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Five Quick Ways to Boost Your Social Media Listening

May 25, 2016 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

Five Quick Ways to Boost Your Social Media Listening

People are always complaining about the amount of noise there is on social media. Clients want to know how to cut through the tremendous ruckus and hear the good stuff. Here are some surefire ways to listen better.

Photo by darkday.

Twitter Lists for the Win

My number one piece of advice for new clients is to set up lists on Twitter. You can make them secret or public, but either way a list is how you can follow many people and listen to the best ones. For a deeper dive, here’s my post about lists for the power user.

Photo by telmo32

Google Alerts

Did you know that you could set up a Google alert for any keyword you like and then add it to a column in Hootsuite? Each Google Alert has an RSS feed. So for instance, if you have a Google Alert for your own name, you can add that. You could set one up for all the people in your startup so you can monitor who’s talking about you. Then put them into columns using HootSuite Syndicator.

Facebook Groups

You can have different groups on Facebook. That is, you can create groups of friends, people who are restricted, or those you’d like to see less of in your newsfeed. It’s already built into Facebook. So if your coworker is meddlesome, put him in a group other than “friends.”

Photo by Moyan_Brenn

Personal Hashtags

You can create your own hashtag by typing a pound sign (#) in front of any word. Use it to organize a search or any time you want to be found. Make sure your content matches your hashtag. For instance, my chat on Twitter is #DigiBlogChat. For a deeper dive into hashtags, read the excellent The Only Hashtag Guide You’ll Ever Need.

Pinterest Guided Search

If you’re on Pinterest, use the guided search. You can pin from the feed, but a better way is to use the guided search. Listen to what people are pinning on a particular topic relevant to your business. Start with the highest-level (for instance, a hair dresser might search on “short hair,” then let Pinterest guide your search.

Local Search by Keyword

If you’re a brick-and-mortar store, you could search by hashtag to see what people in your area are saying. For instance #SF or #SanFrancisco. I search on #SantaCruz in Twitter quite a bit. Then retweet, repost, or comment on those posts. Brainstorm other keywords your ideal audience might be using.

Make Listening a Habit

Julian Treasure, in his wonderful TED Talk about listening better, recommends trying to listen to different channels to deepen one’s connection to the world around us. If you have a chance to listen to his video, please do.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Facebook, Followers, listening, Social Media, Twitter

How to Unleash Your Creativity with One Simple Trick

May 19, 2016 By Carol Stephen 14 Comments

How to unleash your creativity with one simple trick

You’re probably thinking that there’s some incredible secret here. A lot of us believe that creativity is something we left behind when we stopped falling out of treehouses and breaking our arms testing gravity going downhill with no brakes. But creativity is a belief as much as anything. We are all wired to create.

We Are Designed to Move

Similarly, we are all designed to move. A lot of us in the tech industry believe that we’re more or less heads on sticks, like mobile lollipops. But we have bodies for a reason, and if we don’t move a lot of bad things can happen. We’ve all heard those scare tactics by the people who want to sell standing desks: if you sit for too long, you’ll get diabetes and die. By contrast, when we move, a lot of good things happen. We become rich, famous, and sexy. Or at least we get in better shape and can write blog posts a lot faster!

Photo by Nikko Russano

Walking Helps Us Think

Ferris Jabr in his excellent New Yorker article Why Walking Helps Us Think, asks: “What is it about walking, in particular, that makes it so amenable to thinking and writing?” Moving the oxygen in gives the little gray cells the right kind of food to get the job done.

He also says this:

“When we stroll, the pace of our feet naturally vacillates with our moods and the cadence of our inner speech; at the same time, we can actively change the pace of our thoughts by deliberately walking more briskly or by slowing down.”

So to speed up our thoughts, all we need to do is run a brisk mile.

Put One Foot in Front of Another

Walking or hiking changes our moods and our thoughts, as well as letting us change the pace of our thoughts. We’ve all had the experience of our outer pace changing our inner pace. Sometimes it starts with music. And knowing that merely putting one foot in front of the other can quicken our thoughts, well, it’s a refreshing idea.

