Thanks to the power of the time-stamp, you don’t have to publish your blog posts the moment you finish writing them. I’ve made a habit of using the time-stamp instead of live blogging, largely because it gives me control over when posts are published and it also gives me a window of time in case I want to put in some last minute edits.
In this way, you can write all of your blog posts at pretty well any time and none would be the wiser. With that in mind, when is the best time for you to write your blog posts? For people with conventional 9-to-5 kind of jobs, the scheduling can be a lot more restrictive. After all, your boss doesn’t want you to mess around with your personal blog on company time. In this way, you are left with only a small handful of options:
First Thing In the Morning
Provided that you don’t have too lengthy of a commute in the morning, you can probably squeeze in an hour in the morning to throw together a blog post. A key advantage to this strategy is that your blog post is done and it won’t have to weigh on your mind the rest of the day. You really shouldn’t be obsessing over your personal blog while at work anyways. The main disadvantage is that you will necessarily be rushed for time and the quality of your blog post may suffer. What’s more, your brain may still be a little groggy, still recovering from your night of slumber. I’m not a morning person, so writing a blog post at 6 a.m. isn’t exactly for me.
Lunch Hour
You’re a little more awake now, having endured a morning of crunching numbers, following sales leads, or asking customers if they want fries with that. You’ve also had a few hours to consider what you want to be blogging about today, so you may be better prepared to share your thoughts with the world. These are good things. However, just like the morning post idea, you are pressed for time, because most folks are not given more than an hour for lunch. Some workplaces may not offer web access either, so you’ll have to scramble to find a WiFi hotspot. For work-at-home professionals, this is less of an issue, and writing a personal blog post between freelance writing projects could provide a much-needed break.
Right After Work
I don’t know about you, but when I had a regular 9-to-5 kind of job, the first thing I wanted to do when I came home was not hop on the computer and bash out a blog post. Most of us are pretty tired after a long day at work, so it may be best to rest up during that hour or so before dinner. For people who enjoy cooking, the preparation of a hearty home-cooked meal can provide a sense of relaxation and escape from the drudges of everyday work. I personally don’t think that writing a blog post immediately after work is a good idea, but it seems to work for some people. After all, you may have been inspired by the day’s events in some way, running home anxious to blast out your opinion on the matter.
Sometime After Dinner
You’ve had a long day at work. You’ve inhaled a delicious supper of Kraft Dinner and day-old croissants. For non-bloggers, now would probably be the time to watch some primetime TV, play some video games, or curl up with a good book. For bloggers, however, I find that this is a great time to take a relaxed pace with writing a blog post. For starters, you don’t have the same kind of time restrictions as you do with a morning post or a lunchtime post. You can take as long as you’d like to gather your thoughts and express them in the best possible way. Also, like the pre-dinner post, you can reflect on the day’s happenings if any of them proved to be an area of inspiration. The downside to a post-dinner post, as you can imagine, is that you may be pretty tired by the end of the day. Then again, I’m more of an evening person, so this works out great for me.
If you are a working dog like me, your options as to when to write a blog post are a little more open. Realistically, it is just as possible for me to write my blog posts in the middle of the afternoon as it is for me to write them in the middle of the night. Even so, there is still appears to be an optimal time for everyone… this optimal time, however, is different with each person.
Speaking for myself, I prefer to take the last strategy mentioned in this post; this particular entry was completed shortly after dinner. This is the time of day where my brain appears to be running at its best and it is when I am most lucid, a state that is particularly conducive to blog writing. Just like an exercise regimen, a blog post schedule must be individually catered to each person. Some people prefer to hit up the gym in the morning while others do it late at night; the same is true of writing blog posts. Choose the time that works best for you and then take advantage of the time-stamp feature for maximum exposure.
I always like to write in the late night and the next morning doing my checks before i publish them and work on others.
I also like to write at night, and hit the publish button before I go to sleep. Being in Japan, when I go to bed, North America is just waking up, so I’m usually greeted by a few comments the next morning – a good reason to get out of bed! 🙂
I’m pretty bad about using the timestamp feature as I find myself live posting much more regularly. When I am going to be traveling I try to plan ahead as much as possible though.
As far as the time that I write, I do the bulk of my writing late at night. Morning is not an option as I am up around 4:30am just to go to work. I will sometimes try to get a post started over lunch but rarely have time to finish a full post. After work I like to spend some time with my wife and kids, which means I am usually writing between 11pm and 1am.
Nice post, I never really put much thought into the best times to write a blog post, thanks for sharing.
Matt