Tag: Marketing and Advertising

When NOT to Post on Social Media Platforms

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When NOT to Post on Social Media Platforms

When NOT to Post on Social Media Platforms? Timing, as you might expect, is everything when it comes to posting on social media platforms. After all, if you, say, tweet when your audience is sleeping, they won’t see your tweet. It’ll be lost in the mountain of missed social media communications.

Social Media Landscape - Social Media Platforms
Social Media Landscape (Photo credit: fredcavazza)

We all have such a mountain of missed communications and connections. Social media just moves way too quickly for us to see, comment on, share, and experience everything. We’re only human, and of course that’s fine. Your mission, though, is to post when your audience will be around, not when they’ll be offline, or busy with work, or settled into bed for the night.

Zzzz AKA La La La I Can’t Hear You!

According to Kate Rinsema of AllTop (Guy Kawasaki‘s great site), the following are the most godawful worst times to post.

  • Facebook – midnight to 8 AM
  • Google+ – 6 PM to 8 AM
  • Instagram – midnight to 8 AM
  • LinkedIn – 9 AM to 5 PM
  • Pinterest – 1 to 7 AM and 5 – 7 PM
  • Tumblr – 12 AM to 12 PM
  • Twitter – 8 PM – 8 AM

But pay attention to your audience. Maybe their night owls. Maybe they live on the other side of the planet.

I’m Here and I’m Listening

These are reportedly the best times to post on social media platforms:

  • Facebook – 1 to 4 PM
  • Google+ – 9 AM to 11 AM
  • Instagram – 5 PM to 6 PM
  • LinkedIn – 5 PM to 6 PM
  • Pinterest – 8 PM to 11 PM
  • Tumblr – 7 PM to 10 PM
  • Twitter – 1 PM to 3 PM

What About Different Time Zones?

Articles like this often vex me, because there usually isn’t any consideration taken when it comes to customers, readers, and audience crossing time zones.

My suggestion is to take these times as your own, for your own time zone, unless your audience is on the other side of the Earth. Try for some wiggle room, e. g. if you’re on the East Coast of the United States, like I am, you might want to time things for later during the window if you’re aiming for an audience pretty much only in America. But for a European audience, you should aim for earlier in the window but recognize that, with a minimal five-hour difference, you might not hit the window perfectly.

Or, you could set at least your tweets to run more than once. If you do this, though, I suggest spreading them apart by a day, say, posting post #1 on Monday at the start of the window, and post #2 at the end, and then switching them on Wednesday or the like.  But repeating other postings is probably going to be overkill for your audience. Try using the #ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) tag when repeating your posts.

Caveat marketer.

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott, A Book Review

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The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott

The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott was a fascinating book that I had as required reading for Quinnipiac University’s Social Media Platforms course (ICM522).

The Premise

World Wide Rave Spotted In Ireland David Meerman Scott
World Wide Rave Spotted In Ireland (Photo credit: Krishna De)

First of all, the premise is, like a lot of other books about the Internet and social media marketing, that marketing has become less of a one-size-fits-all/push system. Instead, it has instead evolved into a far more balanced bilateral conversation.

And perhaps the most interesting part of the book consists of the rules themselves, which are in Chapter 2, on page 31 and are as follows –

The New Rules

The New Rules of Marketing and PR

  • First of all, marketing is more than just advertising
  • In addition, public relations is for more than just a mainstream media audience
  • You are what you publish
  • And people want authenticity, not spin
  • People want participation, not propaganda
  • Instead of causing one-way interruption, marketing is about delivering content at just the precise moment your audience needs it
  • Furthermore, marketers must shift their thinking from mainstream marketing to the masses to a strategy of reaching vast numbers of underserved audiences via the web
  • In addition, public relations is not about your boss seeing your company on TV. It’s about your buyers seeing your company on the web
  • Marketing is not about your agency winning awards. Instead, it’s about your organization winning business
  • And the internet has made public relations public again, after years of almost exclusive focus on media
  • Furthermore, companies must drive people into the purchasing process with great online content
  • In addition, blogs, online video, e-books, news releases, and other forms of online content let organizations communicate directly with buyers in a form they appreciate
  • And social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn allow people all over the world to share content and connect with the people and companies they do business with
  • Finally, on the web, the lines between marketing and public relations have blurred

Because customers are talking back.  And companies and their marketing departments had better start listening.

Rating

Review: 5/5 stars.

Quinnipiac Assignment #15 – Reflections about ICM 522

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Quinnipiac Assignment #15 – Reflections about ICM 522

With the end of my first Social Media class came a request for our overall impressions of how things went. Hence, I prepared Quinnipiac Assignment #15 – Reflections about ICM 522.

Quinnipiac Assignment #15 – Reflections about ICM 522

My classmates and I were also tasked with showcasing what we felt was our best work.

I was so very pleased that I had a few works to choose from, but I narrowed my choices down in order to save some space.

My reflections essay included comments about the video and essay portions of Module #4, Module #9, Module #10, Module #11,  and my Final Project; that video is duplicated below.

Module Four was about the Ad Astra Star Trek fan fiction writing community. Module Nine was about the Facebook page that my partner, Kim Scroggins, and I created for our ‘client’, the as-yet undiscovered Rhode Island rock band, J-Krak. Module Ten was about the creation and growth of the Twitter stream that we made for J-Krak. And Module Eleven was all about our less than successful experiments in spreading the gospel of J-Krak to MySpace and Google+ (the former was a particularly abysmal showing. At least our client’s presence on Google+ assured better placement in overall search results).

The class was great fun, and I could not get enough of studying for it. I have never, ever had a course like this before, where I was so into it that I could not wait to study, and I did all of the extra credit because I wanted to, and not because I necessarily needed to. That has never, ever been my experience with a class before this one. This overwhelmingly positive experience has given me the incentive to not only finish my Social Media Certification training, but I am also rather seriously considering going on and getting my Masters’ Degree in Communications, with a concentration in Social Media.

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A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action

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A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action

Blogging Less?

I’ve been running through life lately by shooting along at seventy gazillion miles per hour, and it’s catching up with me.

A Little Less Conversation, a Little More Action
English: Infographic on how Social Media are being used, and how everything is changed by them. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I suppose that’s to be expected. After all, hurtling along like that should, eventually, lead to some form of burnout. So I am looking to cut back.

Now, I love to write. I truly, madly, deeply love it. But lately it’s been something of a chore to get the blog out. It’s been — oh Gawd, I’ve gotta do this again? And that’s led to, what are to my mind, some less than stellar blogs.

Perhaps you have noticed them, or maybe you have not. Or you are too polite to say so. Or, I am just talking to myself. I don’t discount that as a possibility, either. And that’s fine, too. Hey, it happens.

But in my head, some of the joy was getting sucked out because it had turned into much more of a chore than a labor of love. And — gasp! — I had been running out of things to say. Things had stalled, and I was floundering, and it was all moving more slowly and I am sure that you all don’t want to hear, yet again, about my exploits shoveling snow — fascinating as they may be.

Hence I have decided to pull back a bit, and write less. Instead of sustaining a twice per week blog, I am pulling back to a once per week blog. And, sometimes, that may even turn into a no times per week blog. It’s silly to merely pump out content for the sake of pumping out content. I want to write when I have something to actually say. And I suspect you — if you are out there — would much rather read my blatherings if they have a coherent point and a purpose.

I don’t want to waste my time. And I don’t want to waste yours.

So here I am, disengaging a bit.

The mountains will not crumble. The seas will not boil away.

And Social Media will be there when I get back.

Thanks for listening. I’m never too far away.

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