Daydream Believer

Whether you’re outside hiking, or inside walking on a treadmill, spacing out can lead to creative ideas. And all your need to get started is a pair of walking shoes.

It’s Not Just Anecdotal Any More

In the good old days (ok, pre-2014), people thought walking helped their creativity, but there was no science to backup the idea that creativity was linked to walking. Then a study, from Stanford came along, in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. And this article from the New York Times: Want to Be More Creative? Take a Walk.

Dr. Oppezzo, who led the study says

“Again, walking markedly improved people’s ability to generate creative ideas, even when they sat down after the walk. In that case, the volunteers who had walked produced significantly more and subjectively better ideas than in their pre-exercise testing period.”

How Does Walking Improve Your Life?

Do you walk to be more creative? Do you take advantage of the new ideas you generate right after a walk? Let me know by leaving a comment!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: competitive edge, creativity, hiking, walking

How to Lose All Your Followers on Social Media

May 12, 2016 By Carol Stephen 12 Comments

How to Lose All Your Followers on Social Media

I almost called this “The Wonderful Art of Subtraction on Social Media,” because sometimes the best thing to do is to subtract. That is: unfollow, unfriend, and mute. After all, everyone wants more, more, more followers on social media. Isn’t that the whole point? Not always! Sometimes less is more.

Photo by cliff1066™

Same Old, Same Old

Lately I’ve grown tired of seeing the same stuff day after day, month after month. On Twitter, the accounts that spew quotes are the worst. My friends Mitch Mitchell and Terri Nakamura have been tweeting about it. How do those accounts get so many followers when all they do is broadcast quotes all day long?

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Spew quotes all day long.

https://twitter.com/Mitch_M/status/728464131049693187

Unfriending on Facebook

On Facebook, if I don’t remember where the heck we met, or if we haven’t had a conversation for a couple of years, off you go! I’ll bet they don’t remember me, either (even if to me, I’m the queen of the universe!). Wiki has a great list of reasons you might have been unfriended on Facebook and how to get over it.

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Being offensive and way too personal is a good way to be unfriended. Right now, the political rant is also a great way to lose friends.

Photo by abodftyh

Unfollowing on Twitter

On Twitter, if there’s too much salesy stuff, and too many boring tweets, same thing: they get muted or unfollowed. Muted if the volume is too high and unfollowed if the tweets are tasteless. Partly the fault is mine. I may not have taken a good, hard look at the account when I first followed or followed back. But sometimes accounts change, too. Here are some Twitter Best Practices, by the way.

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Drunk tweeting off topic is a fast way to lose followers. Also, sending direct messages asking for money is a fast path to being unfollowed.

Photo by davebloggs007

Disconnecting on Pinterest

Sometimes people post about too much of one thing, and it gets boring. Or, as in the case of someone I unfollowed this week–too many “sexy ladies dressed as animals.” Yeah, I know. Weird. I kept unfollowing one board after another, until finally–no boards at all! What a great day that was. If you want a primer on Pinterest, you might like this one: Pinterest: Top Ten Tasks and Power Tips.

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Pin only photos of sunglasses. Or stuffed animals. And you’ll lose followers. Try it!

Photo by janoma.cl

Getting Unlinked on LinkedIn

Like Direct Messages on Twitter, sending salesy messages before getting to know someone is a no-no on LinkedIn, and a great way to lose followers. Today I got an email from someone I’d never had contact with asking me to buy their IT services. See ya! If you want to know how to prune the rose buds on LinkedIn, here you go.

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Send a lot of salesy stuff, before getting to know someone.

Photo by eelke dekker

Insta-Unfollowed on Instagram

On Instagram, a really great way to be blocked is to leave a comment on someone else’s post saying “follow me.” Don’t you hate that?

Fast Path to Losing Followers: Say you sell followers in a message on someone else’s post.

Who Have You Unfollowed Today?

