by Fronetics | Feb 15, 2016 | Blog, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
When you are posting on social media could be as important as what you’re posting.
Timing is everything, and that statement especially holds true when it comes to posting content to social media. If you are sending out your message and nobody is there to see it, you are that proverbial tree falling in the forest; you did not make a sound. Your post had little to no impact.
So, even if you are putting in the time and effort to craft informative blog posts, tweets with just the right message, or Facebook posts that inspire more than just page likes, you still are not getting the most exposure you can out of social media.
Data that delivers results
According to research by social media scientist Dan Zarrella, when you are posting your content can be almost as important as what you are posting. Luckily, there is an ample amount of analytical data out there regarding optimal times to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram.
For example, looking at broad-based Twitter engagement, research suggests that users go up by 30 percent on weekends, speculatively because more people are on their computers, smartphones, and tablets during their free time. On weekdays, this peaks at 4 p.m. EST, perhaps as people check into social media as the workday begins to wind down and they are seeking a diversion.
Some studies suggest that Twitter use often peaks slightly earlier, between 1 and 3 p.m. on weekdays, and this might be attributed to people who take an extended lunch break.
LinkedIn studies show that the optimum times to post content are Tuesday through to Thursday during normal work hours. Also noted: Tuesday 10 to 11 a.m. is known to get the most clicks and shares.
When it comes to Facebook, another marketing study suggests that there is quite a wide range of variables, and it is really based upon your audience. But, in general, the best time to post on Facebook is 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Other popular times include 1 to 4 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays, and lunchtime (12 to 1 p.m.) on weekends.
There are poor times to post on Facebook, too, such as weekends before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m., according to SurePayroll’s research.
Research supports that B2B content generally performs 16% better during typical business hours, while B2C content performs 17% better on weekends.
Your (personal) optimal posting time
But, the problem with these suggestions is that they are just statistical generalizations of when might be the optimal time for posting content. What you need is analytics that are specific to your particular followers. Your audience maybe a different demographic than those represented in these studies, and when they are reading, sharing, or retweeting may actually surprise you.
You can access personalized data regarding the social media habits of your readers and followers through analytic programs like Google Analytics and sites like Tweriod. There are a wealth of available free tools, which provide valuable insight regarding your audience.
Here are a few to consider:
- Tweriod is a free Twitter tool that helps you know the best time to tweet. The free analysis will analyze up to 1000 of your followers. Tweriod is not part of Twitter but rather is something you may access to better understand your followers’ schedules and interests, like what they have retweeted.
- Followerwonk can help you to individuate your potential Twitter audience by learning not only who follows your competitors, but who commonly retweets their content. You can also look at your own personal audience and discover what content they like, share, and maybe even link to from other posts, as well as when they are most active on social media.
- Facebook Insights tells you the best times and days to post content by accessing your page’s insights in the posts sections. In the graph section for “When Your Fans Are Online,” you can see the days and times when your fans are using Facebook. This data is constantly updated.
- Google Analytics provides insights, analytics, and data regarding your website, and it lets you do more than measure sales and conversions. It also gives insights into how visitors find and use your site, what they are clicking on, and how to keep them coming back.
Many people still play a guessing game when it comes to deciding the best time to post their content for the most impact. But, studies suggest the average life of a tweet is only about 18 minutes. So, if you tweet something during an inactive period for your Twitter audience, you are probably wasting your time.
Posting the right content, at the right time, can make the difference between getting valuable comments, shares, and clicks on your links, and it can provide a myriad of valuable new leads.
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by Fronetics | Nov 5, 2015 | Blog, Content Marketing, Data/Analytics, Leadership, Marketing, Strategy
We all want to see the fruits of our labors. Whether launching a product or a new social media campaign, we look for instantaneous numbers that will affirm we made the right choices. But here’s the problem: not all metrics are created equal.
So-called vanity metrics are measurements that have no bearing on your bottom line but can give you an inflated sense of success. Generally, they are easy to calculate but are influenced by too many factors—and are too vulnerable to random external events—to be reliable.
Website visits and number of subscribers are two classic examples. A spike in homepage hits may be the result of your marketing efforts, or it may be because of ghost spam. (Or, both.) Regardless, more visits do not necessarily correlate to increased revenue—just more visits. In the same vein, having 100,000 email subscribers means nothing if only 1% are opening them. You actually could be losing money in terms of resources allocated if the emails aren’t helping drive sales.
That’s why it is crucial to focus on return on investment instead of vanity metrics. You could waste hours reviewing a hundred different analytics that tell you nothing about how revenue was affected by a particular effort. Or, worse, you could use vanity metrics to justify decisions that don’t achieve their ROI.
As a simplified example: say you spend $100 on a banner ad for a new product on an industry conference website, and your analytics report that 100 people clicked through. This sounds like success! But don’t celebrate just yet. When you dig past the vanity metric, you find an extremely high bounce rate. That means most of those click-throughs left your site immediately, neither engaging with your brand nor moving any closer to becoming a customer. In fact, you find that only one click-through converts. Was it worth paying $100 for this one customer? Probably not.
But say you ran another $100 banner ad on an industry publication website, one that targets a younger audience than you think your product fits. Only 20 visitors clicked-through, which sounds less successful than the other ad. But when you follow those 20 click-throughs down the sales funnel, you see that 15 ended up purchasing $1500 worth of product. Already, the ad has paid for itself 15 times over. You’ve also learned that perhaps a younger audience is more suited to this product. The ROI proves the vanity metric was quite misleading in this case.
