We had a look at the article Lunch time, end of work day best times to tweet and implemented this approach as part of our social media strategy. We found that posting to our Facebook page at lunch, later afternoon and sometimes again in the evening did maximise our post views and interactions. Despite what the article says, we see Twitter as a place to post more regularly, given it's largely ephemeral nature.

As we go into front page redesign mode, the question was asked about when would be a good time to update the front page with new content? Jen, our stats guru, poked around our Google Analytics to see what times of the day visitors came to the front page. We chose to look at Friday 1 July to Monday 4 and found that:

  • on a Friday 27% of visitors were between 9-12noon; 13% 1-2 pm and 13% midnight - 5am
  • on a Saturday 17% visited between 8-11pm or midnight to 5am; at other times they were evenly spread
  • on a Sunday 21% visited between 8-11pm; 19% 9-12noon and 16% 3-5pm
  • on a Monday 22% between 9-12noon; 18% 8-11pm and 17% 3-5pm

Now I know that this is dependant on different time zones, and we will do more digging between OZ and OS visitors, but seems to me that maybe a Friday afternoon and/or Sunday morning and afternoon might be a good time to upload some new content?

How do you decide when to post new content?