question - your ideal posting time

The client on the phone is taking an inordinately long period of time to find her caseworker's name. So.

I have a question.

When posting to LJ--not just daily entries, but stories, art, vids, meta, etc--what is your ideal time and why? Mornings, fresher, bored at work, midday, nearer lunch, refreshed, afternoon, the midafternoon drag, evening, while watching House or Supernatural et al, or night, when the house is quiet?

I have this weird feeling it means something that I'm most likely to post after 11 PM, but I'm not sure if it's that I don't want attention so fast or it's motivating to wake up to email. Tricky, that.

Comments

[ex-spacehuss207.livejournal.com]

I usually post in the dead of night, when I should be sleeping :D


(it is totally motivating to wake up to email, too.)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Exactly! It seriously does get me to the coffee faster in hopes I have time to read before work.

Plus, nights are when I work on fic or whatever, so I'm more likely to post.

[scrollgirl.livejournal.com]

I've wondered that myself. What's the ideal time to post something to maximise exposure, for example? I don't have much of a social life so I'll post stuff on Friday nights, when most people are out doing stuff, or else catching up on their TV time. Few responses then. I've noticed that posting on weekday mornings seems to get good response rate. Probably because most of us like checking our flists during lulls between meetings or whatever. (As per example, I'm avoiding work right now!)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

You know, I've wondered about that too. I want to say mornings, because honestly, that's when I surf first, but I tend to read after work myself so...it makes me wonder.

Hey, more power to avoidance!

[cereta.livejournal.com]

I tend to post early in the morning, just before my first class. Then, I have the whole day to answer comments. Also, I'm just most alert at that time.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*makes note*

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

While I totally get the authorly logic, I have to admit that as a reader, the stories posted first thing are the ones I tend to miss, no matter how much I want to read them. I cruise my f-list at 6:30 in the morning, but I'm not reading any stories at that hour, just noting what's there and who had overnight drama. Even if I am wise enough to open another tab for the story, I'm still not getting to it until I get home at the end of the day.

Conversely, the ones that get posted when I'm at work? Those are often read right away.

[miss-porcupine.livejournal.com]

I'm usually eager to just post by the time a story is done, so it's usually whenever I finish/get approval from editrix/betas. That said, there are definitely points in the day and in the week when I'm more likely to get comments. I... am still trying to figure out when those are.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

It would be interesting to find out, statistically, when the best time to post would be for maximium attention. Hmm.

And yeah, totally with you on *getting rid of it* once it's done. *g*

[trobadora]

My ideal time for meta/discussion is right after I get home from work, whenever that might be - because then I'll actually be around for the next couple of hours to participate. Everything else, I'll admit I've never paid attention to timing.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*nod* that makes sense.

I've often wondered if there's any way to take some kind of sample to show fannish lj viewing habits--just to see. I'm at my most active at night, but recently started viewing at work more often, sooo....

[mardia.livejournal.com]

I post regular stuff at any time, but I'm finding that I usually post fic very late at night for some reason. Probably because it takes me a while to go through the stuff from my betas, and for some bizarre reason, I'm more motivated when it's 2:30 in the morning.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Yes! That's kind of my feeling--night seems when I feel most creative and least self-conscious.

[shusu.livejournal.com]

At this time of year, past 11pm for me as well. Usually if there's no one on IM to talk me out of it. *g* But then, I do things like "If you're awake and you're first, you get a fic", which rewards the other poor insomniacs and the fine persons in that other hemisphere.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Good motivation there.

[silens-unus.livejournal.com]

I tend to post re4ally inane things while I'm bored at work and then I like to post late at night.

[silens-unus.livejournal.com]

And apparently I'm trying to speak LEET at you.

[temaris.livejournal.com]

I tend to post stories (if I post them at all) late evening, partly because it's the end of an evening of dithering about hitting 'update journal' and it's either post or delete before shutting down the browser, and partly because then I can go to bed and not stress about whether I should have posted the story at all for the first eight or so hours *g* Also, eight hours usually gives at least one person time to comment.

While the prospect of email in the morning is definitely motivational, it's much harder to gauge when to post for best effect when your friendslist is about 50/50 European and US, with a few Australians for good measure. I sometimes go for early evening, on the grounds that the Europeans mostly aren't in bed yet, and the Americans might read at work, but then I have time to prod obsessively at my mail box. Not good.

