Heroes in Business - When To Post: The REAL Answer

Episode Date: March 24, 2021

Learn the answer to, “When is the best time to post?” for content marketing. It works for all platforms and comes from years of achieving extraordinary results using the strategies I teach. Free Tool! on this episode of Social Media on Steroids with Dan Shinder  

Hi, and welcome to the Social Media on Steroids podcast. I'm Dan Schindler, and I created the Social Media on Steroids brand of education, training, consulting, and services to help others learn from my experience of achieving extraordinary results with content marketing on social. I attracted a following of over 1 million people and reach millions more online each month, 100% organically. In this series, I share the strategies that helped me cross all the milestones it took to get there and that we still use. And please, before we dive in, take down my email address in case you have questions. I answer all questions and I take suggestions for topics to be covered in this

series. You can reach me directly at dan at advancedsocialmarketing.com. And of course, the website is the same URL. Follow the blog there and the Advanced Social Marketing YouTube YouTube channel. Okay, let's jump in. Yay! Welcome to episode four of the Social Media on Stairways podcast series. I'm your host and creator of the series, Dan Schindler. And this episode is when to post the real answer. Because there's a lot of bunk out there, a lot of bunk information. But first of all, most importantly, I hope you're well wherever you are, whenever you're listening to this. In these crazy times, I was telling my wife last night, I said, imagine if people eventually start bumping into each other at the market

and the post office and whatnot and say, oh, I didn't recognize you without your mask. Although, depending on when you're, if you're listening to this in a few years from when it was recorded, which is actually March 6th of 2021, you might be thinking, what mask is he talking about? A Batman mask? A Frankenstein mask? Was this Halloween? Well, obviously not if it's March, but just check your history books. Not that that's all accurate, but you know what I mean. So anyhow, let's talk about a very common question that I'm asked, and that is, when should I post? It's a very popular question. And during this podcast episode, I will mention how you can get my free editorial calendar template for planning out your post.

But first, I want to explain why that's important, why to do it. And I actually resisted using an editorial calendar in the beginning of Drum Talk TV just because I didn't understand why I needed it. So I'm hoping to break that ice for you and break that barrier for you so that you don't have to waste time like I did not using it any longer than you believe it, you know, isn't worthy of using. Use it! It's very important. But when I started using it, I was so embarrassed. I was embarrassed that I hadn't been using it because it literally changed my life as far as time, efficiency, productivity, really being able quickly became the farthest reaching, most engaging online media platform covering the world of drumming, Drum Talk TV. And for the first maybe six or eight months, I resisted using that. I didn't even know about it until Lori brought it up. Lori Shube, who was our chief digital officer at that time.

And I said, well, why do I need an editorial calendar when I know what I want to post? I was clueless. Please don't make that mistake. Please don't be clueless. So it helps you visually look at your schedule of when you're posting what type of content. And you should be posting varied content. We'll get into that. And it helps with the flow of content.

It helps to ensure the variety of content. It shows you not only what you're going to post, but what you have posted. So you can look back on that schedule and make sure you're not posting the same thing or same type of thing too close to that. Look back at something and then look into your analytics of whatever platform you've posted it on and we'll get into that as well and and look at

how it performed i mean there's so much value to it i can hardly even quantify it so please just do it okay just do it and i'm gonna tell you all about it but first going back to a popular question, when should I post? So I want to reiterate a crazy story that I mentioned on a previous episode briefly. And this crazy story was a friend of mine, a client actually sent me an article from some guy's blog that was about when to post. And this guy had one recommendation. And I'm sure my friend sent me this just to wind me up or to show me how ridiculous, remind me of how ridiculous

some of the info is out there. Because the guy who wrote this article in this blog said, you should post on Facebook four o'clock on Thursdays. What? Four o'clock on Thursdays? Four o'clock where?

The emptiness of this statement is just this abyss of a lack of information. Four o'clock where? I'm in Arizona right now. So where are you? Four o'clock to me might not be four o'clock to you. And most importantly, not four o'clock to me might not be four o'clock to you. And most importantly, not four o'clock to your followers. That's really the answer. When should you post?