If you’ve unfriended, unfollowed, or blocked someone today, why? I’d love to hear from you!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: failure, Followers, Instagram, less is more, LinkedIn, Pinterest, subtraction, Twitter, unfollowing, unfriending

The Seven Social Media Creatures You’ll See in the Woods

May 5, 2016 By Carol Stephen 14 Comments

The seven social media creatures you’ll see in the woods.

The woods are famous for tall trees and hiking. The woods are also famous for trolls. So although you may think it’s the hiking that makes you more creative, it’s actually all the running away from trolls and other creatures that gives your brain that creative edge.

Photo by MiguelVieira

Mosquitoes

There you are in your idyllic spot, minding your own bees wax (more on bees later), when along comes a mosquito. But they’re never alone. They always have tens or hundreds of friends. You could say they’re the extroverts of small woodland creatures. In Social Media Land, mosquitoes steal your work, and leave you feeling anemic.

Then There Are Ticks

Ticks are the multi-level marketing people of the woods to me. They will give you anything if only you’ll send your bank account number to a friendly Nigerian prince, separated from his family. He does not need all the money, just a small fee. Ticks are the same way. By the way, if you want to survive the Social Media Doldrums, here are some clues.

Butterflies and Moths

There are butterfly people, and then there are moth people. Butterfly people flit around and you can never get them to commit. Moths are the ones who do all the work. Just bring a lightbulb and you’ll see what I mean. Be careful, though: invite a moth into your home and they’ll build a nest in your sweater drawer! In social media terms, butterflies will promise you anything but never deliver.

Photo by peretzp

Bees

There are many kinds of bees. Bumblebees, honeybees, and miner bees. The solitary bees are the hard-workingest bees of the woods. They don’t sting because they don’t have honey to protect. And they don’t have big ol’ hives, either. Bees are different than WASPS. WASPS go to church (they are mostly Presbyterians). If you encounter a group of WASPS, make sure to sit in an empty pew.

Birds

Although they are small, hummingbirds are *holes. They refuse to stop humming, even when they don’t know the tune. This is not acceptable, even in an election year. If you carry a tennis racquet around, though, you should be pretty safe. In social media, hummingbirds are those annoying people who don’t know when to quit.

Deer

One time, I was at my dad’s house, and a deer came tearing down the street, jumped over his mailbox, and landed on a car. Therefore, because of logic, are deer all dangerous. Don’t let those big doe eyes fool you. In social media land, this is the person who spreads those bad rumors about “if you don’t share this with ten people, bad things will happen!” The best way to deal with these people? Send them to Snopes.

Skunks

Of all the denizens of the woods, skunks are the most powerful. Pound for pound, skunks can outperform any parfumerie. A little skunk goes a long way. The skunk is the Kardashian of the Internet. Apologies to the skunks.

Photo by matt hutchinson

Can You Find Any Scientific Inaccuracies in This Post?

If you can, leave me a comment! Thanks!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: bees, butterflies, creativity, hiking, ticks, walking, wasps

Why Social Media Darwinism is the Most Wonderful Way to Success

April 28, 2016 By Carol Stephen 4 Comments

Why Social Media Darwinism is the Most Wonderful Way to Success

Like throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks, social media Darwinism can be your fastest, craziest, and funnest way to success. If you’d like a quick overview of Darwinism, you might want to check out Natural Selection and Biological Evolution for Dummies. It won’t be as fun as this blog post, but still.

Mistakes, Failures, and Startups

What propels you forward faster than making a bunch of mistakes, and the ensuing embarrassment? Nothing, that’s what! You may have read about how mistakes and failure are important to your brand and your startup, right? If not, here you go: What If Failure Didn’t Exist? Anyway, how can you create something new, and something wonderful if there’s no failure involved?

Mark Zuckerberg’s Mistakes

Even Mark Zuckerberg admits he’s made every mistake you can make. Well, maybe not all the mistakes! I’ve made some of them, so he doesn’t get to claim all of them. His telling employees to “be fast and be bold” could be why Facebook is still thriving now.

