Timestamping Is Your Friend
After reading the comments on yesterday’s post I realized that many of us are on a tight schedule whether its school, work or our online endeavors and come to think about it, if it wasn’t for the time stamp feature in Wordpress, I’d be completely lost. Let me talk a little about what timestamping can do for you.
When Do I Use Timestamps?
I usually use timestamps when I want a post released at a time when i think that the most readers will be able to see it. If you notice most of my posts are released between 10pm and 2am central time because I feel that the most people will have access to it during that time.
How Does It Work?
The way timestamping works, for those of you who dont know, is that you can actually pick a day, month, time and even year (for the extremely lazy) when you want to publish a post. This allows bloggers like myself to write a post and schedule it for a certain day and time. Most of the times though, the post you see is the one I’ve written early on in the day and not something from a few days ago. My material is FRESH but frozen until a certain time when its defrosted and served.
I wonder though, how many of you really use timestamp to schedule posts days ahead of time? I wonder if its really as effective, I mean if its a general post, it makes sense because your readers may not know but what if you write a “This Week In Blog” type post and you timestamp it, does it make a difference?
If you’re wondering what kinds of posts you can timestamp, then here is a little guide:
1) Timeless posts - This covers pretty much all types of posts that you may have whether its advice or tips but these don’t include posts such as case studies or anything of that sort which may not be as interesting if its timestamped for too long.
2) Reviews - A lot of us write reviews and I have a review being published in a week but a review can be timestamped if a certain date has been decided for it. If you haven’t picked a date as yet then you cannot timestamp it since the advertiser may want you to mention some things that have a time limit on it.
Posts you cannot time stamp:
1) Contest posts - you want to get these out as soon as possible. This is when you blog about someone else’s contest. Holding off until the last minute to post makes it a bit suspicious specially if youre a regular reader. If you’re a new reader then its okay but don’t timestamp your contest posts because it can make you look bad unless you post it quite a bit in advance of the contest ending.
2) Special Offers - Sometimes advertisers (paid reviews) or good deals come around that have a time limit such as the first 100 people to sign up or until a certain date and time stamping those posts until a later day could result in the deal expiring. This could make the advertiser very unhappy or your readers unhappy for not being timely in letting them know about a good deal. Make sure that your timestamp isn’t cutting it really close with these.
Theres lots of other types of posts that you can and cannot timestamp but going back to my question. Who really uses timestamp beyond one or two days? I wonder if that demographic is larger than I think. Let me know! Have a good weekend guys!
I use that feature too. Its so easy to post multiple posts and have them release over a few days or even a week It sure frees up time to do other promotion
I use timestamp for all my niche blogs that earn affiliate income. With most of my article writing being outsourced and received in packs, I schedule them to be released rather than publishing all of them at once.
For me, the feature really helps those who are hardworking and post in advance.
Wayne
http://www.AffBoom.com
As a student, web entrepreneur and blogger, timestamping my blog posts are the best time management techniques for me.
I used it all the time especially during exam weeks.
Timestamps are really helpful. There’s never enough time to load posts exactly when you want to. Whenever you’re at a show or go away on vacation, it helps to keep posting consistently.
I tried to use the timestamp feature once. And it didn’t work. I realize this is most likely due to operator error. But it has sufficiently freaked me out so now I am hesitant to try it again. But it would certainly be nifty at times.
I have in the past used it to schedule posts for a few days (I think the most ever was 5 days) when I knew I was going to not have internet access (camping for example), but now I just do it to keep the release times of my posts evenly spaced…occassionally I will have a day or two worth of posts written ahead of time, but usually I am just writing the next post that will be displayed and scheduling when it should appear, I think that just about every post I have ever written has been timestamped to some degree (even if just a few minutes one way or the other)…there were times in the past where I would timestamp a post to have appeared before it was actually written, but I quit doing that quite some time ago because I decided it wasn’t very fair and honest :S
i only recently learned that blogger already allows this as well. i plan to use it more in the future. since my posts are haiku, i don’t have as much of a timeliness issue.
Kouji, Thanks again for commenting. I really need to show you some link love soon so expect that coming from me soon. I’m glad that youre able to stay on top of your schedule but I can tell you, I would find it hard without time stamping!
i use it a lot, my internet connection was down so with a lot of the offline material i had gathered, i wrote 19 posts for a new blog of mine and i scheduled them to be 3 posts a week, on mon, wed and fri, so the next 6 something weeks are sorted out for me.
even for http://www.kahthan.com, i have done this as well, but only for a week or so to lessen the load on posting every day..
Wow, I don’t really use timestamping for long term posts but I really like the idea for the new blog. Its definitely a great feature and can be highly useful for someone like you and your blog. Great comment.
contest post are most common one.
I use timestamps more on my niche blogs than on my personal one, but I have used it before. I like to have posts sitting in the incubator lol
timestamping is great!