Meta seems to get posted randomly when I finish writing it, usually after I've concatenated about three draft versions and can't stand thinking about it any more. I think I'm less invested in my meta *g*.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking that noon would be perfect, but that would mean posting during lunch, and for some reason, food and fanfic do not go together.

...I have *no idea why*.

[mckays-girl.livejournal.com]

Half the time, I post late at night after everyone else is asleep, but lately I've been trying for late mornings. Sometimes I worry that by posting late, my stories will get lost on someone's f-list.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*nod* me too. Of course, then I worry Pru or Ces or Astolat or Toft will post and angst about that, too. *grins* Timing is everything.

[toft-froggy.livejournal.com]

My ideal time is probably late, too. After all, you want to post when everything's already happened, right?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

That makes sense.

[ladyjanelly.livejournal.com]

I usually post fic to my personal journal late afternoon/early evening (7-10 Dallas time), and the do all the cross-posting the following morning/early afternoon. I kinda like to know who sees my fic because they're on my f-list and who finds me from the comms.

Also, I know it's a horrible, horrible thing, but I like it when I end up on the spnnewsletter on two days instead of one. I feal like I'm cheating the system, but I really do like it when a lot of people read the fic.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I dont' thinks so. I mean, we post have someone read us, so it makes snese to post for the widest readership possible. I am in total support of that.

[eleventh-guard.livejournal.com]

I post whenever I finish a chapter.

Due to my work schedule this is usually afternoon, and that seems to work out okay - the evening readers will see it. I don't read/post in the evening very often because that's usually when I sleep. Third shift. Bleh.

I might post in the middle of the night if I'm off, but not most of the time.

I find that morning posts generally are not good for getting readers, although lately I've been posting so often that it might not make a difference (5 chapters this week - I blame NaNoWriMo, but I do check my work before I post, and have someone else look over it if I'm not so sure about something.) So I try to post in the afternoon.

Wee morning hours = low reader turnout, evenings = bad for me.

[dalaire.livejournal.com]

7 AM and 7 PM.

I generally post after I've finished my breakfast in the morning, or (more commonly), after my son's gone to sleep and I have my brain to myself again. Not saying that it works after that 12 hour bombardment, but it's when I have the time to collect my thoughts and my day. I like to get to writing by 8 PM, too, so I try to do all my evening posting between 7 and 8 PM.

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Most of my postings tend to be in the middle of the night, sometimes late enough that it's already morning on the east coast. This goes for both fic and other LJ posts, and even though I've heard you should post this or that time on this or that day, I can never keep straight when I'm supposed to be posting or not, so I just post whenever I have a post to post!

PS. Post no longer looks like a word.

[out-there.livejournal.com]

Weekends, specifically Saturdays, because I have the house to myself and therefore can spend all friggin' day online without mum criticising (okay, that's a lie. She'll still compalint hat I had the entire day and didn't manage any housework whatsoever, but I won't have *online-time* criticised).

Only very occasionally at work because I don't want to get fired. Mainly when I look at my inbox and feel incredibly overwhelmed, I take 15 mins to check LJ.

Sometimes -- when work's lighter -- between 5-6pm on weeknights because Mum gets home 5.30-7pm, so there's a snatch of time that I can use.

In short: whenever I can find time on my own, I post.

[roguewords.livejournal.com]

Mostly? I post stories when they're finished. *grins*

That usually tends to be, lately anyway, around 11pm - 1am. This whole east coast, real job thing is completely throwing me out of whack. ;) Before it usually around 3 am central, because I'd be at work and would pound something out, send it to my late night beta, and I'd get it up as soon as possible. Then I'd post again later, like before I went to bed later that morning, that I'd posted fic. *shrugs* not that many people read what I'm writing anyway, so it didn't really seem to matter.

[abby-i.livejournal.com]

Regular entries I post whenever, normally at work when I'm bored.

Vids and other creative stuff though I always post right before bed or before I'm going to be away from the computer for a good few hours as I like to come back to lots of pretty comments. :)

[nakeisha.livejournal.com]

I don't have a particular time of day, but I try to avoid posting on Fridays (if it's a metapost either general fandom or specific fandom) or at the weekend if posting stories, etc. because fewer people seem to be around at the weekends. Thus if you post a metapost on Friday and it gets picked up for a newsletter at the weekend, fewer people will see it. Ditto for any stories.

[dzurlady.livejournal.com]

Mostly, really late at night, when I tell myself to just bloody post because I have to get to bed. Otherwise I tend to get distracted by other things. :)