I thought I’d share with you some of the information I’ve learned since altering my posting schedule, as well as what I’ve learned through using Twitter. It’s nothing particularly compelling, and I’d say most of it you already know it, but there may be people who could benefit, and if nothing else I thought it might make for a good discussion. I’d love to provide you with pie charts and throw around words like “statistics”, “data”, and “analysis”, because despite that fact I’m no good at mathematics I find such things immensely interesting, but none of my observations fit that sort of structure and my information is just written down on paper as bullet points.

My new posting schedule of Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, has allowed me to really gauge the times when more people are about online. I suppose it goes without saying that posting as I did previously, every three days (which made for a strange two-week schedule I’m not proud of) didn’t allow me to discover anything, but as often happens to the self, I didn’t realise it would happen at the time.

So what has my posting schedule found? For the most part people are about a lot on Monday, less so on Wednesday, and not around much at all on Friday. This means that more people are around on Tuesday than they are Thursday. Of course this is not true of every week, and there have been occasions when I expect all of us have opened Twitter on a Monday to a silent reception, and on Friday to a mass of discussion. What is interesting, I think, if we consider the more-often case of Monday being the most busy day, is just that: why Monday? I find it interesting that it is this, the first day of the work week, that contains the discussion whilst Friday, the last day, is relatively quiet. I suppose I think that on Monday people will be feeling less motivated and also too busy to tweet, whereas on Friday they are looking forward to the weekend and feel emboldened by this fact to sneak online more than they would the rest of the week. Yet Monday rules. Does this mean that actually people need to psyche themselves into working by talking to others whilst on Friday they think “I might as well leave it until tomorrow, it’s the weekend then”? I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on this one because I find it fascinating. It’s also interesting that the Twitter accounts of publishers and editors – people who are being paid to be on Twitter – often follow this routine too, despite their approach being different and their work place actually advocating use of social media during work hours.

As a British blogger I’ve learned that scheduling my posts for the early morning is better than posting in the evening. By early morning I mean 1am. I chose this time originally to fit in with Australia – I wanted a time that fit my location so that the date my posts are assigned correlate to my calender, but wanted the post to go live at a time that fit internationally. 1am GMT/BST roughly fits in with Australian lunchtime, as well as late afternoon/early evening throughout America, the two regions at the extreme ends of the time zones. And it means that my posts are there ready for when Britons wake up for breakfast (more on that in a moment). Posting in the evening, British time, means that a lot of people will only see the post the next day, and in my experience you’re a lot less likely to read a post from yesterday when there are newer ones available. This is partly why I don’t post everyday, because I know how easy it is to just select the newest when there are a couple or more available. Whilst a lot of the content us book bloggers produce is “evergreen” and relevant for a very long time, as the basic audience of each other’s blogs we haven’t time to go through all of it.

In regards to the British breakfast, I’ve found that a great many people are online early in the morning, before work. This makes sense, but this time, around 7am, is good across the board. Yet once America is awake, unless you follow mostly Americans the overall usage of Twitter dies down, sometimes until the next day. Indeed it seems the best time to be on Twitter is 3am British time – afternoon in Australia, evening in America. We’re not best placed for interaction with the majority of our fellow English-as-first-language speakers. I find that peak time is from about 2am-12pm British time, which is a bit of a disadvantage during the work week when you don’t want to stay up too late.

So there you have it, not particularly new information with not particularly interesting analysis (I had to sneak one of those words in somewhere). If you’d like to know how I’ve applied it to my blogging, here it is: post what I consider the best of the posts I’ve lined up for the week on Monday, and then second best and third accordingly. But don’t not let people know about Friday’s post because you may find that particular Friday to be a buzz. And considering it’s the weekend next, people may also read it then. Though don’t rely on weekends because people like to relax.

What have you learned about social media usage and posting from your experience as a blogger?