There are many times I will schedule blog posts for the future… sometimes it is just written the day before I schedule it, other times, it could be set for a week or more in the future. And I also have a stash of blog entries in my drafts that might need a bit added to them or some editing before they see the public’s eye. And it is nice to be able to have some blog posts set to schedule in the future, especially if you are going on vacation or know you will be tied up with a client or a conference. But when it comes to scheduling posts, there are a few things to keep in mind so you don’t end up looking silly by commenting on something that is so obviously dated… even when you only wrote it days ago!

Avoid stories on current hot topics
Especially when the story could completely change in a matter of days, avoid tackling hot topics or current news stories - or anything that could potentially turn into a hot topic - in a post that you have scheduled to publish days from now. Imagine you had written a blog post on January 31st about why Microsoft would never make an offer to buy Yahoo, then set it to publish a week later while you are on a beach in Hawaii… hopefully with your readers being none the wiser. All it took was a matter of hours for that post to be outdated when Microsoft announced their unsolicited acquisition offer on February 1, 2008. You would look pretty silly when your post published a few days after that! So avoid scheduling anything that could become outdated, especially if you will be without internet access to put the brakes on the scheduled post.

Don’t be too controversial
Along with avoiding hot topics, avoid blog posts that would create controversy, especially if you won’t be around to babysit the blog’s comments or be able to comment yourself if people are not happy with your chosen standpoint. Sticking with non-controversial stuff is better, and make those controversial blog posts when you are in the office.

Choose your days
If you plan to have a new blog entry every day or every weekday, this isn’t as important. But if you are scheduling just one or two blog posts a week, make sure you are scheduling them to run at optimum times on the best days. Usually the best time to publish new entries is about 3am in your time zone (or your target market time zone). This means that when the early risers get to their desks in the morning, your blog entry will be near the top of the RSS reader list, or pretty close to it. Likewise, watch your analytics to see which days are consistently better traffic-wise and try and publish on those days. Many blogs see a spike on Mondays and Tuesdays, but check to make sure your blog follows the same patterns.

Check your calendar
Because of how Wordpress is set up with their date system, if you tend to schedule blog posts for weeks in advance, it pays to pull out your calendar - especially one that has holidays and special events in the country of your chosen market, if you do not reside where the majority of your readers are. So if you are picking a random date four weeks from now to publish your latest Top Ten Tips blog post, make sure that random day is a weekday (which is best for nearly all blogs) and that it doesn’t happen to coincide on a holiday or long weekend. If it does, you can select another date in the future. If you randomly chosen date had happened to be Thanksgiving Thursday or Easter Monday, your blog traffic will be significantly down and you will miss out on readers who might have otherwise read it.

Scheduling future blog posts is a great way to ensure your blog has regularly updated content, even when you aren’t around to update it. In Wordpress 2.5, simply go and select edit next to “Publish immediately”, then pick your date. Even many hosted blog networks, including Blogger, now have a future publishing option. So next time you will be away or otherwise bogged down, follow these tips to schedule your posts.