If blogging had a secret sauce or magic potion, this would be it. By far, this is the most common question I get asked about blogging and social media.
When is right time to share blog posts on social media?
I can confidently respond without hesitation…
It depends.
I’ll be honest. I really wish I could tell you an exact formula for sharing your (amazing) blog posts so they reach the millions of people who need to be reading them. But the reality is that there isn’t a formula.
With that said, there are some things you can do that’ll help you figure it out. With a little bit if testing, measuring, and retesting, you’ll find the right answer for you pretty quickly. In no time at all, you’ll be able to share blog posts like a boss.
The First Key to Social Media Success
It’s not about you.
First and foremost, the success of your blog posts in the world of social media has nothing to do with you. Well, maybe a little bit. Many bloggers misunderstand social media success as having to do with getting the right mix with when and how they post their content. However, if it only depended on your sharing, then it’s not really social is it?
If you want to find success in social media, then you need to be thinking about how other people share your content. Your role in that is two-fold:
- Create content that’s share-worthy. Think about blog post titles that make readers want to click. Think about eye-popping images that catch their attention. Think about writing content that would make them want to share with their friends because of how it moved them.
- Make it easy for them to share. I’m amazed at how many websites I visit where I can’t find social sharing buttons. Sure, I could copy/paste the blog post URL, but if I have to go to that much effort, you’ve already lost me. Share buttons should be highly visible and easy to use.
Finding the Right Times
While most of your success comes from how other people share your content, you’ll still want to optimize how you share your blog posts for maixmum reach. This is where you’ll want to experiment with different types of posts (text, images, links, and videos) at different times of day.
Social media gurus will look at the data and tell you that you should be posting your content at 2pm on Thursday afternoons (or some other flavor of the month). However, that’s based on meta-data from thousands of accounts, not your data.
So how do you find the optimum times for your accounts?
For Facebook
If you run a Facebook page for your website, then you’ll have access to Insights for your page.
In your Insights, you’ll find “When Your Fans Are Online” on the Posts tab. The initial chart shows general population volume, but when you mouse over different days of the week you’ll see when your fans are online that day. This is based on recent data specific to the people who are fans of your page. Note that when your followers are online will vary from day to day.
For Twitter
You can find similar data for Twitter using third-party tools, like Follwerwonk. Once you sign in with your Twitter account, you’ll be able to analyze followers… both those who follow you, and those who you follow. You’ll get a great deal of demographic information about your followers, and a detailed chart of when they are most active on Twitter.
I want to draw special attention to that “Schedule at Buffer” button below the top chart. That brings me to my next point…
Buffering Your Way to Success
Once you’ve figured out the best times to schedule your posts, then you can plug that information into a tool like Buffer. In Buffer you’ll be able to create a custom schedule for each of your social media profiles, and set the times you want to post. You can even schedule different frequency and posting times for each day of the week. In the example below, you’ll see that I set my schedule to reflect the peak times for my Facebook page on Tuesdays.
This is where that “Schedule at Buffer” button in Followerwonk comes in handy. You can select a frequency for scheduled posts in a day, and automatically import an optimum posting schedule into Buffer.
One of my favorite parts of Buffer is the analytics for the posts you share (only through Buffer). Based on interaction threshholds, you’ll get a good idea of what kinds of social media posts are resonating the most with your audience.
It’s important to note here that using Buffer for scheduled posts doesn’t mean that everything you do on social media needs to be scheduled through Buffer. It is, however, a great tool that will help you push your blog posts out to different platforms at predetermined times, making sharing much simpler.
CoSchedule: A Premium Solution
If your blog is on (self-hosted) WordPress, then you can use some cool tools like CoSchedule. This WordPress plugin comes with a small monthly fee, but it has some pretty slick scheduling functionality. Basically, while you in your Edit Post mode, you can also create your social media posts to publish at whatever times you specify. Create, text, image, and link posts to run at the same time that your blog posts publishes. And then run a different kind of social media post at x-number of hours after the blog post publishes.
If you publish your blog post at 6am, you can publish a link post to Facebook at 6am, then an image post 5 hours later, and a text post 10 hours later. Then think about the Twitter and Google+ posts you want to send out in order to get the best coverage for when your followers are most likely to see it. Everything is triggered automatically based on the publishing of the blog post. CoSchedule even has a slick calendar that shows you all scheduled blog and social media posts for easy management.
Last thought…
The best thing you can do to determine what social media posting methods and schedules are best for you is to test, measure, adjust, and test again. When you share blog posts, pay attention to the types of social media posts you run at different times, and how well each of those resonate with your followers. Before long, you should be able to pick up on some trends and patterns with your followers that will help you optimize every post you make…
Like a boss.
Caryn Jenkins Christensen says
May 21, 2014 at 9:23 amI never, in a million years thought that when I started blogging, I would have to become a statistician in *sharing*. Dan King, you totally *ROCK* the behind the scenes blogging thing (she said, wondering if you’re for hire because it’s all a.bit.overwhelming to a non-techy). 🙂
Dan King says
May 21, 2014 at 10:44 amha! you’re right… who said that those math classes would never come in handy? it sounds crazy, but with all of my own stuff, i don’t make a move or change unless the data tells me to… AND it usually tells me how!
and thanks! i appreciate the encouragement! and yes, i am for hire (check out http://fistbumpmedia.com for everything i do). i would love to work with you, and help take care of things for you! that’s my thing… i try to help manage the technology for people so they can just focus on their writing. let me know how i can help you!
Deborah Hudson says
May 21, 2014 at 5:00 pmGreat information, but I was disappointed to learn that for Buffer and Followonk you have to pay for the upgraded service to make full use of their functions. They are still beneficial with the free service and since blogging isn’t my “job” keeping it fee is best suited for me. There’s so much available I’d never know about. Thanks for provided the links and examples.
Dan King says
May 21, 2014 at 10:28 pmI do pay for the “awesome” plan in Buffer due to the number of social media accounts i manage as a social media professional. however, the free version was PLENTY for me for a long time when i used it for personal use. and i’ve never paid anything for what i do with followerwonk, because i’ve been able to get everything i need (which is what’s shown here) for free.
i TOTALLY get keeping it as free (or low cost) as possible. even as someone who makes a living with this stuff, i still strive for not paying a lot for my tools. i’m a firm believer that getting a message out there shouldn’t cost you anything. if you do pay for something, then it should be something that provides such a high level of convenience that it completely justifies the cost.
thanks for the thoughts! #fistbump
SimplyDarlene says
May 22, 2014 at 10:04 amyou had me at “boss,”
but left me
at “buffer.”
Good stuff here. Even though it’ll take me some doing to sort it out, thank ye kindly for the information and tips and assorted whatnots, coach Dude.
Blessings.
Dan King says
May 23, 2014 at 9:51 amha! no worries darlene! we’ll get you there. you know me… i’ll try to make it as easy as possible for you! #fistbump
Susan Rinehart Stilwell says
May 24, 2014 at 12:42 pmI just got back from a writer’s conference and will definitely share this, Dan. You’re always on top of things!
Dan King says
May 26, 2014 at 2:47 pmthanks, susan! you rock! #fistbump