Last week, as I finished composing my Personal Blogging Crusader post, I planned on having it publish in the morning. I’ve noticed recently that posting first thing in the morning helps bring more people to my blog, as opposed to posting on a Friday night when readers might actually get a life for the weekend and skip reading blogs, and I like it when people read my blog. Anyway, it’s easy to schedule a post in both WordPress and Blogger, and I’m sure other blogging platforms allow this as well.
This wouldn’t have normally been a problem, except the second I hit “Publish” a number of things happen. My feed is picked up, so those who read through an RSS reader, which I explain in my old post Feed Me What? can see it. Not only does my blog post become available to read in your favorite reader, but a link to the new post also goes out to Twitter and Facebook – setting these all up automatically are easy ways to get the word out about new posts on your blog.
As soon as I realized my mistake, I in my infinite wisdom had to go and make it worse. I didn’t think this through until I looked at my stats later (yes, I’m a stats whore, but that doesn’t mean you should be too). I edited the post to update the posting date and time, which took it off the front page of my blog and gave people a “404 Page Not Found” message if they tried to click the link. I did post in Twitter and Facebook about making the mistake and said that the post would be available the next morning, but my feed reader did not update when the post was published at the scheduled time – that only went out the first time. I know this because I subscribe to my own blog, and you should too – that way you know what readers are seeing – whether or not they can see your photos, etc.
I noticed when checking my stats that I had people clicking over almost immediately, but I had already edited the post to publish later, so it wasn’t showing up on my blog. I wonder how many readers didn’t get to see my post because of this, or how many just aren’t going to take my new personal blogging venture seriously?
As personal bloggers, there are many reasons why you might not want to publish something right away. Perhaps you are going on vacation and don’t want the world to know you’re not home until after you’ve already returned (good safety tip, btw). Perhaps you have a big announcement to be released at a certain time. Or perhaps you just want to do all your writing on one day and do minor blog maintenance, such as replying to comments, during the week so you can have a life. In any case, scheduling posts is a great tool to use. But I would caution you to make sure you’ve got everything ready to go before hitting the button. You could end up spoiling a surprise or disappointing people. For personal bloggers, a lot of those readers are virtual friends, and I don’t know about you, but I feel bad when I slam the door in my friends’ faces like that.
Next time I accidentally hit publish too soon, I’m going to leave it. I think that will have a much better effect than trying to backtrack the way I did.
Other Posts Like Me:
- Getting the Word Out
- Blogging Pet Peeves: Feeds
- When You Don’t Feel Like Blogging
- How Much Social Media Is Too Much?
- About Pages for Personal Bloggers
I tend to suck at scheduling; I always mess up somehow. :D
But I find that with feeds, particularly Bloglines, posts are delayed. So you might post on twitter that a new blog is up, I go via there and check it out – but then it won’t load in my Bloglines as a new post for another few hours yet. It’s kind of frustrating.
I don’t auto update in Facebook as I don’t share my blog there, but Twitter does wonders for people randomly clicking through!
I’ll need to check to see if my blog automatically pings Bloglines – if it doesn’t, then adding it might help get it to you faster. If it’s already added, I’m not sure what to do to make it show up there any faster. I use Google Reader, and it shows up there within a few minutes, so I wouldn’t know what else to do about Bloglines – it would likely be on there end.
As for scheduling, I find that it needs to be a very conscious process, otherwise I will mess up like I did last week. I know the process, I just forget to do it.
I try to keep two or three posts scheduled ahead. That way I can have a routine posting time, which is 7:AM daily. I try different times but the early morning tends to work best. Someone has probably done a study on that posting time thing.
I think I have seen some pro-blogging posts about best posting time, and weekday mornings win. I’ve been trying to stay ahead of the game, which works a lot better for me both in terms of keeping myself inspired and getting visitors to my blog. I’m trying not to burn myself out, so I’m aiming for 3 posts per week – Mondays for Personal Blogging, and two more for my own stuff.