Deciphering Post Days On Steemit (A.K.A. Are Saturdays A Dead-Zone?)

Monday, October 16th 2017

Figuring out what days and times are best to post on Steemit is one of the most challenging things about the platform. I've been writing posts for about a year now (with my current stretch of unbroken posting going back about a month not counting Sundays, which I decided to mostly take as an off day to avoid burn out) and I still have no idea when the best time of the day is or even what the best days are. However, that's not to say that I haven't learned anything in my time on the platform.

Whale Hunting? Leave That to the Moby Dicks.

One strategy that I've seen propagate on the platform, especially in the relatively early days, was whale hunting. There are a lot of problems with this approach, among them that the platform has grown so much and there are so many authors vying for attention that trying to post every day when the whale you are hunting is on might be a counterproductive task.

On top of this, many whales now delegate their powers or leave their voting to bots with unknowable algorithms to maximize their investment. In other words, there is absolutely no guarantee at all that you can 'hunt' one of these high SP (steem power) holders with any level of success (although, full disclosure: I haven't tried).

I've got nothing against this strategy if that's your style, but it really doesn't do the trick for me. I think you're better off following some of the tenants that I'll list below.

Same Time, Same Place, Every Day

One of the most important things that you can master on the platform is consistency. I've said this multiple times in various posts, but it always bears repeating: people vote and have their bots vote for posters that they can depend on. Posting every day is the most important thing, but being consistent in that post schedule (i.e. posting at the same times or very similar ones) seems to be very important, too.

When I first got started I couldn't help but think that conventional wisdom dictates that it would in fact be better to post at different times every day because in theory you'd have a higher chance of being seen by more people.

In experience, however, we find that this simply isn't so. My theory on this is that it's better to develop a relationship with a relatively small subsection of people who will become dedicated readers and followers than to have as many people as possible glance at what you're doing.

Demilitarized Writing - Weekly Dead-Zones

Sometimes it feels like there are dead-zones during the week where you don't get that many views or upvotes (or upvotes worth that much). It might be because these are still early days for this blog, but I can't help but think that there are times that are the worst to post at. I just haven't at all figured out when these are.

It's sort of hard to study these things without a proper calendar archive system on the Steemit platform, so I'm going to start labeling my posts with days and tagging them with the month to make it easier to get a sense of any given period going forward. We shall see if this ends up being useful.

Shorter is Sometimes Better? On Post Length

Another thing that's been hard to suss out is the perfect posting length. I think, on the whole, I need to start making my posts shorter. The platform moves at too fast a pace and I think that it's better to make my posts shorter but work on also making them more concise and value packed. It's not an easy thing for me, as many of you that have been reading my posts a while will realize that I can be on the verbose side.

Stay tuned for more on this topic, I'm continuing to work hard at deciphering this ecosystem and I'm dedicated to sharing that value with all of you.

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