When and How Do You Read Blog Posts? Take a Poll!

It’s time for another poll, folks! A few weeks ago I wanted to know who was stopping by to read this blog. The results surprised me a bit. I thought most of my audience would be other bloggers, but in fact, book lovers (non-bloggers) ranked higher! Here are the results of that poll:

Who is Reading BBB poll results

(Unfortunately, I didn’t have any celebrities stop by this time.)

Thank you to everyone who voted!

Today I’m curious about something else. This is a two-part poll, so I’d love it if you answer both questions. First, I’m curious about when you usually read the blog posts you follow. Here’s my blog reading routine: I get up early every morning, and the first thing I do is check my email on my smart phone, sitting in a comfy chair while drinking my coffee and eating Hershey’s kisses. At this time of the day, my inbox has my complete attention. I’m not distracted by anything else, so I go down the list and read all the blog posts that have been posted between about 9:00 p.m. the night before and 5:30 a.m. that morning. And there are a lot of them. After I take my kids to school, I am busy doing other things: working on my blog, reading, working at my part-time job, errands, etc., and reading emails at that point becomes a hit-or-miss activity. Don’t get me wrong: I do continue to read emails throughout the day, but when it comes to blog posts, I may not have time to visit the blog and leave a comment. So most of the commenting I do on other blogs happens first thing in the morning.

Because of this routine, I have started posting my own posts at 1:00 a.m. (just a random time, I don’t know why I picked it!), thinking that maybe other readers prefer to check new blog posts early in the morning. But sometimes, of course, I simply write up a post during the day (like this one) and publish it whenever it’s ready to go. And I’m wondering if this hurts my post views. Maybe people are too busy during the day to check their email and they don’t read my post at all.

The second part of this question is how do you read blog posts? You can tell from that paragraph up there that I read all the blog posts I follow when I receive an email notification. I do “follow” bloggers on Bloglovin’, but very rarely do I go to my reader to see what’s happened that day. I mostly rely on good ol’ email to tell me whose’s just posted something new.

The other thing that I see happening, which is a valid way to read blogs, is that some bloggers will only go to another site if that person has left a comment on their blog. So they may not “follow” a particular blog, but they will return the favor and visit a site and comment.

I’d love to hear your opinions on this: what works, what doesn’t work, what’s easier for you as a reader and what times of the day are you just too busy to read blogs. Let me know in the comments too! For the purposes of this poll, your answers should reflect blogs that you visit regularly, not new blogs that you might stumble upon. (That’s a question for another poll).

Thanks everyone! I’ll be posting the results in a couple of weeks.

Posted February 7, 2014 by Tammy in Discussions, Poll / 15 Comments

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15 responses to “When and How Do You Read Blog Posts? Take a Poll!

  1. This poll is very timely, since I only just started a feedly account this week. My other methods were starting to become a little overwhelming ๐Ÿ™‚

  2. I rely on Bloglovin a lot. I don’t subscribe to any of my favorite blogs by email, although I am considering it. Throughout the day I check Bloglovin, scrolling through all of the unread posts, opening the ones that interest me in new tabs, and slowly chip away at unread posts like that. Usually with candy in hand ๐Ÿ˜‰

  3. Alyn Y

    I use mainly Bloglovin. There are a few blogs that I have subscribed to so I usually end up reading those first because I always check my email first thing in the morning. There are a few blogs that I follow that aren’t part of Bloglovin so those I bookmark and go through after I finish up with Bloglovin. I tend to check those later on at night too.

  4. I am so curious to see the results of these polls, Tammy! As for me, I generally do all of my blogging — both reading and writing — during the day on weekdays, in my spare time. Evenings and weekends are usually busy with reading books and spending time with my husband, taking care of the house, etc.

    As for HOW… I do subscribe to some through email, but mostly I use Feedly and just systematically go through all the new items in my feed when I have time.

    • I’m finding lots of bloggers mostly use readers, and I guess I’m surprised! I feel like I’m missing out now, so I’m going to fire up Bloglovin’ and give it a whirl…:-)

  5. Pabkins

    Very cool polls! I can’t wait to see these results. Its nice to know you get a lot of non bloggers. Another poll that would be great is who often do you visit a blog and read content but never comment?

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