There are patterns that most people fall into in life but also with posting content and social posts. In the past we did dig into the notion that Best Practices Are Not Always Best Practices for you and your business. You do need to test things and then keep testing them.
Our Posting Schedule Tests
- We started at posting on Monday
- We moved to Wednesday
- We tried Saturday
- We currently post new episodes Sunday
If you are a YouTuber or Podcaster – you should test a schedule and stick to it. People will come to expect new content on day X at time Y and your ability to retain that viewer or listener will be higher than if you randomly post content to your channels.
Special Podcast Series Schedule
In recent years we have started doing big series that have 4-5 episodes that are also much longer than our normal shows. The amount of content in a short time is the complete opposite of what we usually do and we have seen normal listenership for that content when we thought it would be huge.
Again it comes to schedule and what makes sense and for our special series we are still testing!
What is Your Industry?
Think about what you read, test it but also think about your industry and business. If you are a restaurant that has dinner specials, perhaps posting daily at a certain time is what you need to do. What time? No idea but you really need to test that.
Mat gives an example of a Food Truck and how he has been trained to check at 11AM daily to see if they are going to be near him. That business has a posting schedule that he expects and likely many others.
Are You Marketing Your Content Marketing?
The last item that should be thought about when it comes to your schedule is… how much budget and time do you have to promote your content?
If you post new content daily are you promoting it each day? You spend all that time to create something but don’t spend any to promote it you might want to rethink your balance.
- Post multiple times to Twitter
- Share on LinkedIn and Facebook and other networks
- Include it in your weekly newsletter
- Promote it… just do it in as many ways as you can.
Again – always be testing. Test time, date, visuals, messaging, networks, and anything and everything else.
Full Transcript
Matt Siltala: [00:00:00] Welcome to another exciting episode of the business of digital podcast, featuring your host, Matt and Dave roar guys. Thanks for joining us as always. And, uh, I know that we have the aim over there. So here’s this virtual wave today. How’s it going, bud? Cough.
Dave Rohrer: [00:00:19] As soon as I hit record, I started coughing.
Matt Siltala: [00:00:21] She knew that I was going to do that too.
So today what we’re going to do is we’re going to just jump right into it and, uh, This, this one’s interesting chatting about it as we do, uh, before we record. But, um, there’s different patterns in social media, the media posting that people, you know, even with what we do with our podcasting, but like there’s different patterns that we jump into and things that we test and do, and don’t do.
And, and I think it’s interesting cause you know, you, you were starting to get into like some of the stuff that we’ve done and maybe I’ll just hand it over to you and let you do that. And then get us started.
Dave Rohrer: [00:00:57] Well, I think we’ve talked something about this and [00:01:00] we’ve talked about the whole idea of best practice.
Isn’t always best practice. Like, read it, look at it, but test it yourself. And that’s what this comes down to is when are you supposed to post it’s like, well, so, and so did a test of. Whatever number of accounts and whatever number of posts. And they decided that, yeah, you should always post at 9:00 AM on a Saturday or something.
Um, and then there’s tools out there that will look at your data. Um, and it will also then tell you when you’re supposed to be post. But the funny thing about that is, is if you’ve always been posting at Wednesday at 9:00 AM, Their best stuff and you redo it on Thursday and Saturday, of course, it’s going to tell you to do with that.
So, cause it’s biased and the data is telling you that you already do it. So yeah.
Matt Siltala: [00:01:53] I often wonder when you’re reading those, when people are saying social media in general, but was the study done? [00:02:00] Cause I’ve seen this happen before where someone’s tried to, they’ve got over this and they’ve done a huge case study.
On Pinterest, but then they’ve, but then they’ve presented the data as what you should do on social media in general, although that was specific to your industry on Pinterest.
Dave Rohrer: [00:02:16] Well, yeah, that’s the question. Which, which platform is it? What industry was it? What were the size of the companies? How many of them were there?
So if you’re, uh, you know, still building that house next door, if you’re a home builder, you know, or maybe the plumbers. And you want to post content. Should you do it when a home builder does it when an HVAC company, when a restaurant is told to do it? No, because a restaurant who wants people to know about their dinner special every day is probably going to post it in the morning or the day before and say, Hey, don’t forget tomorrow.
When you’re planning your dinner. Dah, dah, dah, dah.
Matt Siltala: [00:02:57] And that is a perfect segue into the example that I [00:03:00] wanted to share.
