6 Questions To Ask Before Timing and Placing Content

Good content is important – but if it’s not published in the right place at the right time, even a blog full of interesting tips and tricks will be ignored. In the content world, timing is everything, and often the difference between great and good lies in the timing. Great companies know when to hold off on blog posts until the time is right, while good ones simply publish when and where they feel like it.

The location of a post is as important as the timing. Rather than posting on your own site, a particular blog may reach more people on a site just as LinkedIn or Medium. The trick is to find a balance by juggling different content pieces, making difficult decisions and weighing each option fairly before making a choice. In order to post content successfully, you must know when the right time is to publish and how to reach your target audience with the location.

How do you choose which locations and times to place your content? How do you ensure that you will reach your target audience in the exact right spot when they are most likely to respond to your product? We have six questions you can ask before you get started.

1. Do You Know Your Audience?

With any product or service, knowing your target market is essential to building your brand and your business. You must understand who your customers are before you can even create content they are interested in. Once you’ve determined your audience, you have more data regarding what your customers want to see, where they want to see it and how they want to see it.

Many companies gather information about their target customer market by looking at the type of person that has bought their services in the past. You can also pull information about your target market from social media. Some companies choose to use a profiler that allows you to search for people and brands and determine everything you can about them. Knowing your audience is vital to creating content they will be interested in and engaged with.

2. How Does Your Content Fit Into Your Larger Marketing Plan?

Companies typically use content marketing to upsell products, build authority in domain, increase conversions and traffic, build a personality or brand and engage with their audience. Before you can decide where and when to place your content, you must first determine what you hope to achieve with it.

Creating a detailed content calendar can be one of the most successful ways of ensuring that your marketing projects align with your content. In your calendar, include campaign launch dates, any content that is currently being worked on and any other major projects throughout the year that will require content. For example, think of any holidays that might be big days for your company. A jewelry company may look at Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day or Christmas as great times to influence customers and focus content around those areas.

3. What is the Right Flow and Mix of Content?

Now you know who you are talking to and what you hope to get out of your content, now it’s time to consider which types of content your potential customers are most likely to respond to and be interested in.

Are members of your target audience more likely to response to a detailed guide or a short, funny blog post? Do they want specific questions answered in-depth or are they looking for visual content like infographics? Do they want to see video in your content?

The best way to handle this is to provide a variety of content types. Consider your website a magazine or newspaper. Your visitors are likely to respond to both in-depth, well researched pieces and interesting, fun reads they can link to on Facebook. Offer a mix of different types of content on your site to keep things interesting.

4. Have You Tried Reactive Marketing?

Is there a trending issue going on that your customers are likely to respond to? For example, when the incorrect flag was displayed for the Chinese team during the Rio Olympics, one eye care company capitalized on the idea with an ad that simply showed the flag and said “Should’ve come to us”.

If there is a popular topic in the media, a celebrity story or even a favorite character on a popular TV show, use these things to your advantage. Avoid anything that may offend your customers, such as natural disasters or religion. What’s going on in the world can benefit your company’s advertising if you use it correctly.

5. Are You Informed About Current Events?

Do you stay involved with current events and trends that may apply to your brand or your customers? Do you read through the news and tabloids to see what information your customers may be interested in reading on your site? You should regularly be visiting industry sites and blogs to stay current on what’s going on in your industry. These are great places to choose topics that will catch your customer’s attention.

When you notice a topic that is trending or hot in the news, timing becomes especially important. If everyone else gets to it first, you may be seen as simply piling on more information. The quicker you can produce content, the more popular it will be.

6. Have You Tested Posting Times?

It’s important that every site do testing to determine when is the best time to publish content. Here is some good advice to adhere to.

• Emails – Research suggests that 8-11AM and 12-2PM is the best time to send a newsletter through email, although this can change based on your audience.
• Blogs – Statistics show that blogs published on weekends are more likely to be shared on social media as there may be a lack of competition for engagement on the weekends.
• Twitter – Recent studies show that 81% of Twitter users are scanning during the hours they commute home and that retweets are most common in the early evening. Other research shows that tweets posted between noon and 6 PM get the most clicks on average.
• Facebook – Studies into Facebook’s News Feed algorithm show that users are engaged 18% more on Thursday and Fridays, and almost 32% higher from Friday-Sunday. Although there is no best time to post, afternoon seems to be a good time to get shares and likes.

Every site should do their own testing to determine which times are most appropriate for their customers, but these are some good rules of thumb to use while you do your own testing.

Different Company, Different Results

When deciding how and where to place your content, make sure you’ve done your research and can answer all these questions to guarantee that you hit your target market at the right time to boost traffic and conversions.