How to Determine the Perfect Posting Schedule for YOU
Once you have your site established (with, say, 30-50 pages of content) your aim shifts from establishing a raw source of content to starting to grow a consistent user base. One aspect users (and search engines) expect to see is consistency, so the most important factor when setting a blog schedule is determining how much time you can consistently dedicate towards your blog.
Once you know approximately how long each article will take you to write, and how much time you have to create new content each week, start to implement a schedule you can stick to.
It is better to start small and grow than over-promise and under-deliver.
Start with a goal of 2-3 posts per week. If you find you can consistently produce 2-3 posts per week, try upping your goal to 4 or 5 posts per week.
Remember that in the early days, the exact timing of your posts isn’t as important as it will be once you establish your blog. As you start to gain readers (say, 1,000 readers a month), paying attention to when you release your posts is just as important as ensuring the posts meet your personal quality standards. It is the combination of these two factors that will help get the targeted traffic you want.
There is no one specific time or day that is “the best” time to publish, since readership will vary greatly depending on your site topic. I recommend testing release-dates (eg: every Monday and Thursday afternoon, or every Monday-Wednesday-Friday morning) while your readership is still young. Use your analytics tools, like Google Analytics, to determine when your site gets the most visitors.
Create a reserve list of posts you can publish anytime.
When starting you should try to stick to your goal, but you also need to schedule a little extra time to begin to develop a reserve of blog content. Creating a back-log of articles that can be published anytime is essential to maintaining a consistent posting schedule.
Every blogger faces weeks where (lacking time or motivation) the content doesn’t flow as freely, so you need to have content ready to go to get you through those weeks.
When I’m creating a blog posting schedule I only increase the number of weekly posts after I have developed one month’s worth of reserve posts. This gives me a cushion to make sure I can handle my increase in workload before setting my new schedule, since in order to produce my reserve posts, I’ve already gotten into the habit of producing more content than my current goal.
At the end of the day, getting your blog on a schedule is really about finding the perfect blog posting schedule for you as a blogger and small business owner.