When most of your followers are likely to be awake and be online and see what you post. But they're not all going to see what you post in real time. They're not all going to see what you post either, thanks to the algorithms of the different platforms. But that's okay. In future episodes of this podcast series, I'll talk about how to get around that. And I've been getting around it for eight years. So I'll show you how to do that. It's not all about spending money on ads or boosting posts.

That's not the only way around it. And often that doesn't work either. But let's get back into scheduling. Okay. When you schedule your posts, it also avoids posting in real time. And I'm going to explain why that's a benefit. You should never have to post in real time. Honestly, that's just ridiculous.

It really is. You should plan your posts out ahead of time and load them into the queue of that platform. Pre-schedule your posts. Not all platforms have that feature as a free feature not all those platforms even have that feature but you can achieve that with some different third-party programs which I'll get more into in another episode as well I really want to just focus on when to post right now but the reason the only reason to post in real time is if it's breaking

news, breaking news that you've got to post that's time sensitive about your industry, something that happened in your industry, something that's happening or with your business. In our case, on Drum Talk TV, the only instance I can think of where that is the case is if someone of note passes away. And then we post about it right away or as soon as we find out about it. Other than that, everything is preloaded into the queue. Okay? So that's easy to do. I can, maybe I'll do a free webinar on how to do that sometime really soon. But again, let's focus on just when to post and loading stuff into the queue, whether it's on Facebook or whatever.

Really should be doing should do all your posting for business from a laptop or a PC, full size Mac type of device, not from a smartphone. If you are only using a smartphone, you are missing out on a lot of features. It's just a microcosm of the possibilities. And it's all about tools. It's all about understanding the tools you have at your fingertips and utilizing them to get the best performance. So let's talk about how often I should post, which is kind of tied to another question I get a lot. When should I market? And there's a difference between marketing versus advertising and promoting. They're not the same things.

I'll get into that as well in this episode. But back to scheduling. So when to schedule? Again, it goes back to when is most of your followers awake? And you're not even really limited to just that. We have followers in over 130 countries on Drum Talk TV. I could post really any time of day, any hour of the 24 hours,

because we have followers in all 24 time zones, and it'll get some action. But I realize that not everybody's like that. You may have a business where it's very localized. It's not even an online business. You sell goods. Let's say it's a bakery, and you don't sell online. And I do know, actually, someone who sells baked goods online.

Check out BigMama'sPoundCake.com. online check out big mama's pound cake calm anyhow if you're only posting locally to a local audience that is let's just say it's a Phoenix I'm a hundred miles from Phoenix let's say Phoenix even still you're not gonna post just at four o'clock on any given day you're not gonna ever post at the same time every day any given day you're going not going to ever post at the same time every day, any given day. You're going to need to spread your content out at a variety of times throughout the week because not everybody's online at the same time. And I'll get into the intricacies of that in just a bit. But let's talk first about frequency. So I've also had people ask me but you don't post on

weekends or holidays right I said well why not and I see their gears turning in their eyes go up and they're thinking and I say what are people usually doing on the weekends if that's their time off and what are they doing on holidays and again I see the gears turning and I say they're probably doing in-person social things whether it's hiking, going to the beach, visiting family, going to a party, going bowling, you know, whatever it is that they do. And they're taking pictures and they're posting about it. So yeah, people are online and on social media 24 hours a day, seven days a week, somewhere someone's doing that. So

again, it's about understanding your audience your followers where they are and when when they're likely to be online and that is every day of the week including weekends and holidays and someone else asked me but not when our business is closed right we don't post when we're closed i said well why not if you're open nine to five maybe your clients and customers are not online then because they're busy working. So you post before hours or after hours as well and never in real time. Oh, I love watching the light bulbs go on above people's heads. Because this is very important. It's very important that we're always learning and we're always improving.

