When Is The Right Time To Post?

This is something that has been bouncing around inside my mind for a while now, a conundrum of sorts.

With the internet the world is becoming a smaller and smaller place, I can spend my time chatting with a night owl in Australia or an American insomniac just as easily as I can talk to the person I share a desk with at work. Plus with all of the social media sites and their email alerts and constant flashing updates windows you can always see if you have missed someones communication attempts. In short, we are all available to each other twenty-four hours a day.

The thing is though, just because we are always within reach, it doesn't mean we are always there. Living in Europe I have been struggling with the fact that the majority of my friends and social network associates are based in America. Not to mention, given my language of choice, the bulk of my potential readers are also based in time zones other than my own.  So when is the best time for people to be not just writing and posting, but spreading the word of their posting.

I tend to try to write a blog post in the morning before work (no during it … honest) and then I post it straight away, but is this really the most productive? I mean sure, blogs are stationary, and anybody who subscribes to my posts gets an email telling them it is there. So again the time of my posting is kind of taken care of. However, I only have a very small following, and would like to have my work read by millions more people so should I not be waiting to actually publish my post at a better time of day.

I have noticed that the twitter world really starts to come alive at around 15:00 my time, which is around 06:00 and 09:00 in the states. Given that sites such as Twitter and Facebook work in real time, I have been holding myself back and only really spreading the word of my posting until after this magical hour has been reached.  But that still means that the initial notifications that are sent have been missed. The networked blogs and the WordPress 'sharing' have already gone out, witnessed for the most part by the friends in the eastern corners of the globe and for the most Europe. (Read UK)

I cannot really complain about my website traffic, as it is holding pretty steady and I am getting some comments and regular readers, but lets face it, we always want more, it is who we are. More readers means more 'friends' and when boiled down, more name recognition for me, and that means my name gets spread and obviously recognized easier down the road.

When do you post? Do you do it when it best suits you? Maybe writing the posts at the best time for writing and posting them later on, its only the push of a button after all.