Twitter’s Survival

Remember when Twitter proposed losing the 140-character limit? And we all said “C’mon! Don’t do that!”? If you don’t remember, here you go: Will Twitter Dump Its 140-Character Limit? They learned pretty fast through that mistake! Talk about survival of the fittest!

Biomimicry

While social networks may not lend themselves to Darwinism per se, cooperation can help those in the physical world. Cooperative relationships can help organisms with their reach (for example, Mychorrizal fungi form symbiotic relationships with host plants, greatly extending the “reach” of a plant’s roots). Our own tendency towards cooperation can help us with our own reach. And I think that’s pretty neat.

Brian Solis on Digital Darwinism

One of my favorite writers, Brian Solis, has this to say about social darwinism (article from Wired):

“This is a time of digital Darwinism — an era where technology and society are evolving faster than businesses can naturally adapt.”

And Solis adds this:

“But make no mistake. Digital transformation efforts grow market opportunities and profits as well as scaling efficiently in the process.” Plus the hashtag #AdaptOrDie.

By the way, here’s a review of Brian Solis, What’s the Future of Business: Generation C that you might like.

The Speed of Change

As technology races ahead, businesses must learn to adapt. They don’t need to blindly adopt new tech, but need to stay open to new changes coming down the pipeline. Think of Kodak (R.I.P.) or Blockbuster. We thought they were permanent institutions at one time. But now? Not so much.

Are You Practicing Social Media Darwinism?

How so? Leave me a comment. I’d love to hear from you!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Brian Solis, Darwinism, failure, Mistakes, Social Media, social media darwinism, Startup

How to Choose a Social Media Manager: Ten Worst Ways

April 21, 2016 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

How to Choose a Social Media Manager: Ten Worst Ways

People choose social media manager for all the wrong reasons. Now bear in mind this doesn’t mean you. But many, many other people do just that: they pick based on some emotional reason, then are very upset when their social media manager (“SMM”) doesn’t work out. If you want to hear the positive side of how to choose a SMM, here’s my previous article: Top Ten Questions to Ask Your Social Media Manager. But stick around if you want some of the worst ways to choose an SMM!

Photo by xmatic

Someone Who Doesn’t Engage

Your new SMM should be someone who hates to chat with people. Having short–or long–conversations of people is a hallmark of social media. They should hate dealing with people at all, whether that’s talking on the phone, in person, or on social media.

Photo by Nirazilla

Someone Who Buys Followers

On the day they start work, your new SMM should plunk down $20, and buy a bunch of followers. After all, you need the “social proof,” right? And if you want to know whether someone has a bunch of fake followers, take a look at this: Who Has the Most Fake Twitter Followers?

Fake Followers

Someone Who Follows, Then Quickly Unfollows

Maybe this has happened to you. Someone follows you, you follow back, then they quickly dump you. Now that’s a great thing to do! In a bad way, of course.

Someone Who Says They Do it All

Most SMMs do not do it all, but you should pick someone who says they do! They will say they know about graphic design and Google adwords and also create and edit video for you. However, they might have someone in their agency who can help with some of those things.

Someone Who Doesn’t Care About Driving Traffic

None of your Facebook posts need to drive traffic to you, right? So having a SMM who doesn’t understand that’s important would be a great (aka bad) choice.

Someone Who’s Rude and Entitled

You really ought to pick someone who’s rude and feels entitled as your SMM. Because then there’s a lot less work for them to do. When they start work late, they can leave early to make up for it!

Someone Who Steals Images

Someone who “borrows” images and posts from others without giving any attribution would probably make a fantastic SMM! Always get the consent of the person before using an image, as Sarah Snow Explains in this article.

Someone Who Unknowingly Posts Porn

Someone who doesn’t check what’s behind a pin on Pinterest would make a great manager for your social media! It will certainly be more exciting when you discover what’s really behind that pin! Here’s a swell guide to using Pinterest for Business, by the way.

Choose Your Niece or Nephew!

Surely they’d know something about how to post, just because they’re super young. After all, they can use Snapchat!

