Do you schedule your blog for peak times?

[AlexNewell]

"grab a mic and record some audios that you can whip up there."

Stephen - Nicole left you a gem there...

You sound good - ie you have a nice microphone voice and podcasting would give your blog a variety and reach you don't have now and do some marketing too.

Even if you did a weekly round up podcast - you might really enjoy it and it would build a different kind of relationship with your followers

[deniseoberry]

Stephen --

Here's a thought for you to try on. Take one day a week to write five to seven posts for that week. Take one day to schedule the posts to release daily and schedule any related tweets. Take the rest of the week to actively market your website.

[StephenT]

"grab a mic and record some audios that you can whip up there."

You sound good - ie you have a nice microphone voice and podcasting would give your blog a variety and reach you don't have now and do some marketing too.

Even if you did a weekly round up podcast - you might really enjoy it and it would build a different kind of relationship with your followers

Thanks Alex. My podcast will be starting the end of this month. I already had it in the works!

Thanks everybody for your help! I fear this thread has gone a bit off center from where I was going.

Yeah, I sometimes do feel a bit over-loaded, and the suggestions you have given are going to be implemented, but what I really was curious about was posting blogs for days that statistically has low traffic.

I wonder if I should post anyway, knowing that even if someone doesn't see it, say on Sunday, the search engines do and if the post ranks well, people will see it when they search. Or, should I save that really good post of the days I get good traffic!

How do I get the most bang for my buck, so to speak?

[NicoleDean]

Let me see if I can answer your question better this time. (No coffee yet, so I apologize if I'm missing the mark.)

I'll post on my blog any time, but my automatic "blog updates" Aweber list goes out at 6am daily. And, anything important, I'll mail to my lists, so that's where I get the immediate income boost. But, I don't avoid the weekend if I get Jonesing about something and want to post. I'm much too impatient for that. lol!

For instance, I posted about my affiliate contest this weekend and mailed about it, but I didn't mind doing it on the weekend, since I'll mail several more times this month.

Also this particular discussion has spanned Saturday and Sunday, so it's certainly proof that people are online on the weekends.

[StephenT]

Nicole, I agree that this forum is proof that "some" people are on the net on the weekend, but would you call us normal?

Seriously, this is where I get to wondering. I'm on here on the weekend, but I am not "normal" compared to most people I know offline. I would work 24/7 at this, hence some of the frustration of earlier posts to this thread, but will my reader response be worth the post for my off times. Remember, I am not you with bunches of followers, but just starting out with less than a hundred!

If posting on the weekends and holidays is what I should do, then great, let me at it! I just don't want to waste a post worthy of Hemingway is no one will read it!

[NicoleDean]

Well, that's easy enough. Look at your webstats and see.

[AlexNewell]

"but would you call us normal? "

YES!!

Seems to me Steve that you are following the first rule of marketing, "Go where the people are".

And that's good...

So if you are convinced that people are not on your blog on the weekends then maybe you should not be either.

So you get a rest!

And if you want to do something for your blog, 2 suggestions

(1) take this time to update facebook, Stumbleupon - whatever suits you rather than blog, or,

(2) your blog is a lifestyle and self development blog so...do you need to be doing something on the weekend so that you have stuff to share during the week?

Yoga lessons? seminars, voluntary work? Church? Long walks?

I don't think there is a right answer here - there's just an answer that you will decide on and which will work for you.

My own angle on this is that I look at my daily stats and what I care about is are the numbers going up?

My posting has to fit my schedule and I'll post when I've written something and that's it. That's my take and all bloggers come to their own arrangement.

Last point - people care much more about quality than quantity so if you focus on planning and writing great posts that's more important than posting a certain number of times or at certain times of day.

Again, that's my take on this.

Way back when I was in Uni I co-edited our student magazine. The other editor focused on getting an issue out on a fixed day and would fill the issue with crap provided he had a required number of pages. All I cared about was quality and I would take stuff out of the folder that was meant for the printer and bin it and would happily decline offers of work that I thought were not "good enough". And I cared not one fig for publication dates!!

Neither of these 2 extremes is right although my co editor was probably closer to commercial reality!

I suspect that just pleasing yourself is best here.

:-)

Sorry if I rambled!

[StephenT]

Thanks Alex, I appreciate your input.

[NicoleDean]

First of all, ditto Alex.

Also, Stephen, I know you know this already, but your blog post isn't a one-time thing. You'll be interlinking it and SEOing it and traffic will continue to find it forever.

I think you're overthinking this. Take a peek at your stats and see if you get enough traffic on the weekends to post them. If not, schedule those posts for during the week. And, spend your weekends writing and submiting articles - or having fun. Like Alex said, go have adventures to write about. I normally don't work this much on the weekends, but I'm getting ready for a weeklong trip so I'm on overdrive right now or I'd be off playing, too.

Anyway, I don't know if that helps at all, but I worry and would hate to see you burn out.

[NicoleDean]

Here you go, my stats for 2009 -


Just for comparison's sake when you look at yours.