YouTube Tips How do YOU decide what time to publish? And why did you decide it?

[Beanie Draws]

So I try to publish my videos on a weekend, generally on a friday, sometimes in the morning, or sometimes after work, because I'm trying to hit a mix of time zones. America, India and Portugal are pretty evenly divided as my top 3 demographics now, all with varying time differances.
I try to hit a time when all three are likely to be awake at the same time. Some have study and work, so generally people watch in the evening, or lunch break, but that time period can also change a lot.

How do YOU decide on what time you publish? Not all of you have access to the best time to publish metric, and I know some of you don't really know when is the best time, but for those of you who DO, I'd love to know your reasons, and maybe those of us who are still new, can learn some phycology behind timing and trying to hit specific time regions for specific reasons for getting a good first 48 hour time window.

 

[kallendiggs]

My audience is mostly from the United States. So, I publish twice a week (once between Tuesdays and Thursdays and again on one of the weekend days).

My belief is most Americans spend more time online during the weekend because most of them are off from work. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are days where they're back in their routine and have some free time during the day to watch videos online.

Now, Mondays and Fridays could work, but I noticed in email marketing that most of my subscribers don't read emails on Mondays and Fridays. I don't know if that's also the same with video, but I believe it may be.

Once YT has enough data to give me the best times to publish, I'll follow their suggestions in the short term.

 

[Bears and Butters]

We have audience from all over the world. But we typically post 6 or 7 am PST on Tuesday or Wednesday, and Saturday or Sunday. We were using the analytics... under Audience to see when our viewers are typically on! With more people going back to work post lockdown... it's really hard to nail down the best time! We can definitely say that consistency is important.. that's for sure!

 

[SILTHW]

I have a suspicion, but don't have the data to back it.

I think if you make topical videos, you need to post them when they are relevant and around the times when people look for that type of content. That's where things like the "best time to post" tools can be helpful. For example, I'm working with a client in the UK. People get off of work at 6pm and many take the train or tube home. They download content right before work ends and watch it on the way home. Of they may stream it if they are on a train. If someone is browsing something topical, they are going to grab what they see in the moment and watch it. If your content isn't available, then they may not watch it. If it is topical of very trendy, they may not look for that type of content more than a few times and if your content isn't there, you've missed out. In these cases, it feels like maximizing your "new" search and discovery boost is important, so having your content out before "download time" is pretty important.

On the other hand, I don't know if it matters with evergreen content. It feels like consistency is more important than a specific day and time.

 

[Legacy]

Lately I have been uploading between 12pm and 1pm CST because I have been making these videos that show that characters you need to fight to get keys to unlock a side quest in my game (this would make a lot more sense if you played the game I play, but each new key riddle is added at 12pm cst so I log on as soon as the new riddles go up). And then for my other game, I try to upload as soon as possible whenever they have new updates that I can make videos on. So, overall, I guess my answer would be "I follow my games' update release schedule".