Dave Rohrer: [00:03:01] I didn’t even mean to do that
Matt Siltala: [00:03:03] because a there’s a food truck that I follow, of course, like, you know, big surprise. I love the food trucks, but, um, there’s a food truck that I follow in and they used to be a physical store here, but then because of health reasons, rent, things like that, they turned into just a food truck and they work days that they want to so more power to them, but like, It went from being able to go to them whenever I wanted.
So having to pay attention to when they’re going to be somewhere. And so this kind of stuff is a, is a big deal for them, social media, letting their people know what, and they’re going to be where they’re going to be, stuff like that. And so they’ve gotten to a consistent pattern of, like you said, they’re a restaurant, where are they going to be that night?
So I’m going to be planning my dinners. You know, if I’m getting up in the morning, I can, I can almost guarantee at around 11 o’clock. Am 11 in the morning, they’re going to be posting something on their social media thing where they’re going to be that day. Or if there’s no posting that note, [00:04:00] I know that, Hey, they’re not going to be anywhere near me, but most of the time I can go in at about 11 and I can hit refresh.
And that’s another important thing I can notice on certain platforms, but like Facebook, for example, you go in and you click the latest posts and stuff. So a lot of times it doesn’t show the latest posts you have to actually hit the refresh. And so then it’ll come up and, and so just, you know, little pro tip there, um, I don’t know, that’s a Facebook thing or what, but, uh, obviously it must be, but you know, that’s the point here is like, the pattern that I’ve learned with these guys is I can go in in the morning and I could realize, okay, this is what I’m going to do for dinner.
And I know that that’s there and they have to have that consistency. They have to have that pattern, or I think that their business is going to fail. So that was just like the perfect segue. David, Tim. Into that. So I appreciate that I’m
Dave Rohrer: [00:04:51] patting myself on the back. Um, well, and then there’s the podcasting.
Um, or if you, you know, produce content for YouTube, there’s [00:05:00] certain creators that, um, you know, people are like, when’s your new video coming out? They’re like, uh, I post every Wednesday, like every Wednesday morning I try to get it. It’s going up Wednesday, one way or the other, um, or Tuesday or Thursday or whatever day it is like there’s days that people post.
We’ve tested, um, the first year. So I kept testing, like, do I post it on Monday? Do I post it on Sunday? Do I post it at the end of the week? And then promote it the next week? Like, what makes the most sense for podcasting for us? I usually post it Sunday morning so that by the time most people wake up or at some point during the day it’s in all of the feeds, because it takes a little bit of time to get into iTunes.
Matt Siltala: [00:05:42] Yeah.
Dave Rohrer: [00:05:42] And then. If you’re the person that, you know, updates your podcast or before that Monday travel, which really doesn’t matter anymore. But you know, before you head to the gym on Monday, before you go outside in your backyard to go workout for that day. Well, my hope is [00:06:00] that it’s been an iTunes for a couple of hours now.
So it’s there, it’s in Google, it’s in Spotify, it’s in all of the players. It’s percolated through that ecosystem. And now you’ve updated it and we’re, it’s possible. You’re going to listen to us today. Um, or at least, you know, maybe this week,
Matt Siltala: [00:06:20] that whole other side of it, Dave, that, that, uh, that, which is why I’m glad that we’re talking about this.
Cause I was thinking about, okay, well, back in the day, when we used to do dig or stumble upon or things like that, um, you know, you knew the best times of day to, to, to post those kinds of, but like, think about like what we’ve been going through this year with this pandemic. And like, whereas you could usually count on, okay, people are coming into the office about 9:00 AM.
They’ll get on their socials, their check, all that stuff. So you want to make sure you’re posting about nothing, but you know what, like all that has been blown through the doors with like people working from home and stuff. And so it’s like, you gotta be tested and you gotta be like, figuring, you know, like it’s [00:07:00] all going to be different right now.
I don’t know. It’s just the thought I add.
Dave Rohrer: [00:07:03] No, that’s a good point. I mean, it can totally be different. Um, luckily for us, the podcast. That still shows that still most of our listens come Sunday, Monday. And unless it’s a holiday like recently, you know, then it goes into Monday, Tuesday, or Monday or Sunday.
And you know, if Monday’s a holiday and whatever, but I’ve seen that over now, three years of us posting and I tried Wednesdays, I tried every which day and for us, that’s just what works. But it can always depend on when you send your newsletter or anything. And I also tried when we did the a hundred series.
