their families, as well as singers The Veronicas, some politicians and well known faces around town so that has definitely helped!

Recently though, my time-lapse videos have shot my numbers up, usually growing around 50-100 per day which is just crazy to watch!

What tips would you give people about how to get reposted or featured by bigger accounts in your niche?

Hashtags! Some of the bigger cake accounts also have their own hashtags or tell you to tag them directly to get featured, so that has definitely helped, but I think improving the quality of my photos and videos has made a huge difference too.

I still never feel like my photos do my cakes justice, but I am working on my photography skills. Take the time to learn the basics about your camera as well as some small editing tips because it really does make all the difference.

Do you have trolls? How do you deal with them?

I've been pretty lucky with this and I pity anyone who wants to troll cake decorators, mainly because, well, who hates cake?!

I have had the odd comment since gaining more followers, someone said on a recent post "Too much fat, it even looks unhealthy!" to which I replied "don't look at it then!". I told myself I would never stoop to troll level but I will have a bit of fun with people if I'm feeling a little sassy!

What’s your favourite thing about Instagram?

Probably the amount of love and support I receive on a daily basis from people I don't even know, who just love seeing my work.

I have never really been a creative person so to find this outlet and be able to make a successful business out of it is something I can't put into words. I have worked so hard to get to where I am and Instagram has allowed me to document and share this journey with now just over 13k people.

Karlees Kupcakes Wedding Cake

Freshly-Baked Take Home Tips

What would be your top three pieces of advice for small business owners who use social media to get the word out about their products/services?

Stay genuine – there's only so long you can keep up an online persona, and especially if you are trying to start a business, people want to work with people they trust. Carry yourself online as you would if you had someone in front of you buying your product.

Do collaborations! I think this is a great idea when you are first starting out. I offered a lot of free cake to businesses in trade for some sort of promotion – be it a giveaway or competition of some sort. I'm so big on supporting other small businesses like mine and I think collaborating on some level works for everyone involved if its done right. I also do a lot of charity donations as well in my local community this is something really important to me, and I am a big believer in karma!

Hashtags are your friends! I used to haaaaaate when people used hashtags and thought it was so douche-y but now I love them and they really do work! Think about a bride looking for wedding ideas, how easy it is for her to go #weddingcakes and see literally thousands of ideas, including yours. Find what hashtags are most relevant to your product or service and go ham!

Do you have a small business or use Instagram to promote your wares online? I’d love to hear your experience in the comments!

The post How to Rock Instagram to Promote Your Small Business appeared first on ProBlogger.

1. Welcome/Nurture

Chances are you’re reading this and thinking… yeah lady, I’ve got one of those, they are pretty standard. Thanks for nothing, but if you read my last blog you may have picked up my advice about the benefits of building out a minimum of 4-5 emails of a series of 30 days. In fact, a study done by genius.com indicated that 66% of buyers say that consistent and relevant communication provided by businesses is a key influence in choosing a solution or brand. Get off on the right foot and don’t let leads slip through the cracks with an automated lead nurturing campaign.

This is one of the most valuable modules of our Email Marketing Automation Short Course which I’ll be running live at PB Event this year. Here is more about this workshop, you won't want to miss it!

2. Activate

You might have a free membership of a limited time offer for new subscribers. This automated email is al about getting people to take action on a critical point to strengthen your relationship. For example, DropBox knows that if you haven't installed them onto your machine the chances of you using the service are low, and their chances of upsell are minimum. So they send you a critical reminder emails until they have identified you've installed DropBox onto your machine.

3. Anniversary

According to experience, birthday emails have a 481% higher transaction rate than promotional emails. Treat you subscribers to a special something when a special day arrives in your history with them.

4. Helpful Features/Products

"Oh haven't you checked out our amazing one of a kind flying Japanese skateboard? Well because we know you love skateboards, here is a demo with Tony Hawk we shot last week.”

Okay, so it doesn't have to be so extreme, but maybe you have a tool or download your fans rave about? Or you know they'd love? Why not let educate them about some other things they might like to help build your relationship?

5. Post Purchase

Imagine sharing in your new customer's excitement – reinforce that they've made a great decision, and leaving them with confidence to buy from you again? Behavioral studies suggest that these emails are open 50% higher than standard mailings. Don't miss this opportunity.

6. Cart Abandonment

Do you know how many people abandon your carts or opt-ins? Baymard Institute, a web research company in the UK recorded an astonishing 68.63% abandonment rate at checkout. If you ask me, if you don't install this email and your ecommerce solution can support it, you're just leaving happy customers on the table.

If you're building your business blogging and using ecommerce to sell products, e-products or workshops, you should invest in getting this email set-up.

7. Reactivation

You won't believe this but sometimes people don't open your emails. I know, how rude, you send great emails right?

This is an essential automated email to you're your subscribers alive! Some brands do this on a 12-weekly basis, and what this means is, if they identify a subscriber hasn't opened any of the past 12 campaigns (weekly emails) then they send them an automated email saying "Hey! Are you still there?" to try and spark some new life into the subscriber.

In summary, these are some highly effective email strategies and the will work to keep you blog traffic and sales up. Now it's over to you, have you tried these emails? If decide to give these a try please report back with your results! When these emails are done right, they are incredibly useful. Happy Automating!

Alita Harvey-Rodriguez is known as one of Australia's leading Digital Marketing Futurist and the brains behind Milk it Academy, a training platform to advance marketers skills into new school digital leadership roles. Alita is a regular contributor to Womens Agenda, SEMRush, internetretailer.com.au, 2015 ORIA Judge (Online Retailer Industry Awards) and the leading lecturer at the Digital Marketing Institute for Email Marketing and Marketing Automation.

The post The Top 7 Email Marketing Automation Lifecycle Triggers Every Blogger Should Implement. appeared first on ProBlogger.