Since I started blogging almost two years ago, I have been literally inundated with blogging advice. Some of it has been fantastic, while other stuff, not so much. As I trawled through the seemingly endless guidance on Pinterest, I decided that, in the name of research (and so I could remember what I’d done…) I’d write down everything I tried and measure the results. Let’s not talk about how I haven’t been doing that since I started, because life is too short to go there. Let’s pretend I’ve been working on my content and not scheduling every post to go out at the same time because I have a life to live. And a full time job.
Getting your timing right
So, there’s a shit ton of advice on the best and worst times to post to all your Social Media channels and it actually varies quite widely. Worryingly so, in fact. However, I did see several that had largely the same timings (an hour out either way) for the main networks that I use so I decided, for the sake of my sanity, I’d go with them. Bear in mind that my first test was on a Saturday, so the timings are different from week days for obvious reasons.
Facebook – between 1pm-4pm – posted at 3pm
Twitter – between 1pm-3pm – tweeted at 8:30am, 2:30pm, 6:30pm
Instagram – between 5pm-6pm – posted at 10:30am, 12:30pm, 3:30pm and 5:30pm
Linkedin – 7-9am – posted at 8:30am
Pinterest – 8pm-11pm and 2pm-4pm – pinned at 9pm
I downloaded Hootsuite to take care of all my scheduling needs but, as it turns out, you gotta pay for that and, as I remain unconvinced at this point, I ain’t buying nothing. So, I had to make do with it just scheduling tweets and instagram posts, while WordPress covered my actual posts, Path, LinkedIn and Google Plus. I decided I’d handle Facebook and Pinterest on my own as I use fb anyway and often read through Pinterest in bed at night. I figured I could manage manually update them both. Im such a trooper, huh? I did this for two weeks and these are the results:
Week 1: new content Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday
Week 2: new content Saturday, Monday, Thursday
Facebook – Once a day, only on days with new content
Did I get more views? Yes
Did it increase my page likes? No
Did it increase engagement? very slightly.
Did it increase web traffic? No
Am I convinced? Also no
Will I abandon the practice? No, because it did make me think about the timing of my posts and I definitely think that’s important. Plus, I did see a *tiny* result, so I’m a stick with it for now.
Twitter – 4 times each day on days with new content
Did I get more views? Yes
Did it increase my followers? No
Did it increase engagement? No
Did it increase web traffic? Very slightly
Am I convinced? Nope
Instagram – 3-4 times daily on days with new content
Did I get more views? Yes
Did it increase my followers? Yes
Did it increase engagement? Yes
Did it increase web traffic? No, but I didn’t think it would because of the platform.
Am I convinced? No, and I think 4 photos a day is way too much, so I’ll be cutting it back to 1-2.
Linkedin – once a day on days with new content
Did I get more views? Yes
Did it increase my network Yes
Did it increase engagement? Nope
Did it increase web traffic? No
Am I convinced? No sir, I ain’t
Pinterest – once a day on days with new posts
Did I get more views? Pass
Did it increase my followers? No
Did it increase engagement? No
Did it increase web traffic? No
Am I convinced? Nope, but I think once a day is not enough for this platform, so I’m planning to increase this.
Conclusion
OK, so it’s a tiny wee experiment over a 14 day period, but I didn’t see much difference to my usual stats. That is, apart from with Instagram. BUT, and this is a big but (and I cannot lie…), I also upped my photo game and can’t really be sure that it was all down to the timing. However, I’m definitely sticking to scheduling posts for Insta as my posting until now has been pretty random. I think, to be honest, just having a plan of what to post and when was the biggest thing I learned from this. Basically, get your shit together and stop flying by the seat of your pants, is what I’ll take from this. Not really the advice I had sought, but a pretty good lesson as a result.
Do you time your social media posts??