So we had what, five, five or six, um, interviews and shows and we posted it all in a single week. It was like, ding, ding, ding, each day we were dropping a 30 to almost 60 minute show, which for. A [00:08:00] podcast like us, that’s usually 15, maybe 20, 25 at the very most, every week is a lot of content. And so then this year I was like, okay, we had good, we had a good reception.
We had a lot of listens. They were at the time, not the highest we’d ever had, but I thought some of the best quality of content and best content period and just really good interviews. I expected them to just blow everything through the roof, but. Because we dropped so much contents in such a short time.
Did people just skip over and pick it apart and go, Oh, well, you know, I want to listen to my other shows and I only have an hour this week, so I only listened to one and then, and then they just never get back to it. So this year when we did our leadership series, I was like, okay, why don’t I try something different?
Because we dropped a ton of content in a single week. It was a lot of work for us. And I don’t think we got as many people finding it and [00:09:00] listening as we could’ve. So this time I switched it up, I did Sunday, Wednesday, Sunday, Wednesday, Sunday, or something like that. So I did basically the usual plus one during the week, and I saw an uptick, but we still were dropping twice as much content during that two and a half weeks than we usually do.
So maybe next time we’ll do four and it’ll just be a month long and maybe we’ll drop in something else. But yeah, again, you know, I mean, doing this once a year test to figure out what is best for us, if we’re ever going to drop a lot of content, I don’t know. We’ve done it twice now in two years over a year, like, boom, boom.
I don’t know the answer.
Matt Siltala: [00:09:48] Yeah, well, you know, the logic behind what, you’re, what you’re saying, you know, it makes sense to me as far as like the amount of time that it takes to consume [00:10:00] those episodes. Like, especially with last people are used to 20 minutes tops, and then they’re getting hit with almost 60 minutes and it’s all at once.
Like, you know, almost like it would be interesting to continue to, or maybe do another down the road. Do another series like that, where, you know, where we dropped them a weekly where people have more time to consume, but then also you got to factor in things like, okay, well we’re a year older and we have a year more worth of, uh, people that subscribed to the podcast, hopefully.
Um, and so like, does that take into account? But yeah, it’s all interesting. And I think, uh, for me, when I, when I look at the different businesses that I follow, whether it be like a shoe company and. Or whether it’d be like a food truck or a regular business or a podcast or whatever. Um, do look for those, those, um, you know, those patterns like we’re talking about, like, I know that this particular person updates [00:11:00] at this time, or I noticed some restaurants that they’re just Brown and they post like all different during all different times during the day.
So I know that. Continue to, to check there and refresh their feeds and look at their stuff. And so, um, I guess here’s the thing, like, I like that where I know that there’s something going to be posted versus those ones that don’t have any kind of consistency at all. And so, um, I guess, uh, what my advice would be with, if you have the opportunity to put yourself on a pattern and let people know when they can trust you for certain things, Then then do that, get set up on something like that.
If you’re not able to, um, to do that consistently then I don’t know, like, uh, I don’t know if you have any thoughts on that day, but just something that, uh, that I was thinking of.
Dave Rohrer: [00:11:52] Well, I get ’em in the mail every Wednesday and every Sunday or not Sunday. Um, every Wednesday we get the flyers [00:12:00] for the local shop, food shopping.
So like literally every Wednesday, I know I can walk out. And all of the flyers for all of the grocery stores around here are going to be there. And, you know, I can start planning and I either I can go to, you know, Wednesday or Thursday or Friday, and the sale ends quote unquote, Sunday or something usually.
Um, again, that’s consistently, they drop that newsletter, um, you know, marketing, whatever you want to call it. And it’s always at the same time. So, you know, if you have a newsletter or you have content, you know, a lady has her every Sunday night, her weekly newsletter that goes out. Yeah. You know, certain people have content that they produce, whatever, whatever it is, if it’s Monday or Sunday or who cares, but pick a day and just stick with it, but also test it.
Um, But, you [00:13:00] know, for us, one of the reasons why, one reason we do a weekly podcast is we know we on, we can only produce so much content and two, you can only consume so much content, but also three, it gives us something to promote and we gives us, allows us to promote it. So if you’re creating a blog post every week, Um, or every two weeks, are you doing outreach?
Are you trying to generate links to it? Are you trying to generate shares? Are you sharing it on your social platform? You know, networks, you know, you can post a link to something more than once to Twitter a week. It’s okay. Because not everyone will see it posting it to Facebook.
Matt Siltala: [00:13:45] You mentioned that silence because that’s something that, and I, it made come from back in the day, I was doing infographics for so long, but.
