Fairy Blog Mother
Everybody has different body clocks, so they choose their own time to write their posts. Some people get their inspiration first thing in the morning, others late at night once they’ve been suitably stimulated by various happenings during the day. Of course you can write your post whenever suits you, only to save it in draft for later editing or, if you’re sure it is ready, schedule it to go out at a more appropriate time.
So when is it a good time to publish? I find this varies quite considerably, according to which particular media I have ‘fed’ my blog post to, so it can be read by the audience that populates it.
It all depends when my readership is more likely to be participating on social media. With Twitter the pace is so fast your post could easily be superseded by other news as soon as it hits the Twitter-stream – unless your followers have set up their own streams which includes you in it. That’s how I keep abreast of the worthwhile Twitters so I can interact with them and follow their blog posts whenever they are published.
You need to work out when is the most favourable time your fellow social networking friends are going to be around to read your posts. Do you catch the early birds, the mid-morning browsers, the lunchtime feeders, the afternoon skivers, or the evening perusers. Ideally you need to schedule your post’s feed so it either catches the most popular time, or multiple entries to get a better chance of being read at another part of the day.
Feeds to other social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn will allow your post to be visible for longer before it is usurped by its successor, and subscription posts that are sent to email inboxes or search engine reader pages will languish there quite happily until they are read.
And a post’s journey is not finished with the subscriber – the practice of sharing posts, through Twitter, social bookmarking sites and natural referral techniques will prolong the life of a post so it can reach another form of readership.
So the answer is to find that ‘optimum’ time that will spark off the chain reaction to send your post on its merry way, as it transverses across the world wide web in pursuit of both new and tried and trusted audiences.
What should be your true reason for blogging?
Fairy Blog Mother
Notice I put in ‘should be’ – because I can’t dictate what you created your blog for. But I can advise you on your blogging style, and how it will relate to your readers.
There are plenty of blogs and their posts out in the blogosphere yabbering away about how to make money. And that is one of the reasons why people create blogs – to make a fast buck. Some do succeed, but you’ll find there are plenty of different ways to do this, and some find it easier than others.
I could include affiliate and sponsored advertising, but then I feel this blog would become too commercial and my readers would be turned off. If you want to make money fast, then by all means go down this route, but it does depend on the kind of readership you may want to attract, on the subject matter you’re blogging about, and how much you post every day. The idea is to create traffic to supply the advertising, and sometimes the quality of the posts do suffer as a result.
But when you come across a blog like that, isn’t it really unwelcoming, distracting, annoying and disturbing? I hate the fact you have to glean the posted material somewhere amongst all that hype and irrelevant material – and let’s face it, much of the advertising doesn’t relate to the post’s subject.
So without these interfering interruptions, you need to be more canny about why you are blogging and how you go about it. Without the advertising you won’t make your immediate fortune, so you’ll have to rely on good content, a scintillating and entertaining style, relevant and required subject matter with excellent, pertinent headlines to compensate.
And another thing, don’t try and sell in your content if you’ve decided not to include advertising. Having established that your blog won’t be commercially cluttered, don’t spoil your posts with hard-sell tactics, as that is not the true nature of blogging.
Blogs are a medium for expression, education, entertaining and example. They are an integral part of social networking, and you don’t sell on this kind of media as it isn’t tolerated. Your blog is a place to explain your ideas to your audience for free, as a gesture of goodwill and an altruistic attitude towards helping other people succeed or have a better life. It is somewhere to expose your expertise, show off your knowledge and spread the word, a resource that highlights the all important answers and provides the solutions for nothing – except for a following, subscriptions, sharing on social media and recommendations to others to come and read your posts.
And of course you reciprocate by thanking them, commenting on their blogs and acknowledging them on social networking and bookmarking sites – once they’ve scratched your back it’s definitely time to scratch theirs!