And you don't want to always post when the analytics of your respective channels that you're on, whether it's Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, whatever it is, those will tell you when you're getting the most views and everything, but don't stick to just that because then you're only going to be posting content to people who are already seeing you at those times. The idea is to constantly gain new followers. The idea is to constantly gain new followers, to have new people, to drive new traffic to your website, to sign up for your email list, to check out what you have to offer, to go to your brick and mortar place or your web, you know, whatever it is. whatever it is. So post outside of that so that the real broad stroke answer is to post when your audience is mostly awake. And you can, because if they're awake, they're probably, it's a good amount of them are online. Okay. So before I get into frequency at an even deeper level, I want to tell you something.

I know everyone's busy. And the worst thing, the thing I despise the most hearing from people as excuses is how busy they are. Some people are busy within their boundaries. I get that. We're not all the same. Some people are busy within their framework, within their sensibilities, within what works with their family dynamic, and I get that. But let me tell you something about busy. Okay, my wife, Anja, and myself, we have three businesses between the two of us. She has a

business. Actually, she has more than one. She's an amazing seamstress. She's an artist of many disciplines, and she does art therapy, among other things. I have Drum Talk TV, largest media company covering the world of drumming, and I have advanced social marketing. That's what social media on steroids comes from. And we have 11 kids, blended family of 11 kids and 19 grandkids and a cat. I understand busy. And for the first four and a half years of Drum Talk TV, I was the only one doing our social media posting. I was also doing the interviews.

I was also doing all the post-production. I was also doing all the sales to our sponsors. I was doing literally everything. It's not quite like that now. I'm still very hands-on, but I was also doing social media on steroids. I was doing webinars, seminars. I was working one-on-one with clients. I get busy. That should never be an excuse. When people say that, to me, I think of what they just don't want it bad enough or they haven't been sold enough on the value of it. OK, so here we go. How much should you post?

I'm going to soften that up a little bit. And I mentioned this before on a previous podcast, but my softened version is once a day, once a day, seven days a week. seven days a week. The real answer's three. But if you could just work up to once a day for now and change those times up, it's gonna be huge. Facebook, for example, Facebook and Instagram, the valve isn't even open for the platform to distribute your content if you're only posting once or twice a week.

It's like the switch isn't even on. So right away, I promise you right away when you start posting more frequently, you're going to start getting better results of your reach. Which means more people are going to see your content, which means if the content doesn't suck and you can learn how to avoid that from me as well, you'll get more engagement, which means you'll see what people care about, what they want more of, what they want less of. Suggestions, questions. Oh, I love the questions because we get to answer them and we get to build the relationship with our audience. So start with once a day, seven days a week and mix those times

up. On the editorial calendar tool that I have to help you lay out your posts ahead of time and I recommend at least a week if possible a week or two ahead of time what it is is columns on either side that have the times going vertically down down the side it's an excel sheet and the top, it has the days of the week. So each row of, let's say, 10 rows is one week. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And then the times range from 6 something in the morning till 11 at night, p.m. And it could be 10. It could be from 7 to 10. It doesn't mean that you're posting in every slot. Maybe there's five slots. Maybe there's seven. Still only post once or twice a

day, but you have those slots as options, and I'm going to tell you right now how to get that tool, and then I'm going to tell you something about the wacky times you'll see on there and how I came up with these wacky time slots. So if you email me at dan at advancedsocialmarketing.com with editorial calendar in the subject line, I'll not only email you back, but if you want, I'll answer any questions you have. Tell me what you do do put in your question and I'll send you this tool and I'll also answer any questions you have okay so these times originally they were like 6 30 a.m 7 50 a.m 8 20 a.m 10 15 and so on and one day I was reading an article totally unrelated to social media

