In my research, the best time to publish business content is in the mornings on weekdays. But let’s get into the specifics and experiment a little so you can maximize your readership.
OPERATE WITHIN RANGE: Readership starts ramping up at about 4am and doesn’t die down until 9pm.
PEAKS ARE YOUR BUSY TIME: The majority of readers look at business content between 5-9am and then again at 9pm.
VALLEYS ARE YOUR DOWN-TIME: You will see an obvious dip in traffic at lunch time as well as on Fridays near business closing time.
BEST DAYS OF THE WEEK: Monday through Wednesday get the heaviest reading. However Tuesday and Wednesday get the bulk. This tells us that business people front load their week with content to learn about what is going on to get them through the week.
DON’T IGNORE WEEKENDS. Although weekdays get the most amount of traffic, weekends do bring in traffic, they just capture a different kind of audience and motivation. Readers will take up longer and more educational material versus weekdays where readers are generally looking to stay abreast of current events.
These trends are general findings, which means that there is room to walk these in to maximize your content’s impact.
WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO OPTIMIZE YOUR PUBLICATION SCHEDULE?
There are 2 experiments you can try. Perform each of these experiments for at least 1 week, and up to 4 weeks if able. It is best to do these through months that are fairly low key, meaning no major holidays and minimal days off. I suggest April, May, June, September, or October.
EXPERIMENT 1:
Divide up the 24-hr day by the your output capacity of content. For example, say you are a large publishing entity and can produce 248 articles, 10 short videos, and 10 longer pieces, such as white papers in 1 day. That’s 268 pieces of content.
This will determine a steady publishing rhythm that you can hold at a flat line. In this example, you would publish something every 5 minutes.
EXPERIMENT 2:
The second experiment you will need to perform is front load all of your publishing at 12:01am. This will mean preparing all of your content in advance, the day before.
Both experiments will show you the true spikes in readership. The second one gives all of your content in a dump and readers will make their way through it at will and not letting their behavior be influenced by publishing times. The first one pumps out content on a regular and steady stream. This experiment will show how much the act of publishing at a certain time effects readership with something new popping up regularly throughout the day, staying fresh over competitor’s content.
OPTIMIZE: Plan a publication schedule based on the rises and peaks in viewership that you obtain from these 2 experiments. With schedule-auto-publish, your content team doesn’t have to work unreasonable hours to be up to publish at an exact time. Instead, help them plan in advance to have the material ready before those peak times and then set the publishing on an automated schedule.
