Corporate Blogging: Get up Early in the Morning!

When I get up in the morning, I can see a lot of blogger activity in my Twitter stream. Whether I just happen to follow a bunch of motivated writers or an underlying strategy exists, the outcome is the same: early-morning blogging works. I've seen this in action over the past few years with the corporate blogs I've launched and run. Pageviews are most voluminous early in the morning. According to Dan Zarrella, a blogging metrics "maniac," writes Social Media Today, your best chance of scoring pageviews is to publish your blog post by 10 AM Eastern Standard Time. He found this through the course of a study that analyzed more than 170,000 blog posts. But, publishing early doesn't mean that's when you want to send your content out into the social media space. To get commenter activity going, push or feature your blog posts on Saturday, which is when most readers seem ready to speak their minds, according to Zarrella. Retweeting and Facebook sharing follow a similar trajectory - it doesn't happen when people are reading. Rather, content goes "social" as we get closer to the weekend. So, you should plan your content publishing and promotion activities accordingly. If you have stuff you want people to read, publish early during the week. If you want them to share it, take action on your social networks at other peak times. So, what's the strategy? Here's how you can take advantage of this dynamic: 1. Publish early in the morning: on the corporate blogs I have managed, I usually set a 6 AM publish time for U.S. markets and 1 AM for companies with a truly global scope. There's magic to both times. For the U.S. crowd, publishing at 6 AM means email alerts, RSS feeds and routine readers who like to scan the headlines before going to work will be able to do so. If your corporate blog is paired with a cup of coffee by your readers every morning, this is the way to go. For global companies, 1 AM translates to 6 AM in the United Kingdom and 7 AM in France - for the same net effect around the world. 2. Share later in the day: hold off on your tweets and Facebook shares until the evening, when people are more inclined to play around on social networks. They want to learn at the beginning of the day and mess around later. So, put social media content into their hands when they're most likely to do something with it. 3. Don't forget the value of the round-up: at the end of the week, tweet and share your most important blog posts of the week, under the guise of a look-back. This will give your fans and followers (and you) another bite at the sharing apple. 4. Remember your time zones: you may need a blended approach to determining when to tweet if you have to address several parts of the world.

Social Pro Daily

Corporate Blogging: Get up Early in the Morning!

Tom Johansmeyer

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Tom Johansmeyer