Choose Your Admin for the SMM

Sometimes this can work out, but what about when it doesn’t? What if they don’t have the aptitude for it? As always, leave me a comment! I do appreciate it.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: buying followers, failure, SMM, social media manager, unfollowing

Pinterest: 10 Quick and Easy Tasks You Can Do Right Now

April 14, 2016 By Carol Stephen Leave a Comment

Pinterest: 10 Quick and Easy Tasks You Can Do Right Now

If you’re confused by Pinterest, there’s no need to be. You can start pinning for yourself or your business right away. For this post, I’ll skim over a few basics, and then get into some tasks you can do immediately. And I’ll make it as quick and easy as possible!

Set up a Business Account

If you haven’t set up a business account, go to Pinterest’s blog for the easy setup. Don’t forget to verify your business account, too. Skip this step if you’re on Pinterest for fun, of course.

Your Action: Set up your business account.

Create 5 Boards

Create Five Boards

Yes, you could create more, but start with five boards with five pins each. That’s quick and easy, right?

Your Action: Set up boards with simple names to reflect your business interests. For instance, if you sell windows, you could have boards about Glass, Architecture, Shades, Window Boxes, and Trim.

Make ‘Em Pretty!

Make ‘Em Pretty

Your board covers need to be pretty! Guys, that includes you, too!

Your Action: Choose the best of the five pins and make that your board cover. Here’s a post that includes how to create better board covers, by the way.

Pin Descriptions

Of the pins that you pinned, are they filled with keyword-rich words?

Your Action: Put yourself in the shoes of someone searching on Pinterest. Would they find your pin?

Pin At Good Times

If you’re only pinning in the middle of the night, you’re going to get middle-of-the-night results!

Your Action: If you only have a few minutes, pin at 6 pm. That’s when most people are on Pinterest.

Find Your Analytics

Click the little gear at the upper right of your Pinterest account.

Your Action: Spend 10 minutes getting cozy with your Pinterest analytics.

On the first page of your analytics, you’ll see the above screen, or something like it.

Check Your Own Website’s Impressions

Pinterest By the Numbers

In the screenshot above (Find Your Analytics), you can see some of the ups and downs of the numbers. If you hover over what interests you, you can see more details. Here I’m interested in activity from my website. Check the impressions from your own website. Go to the top right (third panel, above) and click More. You will see impressions from the past week, by default.

Your Action: Check the impressions for a pin that got repinned and see what you did right! What was the subject of the pin? (To check when a pin was pinned, simply click on the pin and you should see how long ago it was pinned to the top right.)

It’s All in the Details

Check the details. I’m interested in the spike shown on April 10, above.

Your Action: Choose a pin and check the details. See the impressions, clicks, repins, and likes. Below the Top Ten Impressions, there’s a list of places where your pins got repinned. Skim over it–don’t spend a lot of time.

Follow One Pin with the Highest Impressions

Here’s where it gets interesting. One repin onto a board with very high traffic caused all of the 4565 impressions, above. Pretty neat!

Your Action: See where your highest pinned pins got those impressions. Above, you can see that one repin caused a number of clicks. Is that something that you could replicate?

Be a Tortoise Not a Hare

Pin steadily. Don’t worry too much about daily fluctuations in analytics.

Your Action: Commit to pinning five minutes per day. If that’s too much, maybe five minutes three times a week.

Bonus!

Bonus Tip

Once you’re a regular pinner, you may want to do more.

Your Action: Create one board of your highest ranked pins. Use your analytics to find, say, your pins that got more than three pins. Or five pins.

What Would You Recommend?

What quick and easy tips have helped you? Let me know in the comments! Thank you!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: analytics, boards, pinning, pins, Pinterest, Pinterest for business, quick and easy

How to Recycle Content the 10 Best Ways

April 7, 2016 By Carol Stephen 6 Comments

How to Recycle Content the 10 Best Ways

Since it’s almost Earth Day, it’s a good time to talk about recycling your content on social media. It’s also a very good time to prevent your brain from exploding. Recycling your content, as it turns out, is a very good way to prevent your brain from exploding. If you need other reasons to keep your brain from exploding, you might want to read: Content Curation: 5 Killer Reasons It’s Your New BFF.

