Tag Archives: HubSpot

Best times and days to publish new content are off-peak times

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Dan Zarrella of HubSpot is at it again. He’s just published some of his research on what the best times and days to publish new content are including, tweets, blog posts, Facebook post and emails.

the most successful times and days to publish new content are off-peak times.

Apparently people are more active on the weekends. This makes sense, although it doesn’t mean there isn’t any activity during the week. What this means is that you should republish some of your stuff on the weekend in an aggregate post. This also indicates why some of the most popular blogs, like Mashable, publish an aggregate post with all the best posts people might have missed during the week.

But, for most of us who have blogs and have a dedicated reareadership, these trends are different. And they should be. If you are in the U.S. and have dedicated readers in England, you’ll schedule your posts to publish at different hours.

Anyway, what do you think of Dan Zarellas research? Does it make sense to you?

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Social media is for conversations and broadcasting

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We like to say that social media is all about the conversation; not about broadcasting.

Dan Zarrella of HubSpot, posted new research that indicates that broadcasting works better on Twitter than conversation.

60% - 80% links is the sweet spot for retweets

All this data, while useful, should be examined objectively. Why? Because everything depends on what your objective is for using social media tools.

Problem is how we define broadcasting

I think the problem with all of this is how we define broadcasting. If all you do is post stuff about yourself, then that’s spamming. If we define broadcasting as becoming a resource for interesting content, then that’s different.

People like good content, and if you can become a resource by curating interesting content for them, then you will become a very important source in the online lives.

So, is social media for conversations or for broadcasting?

It’s for both. Why? Because if your objective is to create brand awareness, to get leads or to become a thought leader; being in the conversation and posting interesting links are key activities.

When you’re part of the conversation, it doesn’t mean you just have to be in conversation mode all the time; it means you can also post content; either links you find on the web that you think are interesting to your followers, or your own custom made content.

What do think? Do you think the problem is with definition? How do you define broadcasting?

 

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Infographic: How to make your tweets more clickable

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Hubspot’s Dan Zarrella wanted to know if the placement of a link within a tweet matters and makes people click more often:

But about a month ago, I decided to actually look at the data about it and test my assumption. Over the course of the next few weeks I gathered 200,000, random, bit.ly-link-containing Tweets. I used the bit.ly API to calculate a click through rate (clicks on a link divided by number of followers of tweeter). And then I analyzed the relationship of the link’s position inside the Tweet and it’s CTR. I figured the best way to visualize this would be through a heat map.

He came up with this nifty heat map:

Twitter CTR Heat Map

The entire heat map symbolizes a Tweet, with areas to the left in the beginning of the Tweet and areas to the right at the end. Dark red bars represent a position with a high CTR and light-red or white bars show a position with a very low CTR.

As you can see from the heat map, the best place to place a link and make it more click-able is 1/4 of a way through your tweet.

I’m not really sure about this finding and haven’t tested it myself. Have you?

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How your small business is losing web traffic opportunities by not blogging

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Recent research from HubSpot suggests that small businesses are starting to blog to better market their business online.

do you publish a company blog?

This rapid growth means that businesses are now in the minority, if they do not blog.

On a separate study, SiteKreator conducted a study on how small businesses use websites. It randomly selected and reviewed 5,000 of its 100,000 accounts over a twelve-month period. After examining the sites, SiteKreator determined which factors make small business websites the most successful.

Social media integration really seemed to help a lot.

Businesses need to update their websites constantly

Small businesses that update their website more than five times per month have +300% more website traffic than those that do not

Small businesses that update their website more than five times per month have +300% more website traffic than those that do not

 

Social Media is key to driving traffic

Small businesses that engage with social networks see a +400% increase in visitors. Facebook has the most impact on traffic. Twitter is still small potatoes.

Small businesses that engage with social networks see a +400% increase in visitors. Facebook has the most impact on traffic. Twitter is still small potatoes.

 

And lastly, to further drive the point, according to Social ROI:

[blackbirdpie url="http://twitter.com/#!/TalentCulture/statuses/48845980744945664"]

What does this all mean for your business?

If you’re still in the minority of businesses who are not taking advantage of social media tools such as blogs and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, consider doing it NOW. As in today. Not tomorrow.

If you have a small marketing budget, don’t worry either. Twitter is free and creating a Fan Page on Facebook is also free. There are a handful of platforms such as WordPress, Posterous and Tumblr that let you setup a blog for free.

It’s really easy to get started.

All this sounds great, but what you really need to do is allocate time for social media marketing activities. This is the real cost for you, but then again, the cost of not doing nothing and getting left behind is more costly to your business in the long run.

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