and it said uh I read the words pattern interrupt and that made me think of the algorithms on Facebook and Instagram and I thought wow as a consumer follow 30, 50 different Facebook pages of different things, music, motorsports, food, cats, travel, and science. And I thought, I bet all the people running all these pages and scheduling posts are instinctively doing what's easy and natural and they're posting at on the hour, on the quarter hour, the half hour, and the three quarter hour. So they're posting at 10, 1015, 1030, 1045. So I thought if all the pages I follow are posting at one of those four time slots, I follow are posting at one of those four time slots there's probably a lot of stuff going out to one consumer from multiple pages that a is gonna limit how many they get in their newsfeed and to how many it'll limit how many they

actually see so I thought I pictured those as traffic cones in a line. Those are the times 10, 10, 15, 10, 30, 10, 45. And I pictured our content on roller skates, weaving in and out of those cones and posting at wacky times. So as an example, we'll post it 10, 12, 10, 27, 10, 42, 10, 53. No one's going to intentionally post at those times unless they're using my tool or they've taken one of my workshops or courses or you're listening here no one else does that i've i've checked this out and we started getting more reach right away when we started doing that so then i thought of pattern interrupt i bet facebook and Instagram and maybe even LinkedIn have algorithms that learn when we post most often and they squash those posts to bait us into wanting to spend money on ads and

boosting posts. So I went a step further and came up with a four-week cycle so that the posts are scheduled. These time slots change on the editorial calendar. Each week, each time slot changes by about five to seven minutes in either direction, forward or backward. So it has proved to really work very well. Now, let's talk about variety of content. Don't forget to email me for that. Let's talk about variety of content. You should not be posting the same type of posts over and over. And I know that many of you out there, with all due respect, with all the love in the world coming from the right place, right here in my heart, in my chest, I know that you're probably mostly posting what's for sale, download this coupon, use this code, come to the gig, biggest sale of the year every month, new product over and over and over.

And you're going to wear your audience out if that's all you're doing. You're going to wear them out with just promoting to them because there's no reason to keep following you if all you're going to do is keep promoting to people. And as I said earlier, here, I'll explain this now. Marketing versus advertising and promoting are not the same things. Promoting is when you have something going on you want people to know about. Hence, the coupon, the code, an event perhaps, a new product, whatever it is, new release, new location, whatever it is, discount, that's a promotion or an advertisement

that's promoting that. Your marketing is the reason people answer to that. Your marketing is what helps them to like you and your brand, help them to trust you and your brand. Hopefully get them to fall in love with what you do so that when you do promote something, they respond to that. That's the difference.

And you can not do that by just advertising to them, stop doing that. Imagine turning on a radio station, you hear a song from your favorite band and you know, oh, they're going to play that band for the next three hours because it's the celebration of XYZ album coming out, whatever it is. I want to listen to this.

But they play one song and then 25 minutes of commercials. And then they play another song and then another 25 minutes of commercials. Same thing with the TV. It's like, welcome to our channel all we want to do is advertise to you who would listen to that right or watch that so don't run your social channels like that as well post a variety of things be helpful show value what else do you post the common interest between you and your audience not just what's for sale so by having this editorial calendar tool whether you mine or someone else's this is how you lay out your variety of content and post things at different

times rather than the same time reaching the same people you've got to grow your audience over and over and over you've probably heard me talk about leveraging the 5% rule. You're only going to be able to sell to 5% of the people who are aware of you. And in some cases is 0.05%. And remember, only 3% of your target market is ready to buy now. Only 3% of your target market is ready to buy because they Only 3% of your target market is ready to buy because they're impulse buyers or they're judgers, which means they just want closure. They want to get it over with. I'm going to buy it. I'm done. Good. On to the next thing. Whereas the perceivers, like me in most cases, perceivers, they want to explore. They want to compare. They want to feel

warm and fuzzy about buying from the brand. So they're going to check you out, follow you online, and then they buy. And a lot of those are problem aware and some are problem unaware, but they just take their time. So you've got to post a variety of content. You want to have a tool to help you visually look at that week and lay things out. Okay. All right. So we got these three videos. We've got one Monday morning. We've got one Wednesday afternoon, one Friday at noon, our local time. We've got two memes. Let's spread those out. And we've got a promotion. Let's stick that one

here. And on Friday afternoon, the day most people get paid, you know, there's all these different strategies. I'm just kind of touching on the surface, really. In fact, after you get the editorial calendar from me, you can write me back and say, hey, I need help. And I'll help you. I'll answer questions. In fact, I think maybe after I get the first 30 people that request that, I'll schedule a free webinar on me showing you how to do that and walking you through it, all of you.

