The how and why of scheduling posts
In WordPress the how is the easy part. When adding a new post look in the right upper hand corner of the screen.
Next to where it says "Publish immediately" click on "Edit"
Change the date and time to publish automatically
click "ok" when your time is selected and instead of a "Publish" button, there will be a "Schedule" button displayed
That’s it. Once you’ve written your post and selected “Schedule” it will publish on your blog at the time you defined.
The why part is a bit more involved. If you have a single personal blog then this feature is not going to be a necessity, but if you have 2 or more topical blogs then it becomes a very handy feature.
Personally, I’m sort of attached to the idea of not always being in front of my computer. I find that my writing time is much better spent writing on a single topic for two or three posts instead of trying to switch gears between multiple topics daily. The exception is my personal blog, because I prefer to keep personal posts more spontaneous.
Also there are times throughout the day when new posts are more popular, for me these times are 1pm and 5pm PST, so scheduling allows me to release fresh posts just before peak traffic hits. Since I have children I am usually not able to publish manually at regular intervals especially in the afternoon.
Of course, I can also plan to be offline for days so scheduling is the best way to keep fresh content appearing even when I’m off playing in the woods or even farther away from modern technology: at my mom’s house. They don’t even have wi-fi, can you believe that? Barbaric.