Photo by Caden Crawford

Start with Your Blog

Your blog is like the torso of your efforts. Everything starts there. The “limbs” are the different social platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. You may be a starfish, with five arms, or an octopus with eight limbs. Or maybe you’re a mollusk, with only one leg. But I digress. Create your content on your blog, with plenty of nice, fat keywords.

Recycling Tip: Go back to your older blog posts and see which can be rewritten. A slightly different slant can give new life to an old post!

Tweet Your Post

Not only should you tweet your blog post, but if you’ve done your homework and gotten some social capital, ask for people to retweet. “Please retweet!” you might say. And then pin that tweet to the top of your Twitter feed so anyone coming there can see it. If you don’t have social capital, this is an excellent post on Reciprocation from my bud Bridget Willard.

Recycling Tip: Retweet your own tweet later. That’s right. When the initial excitement of that tweet is over, retweet your own post again. You could use a different headline and a different image. Or not. Up to you. Guy Kawasaki repeats his posts, and here’s Guy’s strategy.

Photo by tian2992

Pin on Pinterest

You do have a blog board on Pinterest, don’t you? If you don’t, make one right away! And then pin your blog post there. You might also want to join a group board so that you can pin your wonderful writing there, too. Here’s how to join a group board.

Recycling Tip: If your pin doesn’t get repinned the first time, pin it at a different time and delete the first pin. Make sure you’ve added your key words to the description. You could also add it to a different board, at a different time.

Photo by Moyan_Brenn

Facebook

Facebook is a little trickier, unless you post a lot every day.

Recycling Tip: Use #TBT (Throwback Thursday) or ICYMI (In Case You Missed It) to repeat old posts. And add some different text, for heaven’s sake!

Email Marketing

Remember that blog post? Take pieces of it and put it into your email newsletter. Maybe use a different image, from further down in the post, and add a sentence or two.

Instagram

Instagram has been taking off the last couple of years, with more people using it.

Recycling Tip: Regram your own posts, and change up the hashtags. Of course, recycle the hashtags, too!

Photo by Moyan_Brenn

Google Plus

There’s some disagreement as to whether Google Plus is still relevant. Many Social Media Managers think that it isn’t. Most agree that it’s a ghost town, and that posting there helps with SEO.

Photo by jenny downing

YouTube

Videos are one of the best ways to get attention from your audience. Short videos, in particular work very well on social.

Recycling Tip: Chop up your video and reuse it in different ways. You could take a one-minute video and create three or four shorter videos.

Photo by CityscapeGUY

LinkedIn is often described as the “sleeping giant” of social media.

Recycling Tip: Share one of your favorite posts in a LinkedIn group at a different time.

Recycle Your Images

If you’ve created terrific images, you could recycle them. For instance, you could make a calendar from Instagram photos. Or Create magnets from Pinterest images.

Recycling Tip: Use this link, which friend Kittie Walker shared on Twitter (follow her on Twitter ~ @avidmode), to recycle your images from Instagram.

Photo by E. D’Ascoli Photographies

How Do You Recycle?

Do you recycle? How?

Photo by Moyan_Brenn

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: email marketing, Google Plus, Instagram, LinkedIn, newsletter, pin your tweet, Pinterest, reciprocation, recycling, social capital, Social Media, tweet, Twitter, YouTube

Content Curation: 5 Killer Reasons It’s Your New BFF

March 31, 2016 By Carol Stephen 8 Comments

Content Curation: 5 Killer Reasons It’s Your New BFF

“Find good stuff and share it” is the way content curation works. Whether you as a curator are on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Pinterest, people want to see the best articles chosen for them. Very few people have hundreds of hours to scour the web looking for the gold nuggets. But why is content curation your BFF, you may wonder?

Fewer Brain Explosions!

