Tuesday – The Internet’s Peak Hour

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?