And you can chime in with what your business is, where you're located, where your market is, is where your people are and all those things and i'll show you how to do this so don't be shy i want to help i do that's the whole reason i started social media on steroid series of products and webinars and seminars and courses and workshops is because when i realized that my own strategies of growing an enormous audience organically on Drum Talk TV, I realized that this could help other people. And that's why I came up with it. So please don't be shy. Reach out. Some mistakes, just to review, some mistakes people make because they're not posting frequently enough only once or twice

a week avoid that get up to one post a day and in most cases you're probably thinking even if you think you have time you might be thinking oh but what am i going to post don't just advertise over and over come up with a variety of content that's relevant to who you are what you provide and who your audience is and what their interests are and how that relates to you, what you provide, and who your audience is, and what their interests are, and how that relates to you and what you offer. There's your variety of content. The other mistake people make is that they're posting pretty much at the same time every day or whenever they post for various reasons because they think, well, people will expect it or this is when most people I'm marketing to are online because that's what my analytics say. No, post a variety of times,

more people will see it who don't normally see it and will become followers if your content is really good content. And as far as what content to put on what channels, let's say you've got LinkedIn, YouTube, let's throw in another video channel, Vimeo, maybe you're on Twitter, if that works for your business, Facebook, Instagram, what is that five, six channels, and some people put the blue ones on Facebook, the red ones on YouTube, the green ones on Instagram, the purple ones on Twitter, and so on. Don't do that. Why would you do that? Put everything everywhere to increase the chances of it being seen. Consumers use these different platforms in different ways and for different reasons,

and they all have one or two that they spend the most time on, even if they go to six or eight platforms. There's one or two that's their favorite I'm like that I'm a consumer and by segregating your content to different channels chances are no one is seeing enough of your content now there's some content that won't go on all channels you can't put a meme or a static graphic on YouTube or Vimeo I get that other than that everything should be everywhere. And by the way, on that topic, a little extra nugget, video reaches on average three times more people

and gets five times more engagement. If you do a really good job with video, it could be much greater. It could be like our results are more like 30 times more reach and 80 times more engagement. Seriously. So think of your channels as like network TV, your own network. You want to put everything everywhere in case someone's favoring a different channel.

You don't want them to miss out on your content. So hopefully this was helpful. I really hope I hear from you. Email me at dan at advancedsocialmarketing.com with editorial calendar and the subject line. I'll send you the tool. It comes with instructions. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Sign up for the newsletter, the Social Media on Stories newsletter and get my six steps to daily success. You can do that at advancedsocialmarketing.com and also get notifications of changes with platforms, special things that I'm doing you can do that at advancedsocialmarketing.com and also get notifications of changes with platforms, special things that I'm doing you can be part of. And if you want to learn more, if you need to get trained, if you need to get your team trained, if you need your service provider to know how it really works, I'm happy to train them if you don't want us to be your service

provider or just have questions. And if you don't want to be sold anything that's fine just just reach out with questions visit www.advancedsocialmarketing.com to learn more contact me through the site or pop me a message through LinkedIn which is linkedin.com slash in slash Dan Schinder s H I N D E R so it's Dan Schinder, S-H-I-N-D-E-R. So it's Dan Schinder. Thank you so much. Cue music and closing. So remember, if you're serious about what you do, get serious about how you market it.

You can reach me directly at dan at advancedsocialmarketing.com and see how I can help you further at the same URL. Check out the blog there and follow the Advanced Social Marketing YouTube channel as well. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn at linkedin.com slash in slash Dan Schindler. Happy marketing!