Small business owners should be very aware of how blog posts and social media interaction affect their business. With a swirling mass of posts, articles and other forms of writing to complete, its easy to let too much time lapse between assignments. According to Forbes, newsletters should be published at least monthly and frequent communication through social media on a personal level will drive sales and attract customers.
The Time to Post Has Come
Understanding your target audience will be the biggest asset towards knowing the best times to post. Are you targeting stay-at-home mothers who might be trolling during the day, or teens who are in school and will most likely be online after school is out? College-age students might be on at 1 in the morning, but professional executives are most likely on a different schedule.
KissMetrics has published a great infographic covering a study by Dan Zarella of the best times to post on Twitter and Facebook. Their results came out to recommending 1-4 Tweets per hour and .5 Facebook posts per day for best results.
As Mobile Becomes Standard
More and more people are getting smart phones with data plans and websites are providing smart-phone-oriented landing pages for their users. As this continues to become a widespread standard, content will be accessed at all times of the day. Dan Zarella already found that noon was a very effective posting time on both Facebook and Twitter.
The Pressure of Content Production
According to KissMetrics, “If you post more than once per day, your chances of getting more unique views and inbound links are greater.” This means a very consistent and frequent flow of information will have to be published by your business. While many personal blogs post once or twice a week, businesses have found they are higher in search engines and more likely to be found with a large number of published posts and tend to post frequently.
The pressure of producing quality content on such a regular basis is often handed off to an employee with too much already on their plate. Managing social media responses and posting on the corporate blog is time-consuming enough, but writing it too? Some companies hire writers for their content, while others outsource it. Hiring a freelance writer is an easy way to designate work without adding a full-time salary to the payroll.
Planning Your Schedule: Using Article Writers
With content services, you can hire writers to help you brainstorm or flesh out your ideas into full-fledged articles. Rather than go on a week-by-week basis, set up a calendar and plan out your article topics months ahead of time. Keep an article queue on hand so that you are never pushing for last-minute posts and missing your publishing deadlines. This will keep the pressure off the brainstorming part, since it will be done far in advance.
Don’t forget to factor the current importance of posts; sometimes a relevant story is time sensitive and moved to the front of the queue. You should also schedule in quick assignments with short deadlines when you see opportunities for breaking news. These current posts, interspersed among your stable posts, will help increase short-term traffic.
Alethea M is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