Lean-startup pioneer Eric Reis, who coined the term vanity metrics, said, “The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions.” In other words, measure the things that will tell you if an effort was profitable so you know where to put your time and money.
While vanity metrics tell you nothing about your bottom line, ROI can help you determine whether it was worth spending your resources in a particular way. This is extremely useful on platforms like blogs and social media, where things are constantly changing. Using ROI as a litmus test, you can keep experimenting and making sure you’re using these tools effectively. Tracking a vanity metric like number of followers, which is likely to build over time regardless, gives you no indication of which experiments were successful and which weren’t.
Your resources are limited, so it’s crucial to evaluate your efforts with meaningful numbers that illustrate their effect on your bottom line. Calculating ROI might take some time—both in the few extra minutes to do the math and the amount of time that needs to pass before all the data is available—but that number will be infinitely more valuable to you than any vanity metric on your Google Analytics report.
What metrics do you report to your team?
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by Fronetics | Mar 11, 2014 | Blog, Data/Analytics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
How people access your website and navigate your website can provide you with a lot of information not only about your website’s visitors, but also about your company and the products and services you provide. Unfortunately, many companies don’t know that this information exists and therefore they leave a wealth of strategic data unexamined. The data does exist – and it is free and easily accessible.
This goldmine of strategic data is available via a tool called Google Analytics. Google Analytics provides users with powerful data about website traffic. The amount of data available through Google Analytics is massive. Likewise the knowledge one can learn from the data is massive. Here are just four things Google Analytics can tell you:
How many customers actually look at your website
Having a website is essential. However, a website does your company no good if customers are not finding your website and are not accessing the site. Google Analytics provides you with data on the total number of visitors to your site as well as the number of unique visitors and the number of new visitors.
How visitors use your website
Google Analytics provides data on the path each visitor takes when they visit your site. You can follow the path of each visitor – from the first page they looked at, to the last page they looked at. This information give you information on what drew the visitor to your site, what they were looking for, what they were interested in once they arrived, and provide you with information on why they left the site. For example, did they leave once they made a purchase? Or did they not find what they were looking for and leave your site immediately?
What visitors like and what they don’t like
Google Analytics provides data on the number of visitors per page. By looking at this information you can tell what products or services are most popular and what are the least popular. From this you can make strategic decisions about your company’s products and services. For example, is it time to revamp your product line? Or do you just need to revamp your website content?
How do visitors view your website
What technology do visitors use when viewing your site? Do they use a mobile device, a tablet, or a computer? Knowing this information will help you to optimize your site so as to cater to your visitors. For example, if you find that the majority of visitors are accessing your website via a tablet or mobile device you want to make sure that your website is friendly to this technology.
What are your website’s traffic sources
Google Analytics breaks down traffic sources into four categories: direct, referral, organic search, and social. Once you know how traffic is coming to your website you can make necessary adjustments to your marketing and advertising strategies. Furthermore, you can identify which strategies currently in place are working and which are not.
Setting up Google Analytics is free and is relatively easy. Google provides a step by step guide, and there are also a number of YouTube videos available. Once you have set up Google Analytics use it – and use it to your advantage. The data provided is real time and will therefore enable you to understand what you need to do now in order to attract customers and engage customers.
by Fronetics | Mar 11, 2014 | Blog, Data/Analytics, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
How people access your website and navigate your website can provide you with a lot of information not only about your website’s visitors, but also about your company and the products and services you provide. Unfortunately, many companies don’t know that this information exists and therefore they leave a wealth of strategic data unexamined. The data does exist – and it is free and easily accessible.
This goldmine of strategic data is available via a tool called Google Analytics. Google Analytics provides users with powerful data about website traffic. The amount of data available through Google Analytics is massive. Likewise the knowledge one can learn from the data is massive. Here are just four things Google Analytics can tell you:
How many customers actually look at your website
Having a website is essential. However, a website does your company no good if customers are not finding your website and are not accessing the site. Google Analytics provides you with data on the total number of visitors to your site as well as the number of unique visitors and the number of new visitors.
How visitors use your website
Google Analytics provides data on the path each visitor takes when they visit your site. You can follow the path of each visitor – from the first page they looked at, to the last page they looked at. This information give you information on what drew the visitor to your site, what they were looking for, what they were interested in once they arrived, and provide you with information on why they left the site. For example, did they leave once they made a purchase? Or did they not find what they were looking for and leave your site immediately?
What visitors like and what they don’t like
Google Analytics provides data on the number of visitors per page. By looking at this information you can tell what products or services are most popular and what are the least popular. From this you can make strategic decisions about your company’s products and services. For example, is it time to revamp your product line? Or do you just need to revamp your website content?
How do visitors view your website
What technology do visitors use when viewing your site? Do they use a mobile device, a tablet, or a computer? Knowing this information will help you to optimize your site so as to cater to your visitors. For example, if you find that the majority of visitors are accessing your website via a tablet or mobile device you want to make sure that your website is friendly to this technology.
What are your website’s traffic sources
Google Analytics breaks down traffic sources into four categories: direct, referral, organic search, and social. Once you know how traffic is coming to your website you can make necessary adjustments to your marketing and advertising strategies. Furthermore, you can identify which strategies currently in place are working and which are not.
Setting up Google Analytics is free and is relatively easy. Google provides a step by step guide, and there are also a number of YouTube videos available. Once you have set up Google Analytics use it – and use it to your advantage. The data provided is real time and will therefore enable you to understand what you need to do now in order to attract customers and engage customers.
