WritingThoughts

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Every night while you sleep thousands of prospective clients and readers for your blog get up and start to work.

Your company or services are perfect for them.

Yet they have no idea you exist. Why?

They have no idea that you exist because you only share content and social posts during your own working hours. You’re essentially ignoring a good part of your prospective audience.

In today’s global economy, it’s important to remember that your clients are not necessarily those who live closest to you.

I have a confession to make.

Until recently, I was one of you. I did it too. I ignored half my audience. I did all my social sharing during my own waking hours.

I wasn’t trying to ignore anybody on purpose. It was just more convenient for me share then. Plus, I had no desire to stay up all night on social media.

Then it occurred to me that I was missing part of my audience. I started scheduling social shares for late evening and found my blog traffic shot up when I did. I bet the same will happen for you.

When Should You Share?

The ideal time to share on social media has been the topic of many blog posts and articles. And everyone seems to have different advice.

Since you’re probably curious, here are just a few of the better posts on the topic:

• From Brianna Smith on Social Media Today, Best Times to Post on Social Media [INFOGRAPHIC]. Lists best posting times for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest.
• From KISSmetrics, The Science of Social Timing Part 1: Social Networks. This data (also an infographic) lists best posting times for Twitter and Facebook.
• From Kara Cassella on the AddThis blog, When’s the Best Day and Time to Post on Social Media? Lists times for LinkedIn, Pinterest, Facebook, and Twitter.

And the list of posts and articles could go on and on.

What you probably noticed (besides the fact that this type of data makes a good infographic) is that there are some variations.

I think the “best time to share” varies because, in my opinion at least, there’s not a one-fits-all best time for social sharing. Instead, the best time depends on:

• Who your audience is. Are they consumers? If so, they are likely on social media in the evenings and during the weekend. Are they other businesses? If so, the best time to reach them with social shares might be during the business day.
• Where they are located. Obviously, a local audience will be on the same time zone as you are. For a global audience, however, the time zone makes a difference. Standard eight-to-five Los Angeles business hours occur in the evening for a prospect in London.
• What you share. The material you share makes a difference too. If you mostly share tutorials and other informative articles, work hour sharing makes sense. On the other hand, if you mostly share entertainment such as jokes and memes, you will probably get more response after business hours.

Every blogger will have differences that will affect their ideal social sharing time.

Use Scheduling Tools

The best way to find out whether adding night-time social shares will attract new readers is to try it.

If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking “there’s no way I want to give up my evenings and weekends to hang out on social media.”

I agree with that sentiment.

There’s an easier way. While I’m generally against social media automation (especially social media auto-follows and auto-responses), one type of social media automation that I’m okay with is scheduling social shares.

In fact, you probably already use the WordPress scheduling function to schedule your blog posts, so why not do the same for your social media posts?

There are some great scheduling tools out there, for example:

• Tweetdeck. For Twitter, but still my standard. And it’s free.
• Hootesuite. This well-established tool works with multiple social sites.
• Bundlepost. I’ve heard a lot of good things about this tool and it’s been on my wish list for a while.
• Buffer. Buffer is another highly regarded tool that lets you schedule social shares.

The main drawback to scheduling social shares is that you can’t respond instantly if someone tries to start a conversation in response to one of your scheduled social shares. But you can respond, just not right away.

In fact, you can and should respond every time someone legitimately reaches out to you on social media. It’s acceptable to respond to night-time shares when you go back online.

• The social user could still be online.
• If not, they will respond to you when they log in to their social account again.

Your Turn

Do you time your social media shares? Which times seem most effective for your social sharing?

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