It happens to all bloggers. You put together this brilliant article that’s well-written, packed with information and you just know it’s going to go viral. Then… nothing. You can hear the crickets chirping all over your blog. What happened? Where is everybody? You probably posted it on the wrong day. In most cases, the content you post on Mondays turns out to be the most popular content on your blog.
Assuming, of course, you put the same amount of effort into developing quality content every single day of the week.
When I first started blogging I assumed that Saturday and Sunday would be the biggest traffic days. Everyone would be home for the weekend, messing around on the Internet. And that’s exactly what happened – people “mess around” on the Internet on the weekends – they play games, they connect with friends and family and they look for entertainment. It’s the weekend, it’s time for fun and relaxation.
So, that eliminated Saturday and Sunday. Then I thought, “Well, surely everyone’s online on Friday, it’s the last day of the work week. They’ll want to tie up loose ends before the weekend. And that’s exactly what they do – they tie up loose ends. They don’t go looking for NEW information on Friday because they’re still trying to take care of everything that came across their desk during the week.
So that eliminates Friday. Which leaves us Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Statistically, the articles you publish on Monday will do best – over the 4-day period. But let me dig into that a little further…
During my testing I also assumed that Monday would be the busiest day of the week. Everybody’s getting back to work, they’re ready to take on new projects, they’re looking for new information. And in some cases, this is true and you will see an large uptick in traffic on Monday.
However, there’s still a large group of people out there who spend Monday cleaning up what they left on their desk on Friday and another group of people who spend Monday planning out the rest of their week. In other words, these two groups of people will probably not see that killer post you publish on Monday.
But all is not lost. Because these people will see it on Tuesday. Tuesday is the one day of the week when everyone’s online reading, checking in with their favorite blogs. If you have published that killer content on Monday, they’ll see it in their RSS reader on Tuesday and they’ll come to read your article. This is also when you’ll see a rise in social sharing, which adds even more traffic over Wednesday and Thursday.
There are two important points I want to make:
- Those people coming to your blog on Monday and Tuesday are looking for fresh content, content that’s just been published. So be careful. If this is their first time visiting your blog they might assume that anything posted during the prior week is “old news.” For this reason, you should always be sure to post something new on your blog on Mondays.
- This whole theory goes a little wonky if you’re blogging in an entertainment niche – gaming, dating, movies, etc. That’s the type of information people are looking for on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!