What to Post? or When?
Everyone pays attention to timing — but lip service is what’s important in social media.
We haven’t seen much discussion of the importance of content. Is it more important than timing? Is it more important than photos or videos? How much effort should you put into creating great content, and how much should you reserve for picking the right time to post it? Is a photo worth the extra time?
The Big-Picture Question
Instead of focusing on what day or time gets more response, we looked at the big picture: What improves engagement? And how much more important is that factor than the others? Instead of focusing on a single tactic, we looked at strategy — particularly, to see which tactics had the most impact.
What We Learned
- There’s something far more important than when you post — in fact it’s 300% more important! (If you don’t know, you should read the full case study).
- Post content (photo/video/etc.) doesn’t affect engagement. When people say that photo posts do better than status posts, they are probably writing better status messages in their photo posts than their status posts.
- Time of day doesn’t have an impact on engagement. Again, when you control for the type of message, what time you post doesn’t significantly change engagement.
Download the case study below for the full set of findings, as well as a decision tree for what factors matter when in Social Media.
2.2.12
Contributor(s):