I would try to help people understand it like this. This is one piece of content. Yeah. But you don’t [00:14:00] have to just post and praise, so to speak, just put it out there and don’t do anything with it. You have lots of different areas of data that you could take. Take a little snippet, take a little image from this.
Like, you know, for example, with us, with the podcast there could, and again, like we’re probably the worst example because there’s so much stuff I would, that I want to be done, but I just don’t do it. But like things like, uh, you, you know, you could take, uh, images that we have. We make images from different, uh, things that we talked about.
You could take snippets, a brief recordings from conversations that we’re having put it in a 15, second thing on Instagram or real or snap or wherever it might be like, there’s so much stuff that people can do and that they should be doing. Um, It’s like any of the, uh, the places that I work with that have a reviews, whether it’s a, you know, it could be an AC company, it could be a dentist, it could be a food place.
Like it doesn’t matter. Like you have people coming [00:15:00] in, leaving a good reviews, talking, you know, go on and pay attention to those. What are they saying on Google? What are they saying on Yelp? Are they posting pictures? Can you, um, reach out to them? Can you. Offer them something. Can you take pictures, you know, do a little screenshots of images that they’ve saved, or if there’s been like pick talks that they’ve done or whatever, it might be videos that they’ve made while they were, I’ve been at your establishment, reach out to them, make sure you have permission to use their stuff, share it, share it on your page.
Like just take advantage of that content that’s been created. Like, again, I know that we’re talking about patterns here, but if you get yourself in the pattern of. Doing this and paying attention to these feeds and then, then posting that stuff constantly. Then you’re putting yourself in patterns in that way as well.
And it’s just, it’s again, taking advantage of that kind of stuff. Like talking about Dave with newsletters and, and, um, Just, it’s just one more Avenue for people to take advantage of my opinion. So those are my final thoughts.
Dave Rohrer: [00:15:59] I [00:16:00] think you just made it so that we have to do a, uh, episode up soon about ways to reuse a podcast or audio or video content.
Matt Siltala: [00:16:08] Um, boom. I ,
Dave Rohrer: [00:16:11] because I don’t think we’ve done that. I’m going to double check, but I don’t think we’ve done it. And if had we have, I will link to it, but I don’t think we have
Matt Siltala: [00:16:18] so,
Dave Rohrer: [00:16:19] um, but yeah. The, the pattern for social media posting or just Hatton in general is figure out what works, test it. Um, and then stick with it.
And if you are going to change it know, well, no, you know, if, if you’re suddenly going to change from always posting at a certain time in your newsletters and other places, let them know and go, Hey, We always post the site, blah, blah, blah. We’re now changing it’s now instead of the Sunday, Sunday times newsletter, it’s going to be the wacky Wednesday.
They wind down. I don’t know. Um, you want to call it, but look for patterns, look for something that makes sense. Test it. You know, like I said, [00:17:00] we put a lot of time into those series of interviews that we do. We want to make sure as many people can hear it. And I keep testing how, and when to post it, to release it, what’s the schedule look like?
What are we going to do? How are we going to promote it? You know, I came up with different visuals this time and that we still continue to use now for when we have guests that I like a lot better than what we used to have. Yeah. I just keep looking for different ways to improve it. Yeah. And that’s really, all I can say is just, you know, like we always say always be testing.
And
Matt Siltala: [00:17:33] my final thoughts, that just something that came up while you were talking about this, and then I’ll wrap up now. But, uh, and it’s, and it’s the thing that I try to tell any company that’s going to get on social and yeah. And people are going to start relying on them as is, you know, be that consistency because, you know, there’s, there’s places here like barbecue places, for example, that all know if I’m going to go make the 40 [00:18:00] minute drive.
Like I can know that that they’re open or that they’re not shut down for whatever reason or they update as soon as like something starts, Hey, we’re running out of brisket. So you better get down here within the next hour, or you’re not going to have a chance, just stuff like that. Like again, related to your business, but just being consistent and throwing stuff out there is what we’re looking for.
So, and speaking of consistency, you know what I’m going to be telling you now. Uh, we do appreciate you guys listening to these episodes. Uh, go to Google play, give us a five star review. Um, it helps us continue to get more visibility and continue to bring these to you. So we appreciate you guys joining us as always for Dave roar with North side metrics.
I Matt SOTAL with avalanche media. Thanks for joining us on this guys. Wait
Dave Rohrer: [00:18:48] later.