If you’ve ever looked at RSS subscriber numbers or blog traffic you will know that not all days are created equal. In fact some days just plain have it up on others and research from RSS marketing experts Pheedo reveals exactly how the order falls.
It turns out that Tuesday is the day when blog traffic is at its peak and by a long shot followed by Wednesday, Monday, Thursday and Friday. Unsurprisingly the weekends are slow as apparently some people still have a life away from their monitor. Of course it’s important to remember that the ‘days’ are measured in US-time and for US-centric markets, so if you’re blogging in Tibet to an audience in France, the chips may fall a little differently.
The statistics are from 2005 so trends have most likely shifted since then, however the information match more recent statistics from Feedburner such as this graph showing TechCrunch feed stats from 8 months ago:
As you can see from the graph, TechCrunch’s readership bobs up and down each week creating a graph of 7 day humps. Stats from my own blogs (albeit with much smaller sample sizes) emulate this behavior.
Similarly DailyBlogTips recently reported Mondays and Tuesdays to be a high point for general internet traffic (as opposed to RSS traffic).
What does this mean for bloggers
What does this mean for bloggers? Well its quite simple. If you have a killer post that will have your readers squealing with delight as you categorically demonstrate how superior your blog is, then you should wait until Tuesday to post it so that you receive the maximum audience for your textual genius.
Of course if everyone else is waiting until Tuesday to post their best posts, perhaps that makes Wednesday the best day since its much easier for your diamond to shine when its set on a backdrop of stones…
From my own experience lighter articles tend to fly better on weekends and heavier, more information-dense posts do well in the middle of the week. Alas, I have absolutely no evidence to support these claims, so it’s all hearsay really. What’s your experience?
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What others said...
19 Comments
Raghu CS said
I may not be understanding this correctly, but many times the way I do it is I scan the posts on my feeds during the week, but do a lot of catch up during the weekend - Is this ‘behavior’ captured above ?
Collis said
Interesting question, I think what they do is measure how many times a feed is accessed each day. So statistically people access their RSS feeds the most on a Tuesday. Some people of course like yourself (and me!) access on weekends as well. But overall weekdays are the highest.
You can see this in effect if you watch how many readers a major blog like techcrunch.com or johnchow.com and so on have each day. If you watch the numbers you’ll see they dip on weekends and then go up on weekdays.
The reason that they go up and down in the first place is that there isn’t actually any way to measure how many people are subscribed to a feed accurately. When you subscribe with an RSS reader all you are really doing is telling your program to check a file periodically to see if it has changed. The way the statistics are produces is that the company in charge of the feed - lets say Feedburner for example - guesses how many people are subscribed by looking at how many times a day the file is being accessed. So if its being accessed many times then presumably there are many people subscribed to the feed.
Actually it would presumably be reasonably straightforward to trick a service like Feedburner into thinking that you had a lot of subscribers but of course there isn’t a whole lot of point to doing this since it doesn’t make much difference to anyone except the owner of the feed.
kayliz said
I think Tuesday wins this race because people still have a life that they live on the weekends, which means that the Monday blues(and hang-overs) come into full effect thus meaning online lives resume fully on Tuesday.
Chris M Johnson said
This makes my posting schedule of Tuesdays and Thursdays sound like an excellent strategic plan. Despite the fact that I chose them based on when I didn’t have class.
Blaine Moore said
I think that as general advice, Tuesday is a good day. However, that can depend greatly upon your own niche and your own audience.
As a more specific rule, analyze your own statistics to see when you see the most traffic through your site and when your feeds are accessed the most often. You may find a better day than Tuesday that would fit your particular site.
Maki said
I’ve noticed this phenomenon myself when publishing great linkbait-type posts. Putting it out during the weekend is just horrid and I think Wednesday works best for me.
Thanks for the insight and link to Pheedo, never read the article before!
Birdfreak said
I am a believer that Tuesday earns more hits than the rest of the days but I wonder if some of the numbers are inflated. Tuesday is the day that many new video games, movies, etc. come out and I would tend to think that more people are surfing on Tuesday to get info on these new products.
But the weekend is still a little surprising. I know people are extra busy on the weekend, but often that is when I do research for upcoming projects that are coming out later in the week…on Tuesdays
Collis said
Yeah i guess kayliz is right about Mondayitis making that day not the best and Tuesday then being the real start of the week.
Actually I would have thought Friday was the best day because everyone was distracted from their real work and busy reading blogs!
Bill Flitter said
Thanks for including our information on your post. If you have any questions or need further explanation, please contact me. We will be releasing more information on RSS user behavior in the next few months.
Best,
Bill Flitter
Founder
Pheedo
bill AT Pheedo.com
Joel Laumans said
Nice post, its amazing how much difference there is between internet activity and the days of the week, I would have expected it to be much more average
JohnP said
I always read stuff on the weekends but evidently I am in the minority…
Jaro said
In my experience the best day for a killer article is Monday. You should take into account that if you post something on Tuesday morning in the US people in Asia have probably gone to sleep already.
Ben said
I tend to always get the most hits on Mondays and Wednesdays. I believe this is due to so many people going through the rounds of websites they like to check on, but not necessarily from home - i.e. the weekends over, I’m now stuck at school or work, let’s see what my favorite blog has got for me?
Ben said
Whoops…meant to say Mondays and Tuesdays.
James said
That’s an interesting post Collis. I’ve noticed my stats are different from different days and generally lower on the weekends.
However, I think the blog topic have some influence as well. Eg if the blog is on DIY like gardening or auto, generally towards recreation, i think it might garner good visitors towards Thu/Fri whereas perhaps for news & work related blogs, the weekdays will have higher traffic. Just thinking but not proven. This might be interesting to find out.
Jw
Neil said
Counterintuively, our biggest spikes come on Fridays… our blog (which is called, incidentally, Friday Reflections) publishes cartoons on Wednesday, and short articles on Friday.
I think it’s really down to the content; our Friday postings are on the short and lighter side, and are intended to give people something poignant to think about as they end their hectic working week. It absolutely would not work so well on a Monday or Tuesday.
Henry said
Hmmm, think that trafic depends on topic of the blog. In my experience, garden-topics are much more searched on weekend (especially sunday) than during the week.
Regards
Henry
Mohan said
I guess its like this.
Nice stuff to read. Blogs later
Friday - tgif. I’ll read blogs later.
Saturday - aaaah, a nice lie in. Blogs later.
Sunday - Oooh Sunday
Monday - whuzzat?
Tuesday - Aaah. Lets see what the blogosphere has to say!
Pat said
My traffic shows Saturday and Friday the highest hit days - Wednesday is the lowest. Tuesdays are about average.
You cant really say there is a universal peak day for blogs, even generally. It ALL varies, based on niche/subject, user base, WHEN you write, how often you write, events in countries, too many factors to say ‘Yes, Tuesday is the peak day’.
Maybe it is and maybe it isnt. My own blog would show, as my asumption originally was, that on a Friday evening after a long week people are more likely to sit down and surf the net…
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