WordPress is bundled with a lot of amazing features. One of the cool feature WordPress offers is to schedule your posts to be published on a later date and time. This feature has great benefits and most of the beginners are not aware of this feature. This is a step-by-step guide explaining how to schedule posts in WordPress.
Before we start the “how” part, let’s first find out why is there a need to schedule posts.
Why Schedule Your Posts in WordPress?
So the question arises, why is there a need to schedule my blog posts?
Well, there could be a lot of reasons when scheduling your posts comes in handy.
For example, you are going for a vacation and want to enjoy every moment to fullest. But then you are like “Oh, I had to publish a blog post today, let’s do it now”
But your partners on trip will definitely get annoyed with this action of yours. You don’t want to regret the moment you planned for this trip, so its better you schedule your posts before you pack your bags.
Another main reason for scheduling your blog posts is to get maximum attention from readers. You just completed a great blog post, put lots of elbow grease in content research, fixed grammatical errors, optimized it very well for search engines, hit the publish button but got no eyeballs.
“Damn! I feel so frustrated.” You must be feeling something like…
Source: Kay Klim
But this was your mistake. You didn’t care about your readers. You didn’t know if they were sleep or at work when you hit the publish button.
Remember! Every thing has a peak time and there is one for publishing your posts too. A research shows that blogs get more views and engagement during the “AM” hours as compared to “PM” hours.
According to this study, Monday is the best day for publishing blog posts and ideal time for publishing posts is 11 am EST.
If you like big numbers in page views and user engagement, you have to find out high activity hours for your blog. You need to learn when are you readers more active and what is the best time they prefer reading blogs.
Scheduling your posts also helps you manage your time efficiently. Here is how you can schedule posts in WordPress:
How to Schedule Posts in WordPress
You can watch this video if you don’t feel like reading the text.
Once you are ready to publish your post, don’t publish it 🙂
We are going to schedule your post now. Move your eyes to the right side of your screen.
Look at the blue publish button. Don’t click.
There is a button that says “Edit”, right above the “Publish” button. Hit the Edit button.
You can now set the date and time when the post should go live. Hit Schedule button once you are done.
Happy as Larry? You just scheduled your first post.
Now you might be thinking:
Don’t worry. You can do that easily. Once you have identified the time zone where most of your traffic comes from, just follow this:
On WordPress Admin Dashboard, go to Settings>General.
Scroll down and select appropriate time zone. Save Changes when done.
Jump for joy. You did a great job there.
Now you already know how to schedule posts in WordPress, what next?
Share the post with fellow bloggers so they can benefit as well.
Aqib, thank you for posting this article, and showing it step-by-step. I am always looking for ways to better utilize WordPress.
Thanks Roy. Scheduling posts is really a great feature.
You are very welcome.
Thank you for posting this. I did not know about this option, and this is of great use. I have never scheduled a post but will definitely do it from now on
Im not using wordpress but instead using blogger and scheduling a post is really a great feature. i also sometimes use this feature as well on my facebook page. And everything gets easier with this feature most especially when youre about to take a vacation 🙂
Very detailed guide and thus very helpful for bloggers. I love scheduling posts in WordPress. Really convenient and easy!
I do this for my own blog. My regular schedule are Wednesdays. Really helpful so that I can maximize my publish times. Plus it syncs the social media shares.
Thanks for sharing! I often schedule posts because I write on the weekends. I knew how to schedule them, but I didn’t know the best times. I will try posting at 8 on Monday and see if that helps.
This is very useful especially for digital marketers that are into link building. It also saves time to write a whole bunch of articles and then load them up to wordpress all at the same time. However, it is also important to check every posted article to ensure that it is indeed shared and posted in social media platforms connected to your wordpress blog.
Yup. Indeed a great feature of WordPress and using it for my advantage. 🙂
Glad you come up with such article. This is really helpful particularly for newbies. At least those who are new to WP can easily schedule their written articles anytime they want.
Nice tutorial. Thank you for posting it.