Your brain can pay attention to maybe four things at once. A friend of mine recently said that if you’re driving you can pay attention to what’s in front of you, in back of you, and to either side. If one more item is added, say texting, then it’s overload. Information overload works the same way. Content curation helps your audience because you filter the good stuff for them, and then hand it to them on a pretty plate. Here’s how to handle information overload (TIP: Skip to the list!).

Builds Trust

People will come to rely on your content, so ensure that you stay on target and be true to what you’ll share. So if your social media profile says you are a restaurant, people would probably expect to see fabulous images of food. Probably. And maybe content from parallel industries as well, such as pubs and wineries. Of course, you can also create your own content. Here’s an article on Content Creation: Like Hosting Out-of-Town Guests, that you might like.

Photo by Grayskullduggery

Creates Community

Posting about a particular subject draws in like-minded people. How often have you yourself, as a content curator, been impressed or tickled by a content on someone else’s post? Content curation, done the right way, gives you that sense of community that we’re sometimes lacking.

Opens the Imagination

The best Facebook page or Pinterest board unlocks your imagination. Sometimes you get a lot more than you expected, when you go to a beautifully curated account. Sometimes you think “I could make that outdoor sofa set from old pallets” or “that Grand Marnier Soufflé looks entirely do-able!” Here’s a post about Pinterest Influencers: Curating Pins that you might like.

Positions You As a Thought Leader

If you have original ideas, then curating content can make you a leader. People will come to you first when they want an answer about your area of expertise. When you add context to a news article, for example, you reframe an already-existing viewpoint. And who doesn’t want to be a thought leader?

Secret Sixth Reason

Here’s the reason many of you curate content: It’s your passion. And you want engaged followers. Don’t you?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: building community, Content, curation, information overload, Social Media, thought leader

Why Friday is the Worst Time to Publish a Blog Post

March 24, 2016 By Carol Stephen 12 Comments

Why Friday is the Worst Time to Publish a Blog Post

You want the most eyes possible on your blog post, right? So you’d like to know when to post, the same as all of us. I’ve been posting on Thursday mornings at 7 a.m., Pacific Time. But others may like the beginning of the week, or the weekend. Why not Friday, you say? After all, that way you have the whole week to write your article.

The News Dump

Friday is known as a “news dump day.” that is, bad news or news that media outlets don’t want to be noticed goes out on Fridays. Yes, it’s a thing, and you can read about it in the Political Dictionary. If you must publish something, but don’t want anyone to notice, send it on Friday.

The Zombie Apocalypse That No One Knew About

If you want to keep the zombie apocalypse quiet, or want no one to know about that affair the President is having, you could quietly release it on Friday. By the way, here’s an article about how a zombie apocalypse would be better than having an old school social media manager that you might like.

So if Friday is a bad time, when is a good time?

Photo by NCinDC

Thursday and Saturday Mornings Rank High

Thursday and Saturday mornings, according to this article in Kissmetrics, The Science of Social Timing, are both good times to post, depending upon your audiences. Men are more likely to read an article at night, and women in the morning. Additionally, Coschedule has a nifty long article, When is the Best Time to Publish a Blog Post that again emphasizes that mornings are the best.

Photo by nerissa’s ring

Fridays Are Pre-Weekend Days

Think about it. Mondays everyone keeps their head down, is trying to get over the weekend, and is focused on themselves and getting the work done. And on Fridays, people are looking forward to the weekend. Isn’t that how you are? Then why would your audience be any different? Some people don’t even work a full day on Friday, instead keeping their eye on the clock and how much time they have left before they leave.

Photo by leemueller

It Depends on Your Audience

Of course if your audience is around on Fridays because your audience consists of pescatarians looking for fish recipes, then Friday would be the perfect time to publish. So keep in mind that you should take these recommendations with a huge grain of salt and test, test, test. Speaking of audiences, you might like this article, Audience: Use Their Language.

Photo by jurvetson

What’s Your Favorite Day to Publish?

If you’re a blogger, when do you like to publish your article? Have you done any testing? Let me know in the comments! Thank you.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: Blog, blogging, good days to publish