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Study Shows: Blog Posts Published on Weekends Get More Social Shares

Posted By Guest Blogger 24th of September 2015 Blog Promotion 0 Comments

This is a guest post from Lior Levin.

You work hard to create relevant, engaging content for your blog and you want to be sure that it has as many eyeballs on it as possible. Sometimes, getting the job done can be discouraging and leave you feeling like you are completely reliant on your audience to do the job by engaging with your post on social media.

But the successful brands who keep blowing up Facebook with huge numbers of shares aren’t doing so by chance. There are strategies and tips that can guide you on when to post to your blog, how to best engage social media and how to create a killer title that will have your post making the rounds on every social media channel.

Weekend is The King

If you run a blog featuring professional content, it seems like a no-brainer to publish your content during business hours, on weekdays. Yet a study done by TrackMaven last year of over 4,500 blogs showed that blogs that chose to publish content on the weekend received the most shares on various social media channels. In fact, even though only 13% of blogs were published on the weekend, they saw 18% of the total social shares gathered in the study.

WEEKEND

Aim For Leisure Hours

As it turns out, there is negative correlation between when a blog is posted and when readers have time to properly digest it. Readers may see your new post pop up in their inbox or newsfeed at 10am, and as engaging as your title is, they may not be able to get to it in the middle of their busy workday. This means that regardless of your content (whether it’s professional, educational, financial etc) you need to time your posts to go live during your reader’s leisure hours if you want to maximize engagement and shares.

weekend 2

A Bold, Brilliant Title With a Question Mark

Speaking of maximizing engagement, an interest-catching title is a must to increase your clicks and shares. There are a few strategies that can guide you as you craft titles that are sure to turn views into clicks and clicks into shares. First off, make sure your title is highly informative and speaks to the specifics of what readers are going to find in your post. Secondly, use strong, vivid words and phrases that grab a reader’s attention such as brilliant, love, hate and “you won’t believe.”

Don’t be afraid to try alluring alliterations as well, readers rarely ignore such lively language. Third, consider using question marks in your post-title or perhaps consider phrasing your title in the form of a question altogether. Studies show that posts which contain one or more question marks receive social shares 46% of the time.

weekend 3

Highlight Value

It’s a loud internet, so you need to have posts that speak to the real value that your blog and brand have to offer. You don’t want to get a reputation for deceiving readers and followers with hype and promises that your blog post won’t deliver. Consider illustrating the value found in your post by using brackets at the end of your title such as: Major Marketing Mistakes [Free Printable] or What Do Your Readers Need From You [An e-book that will change your brand-strategy].

Knowledge is, of course, power and the more you use your metrics and data, the more you understand how and when to reach your reader.

Lior Levin is a consultant to an rss feed api service and also works for a company called ily who invented a new phone for kids.

About Guest Blogger
This post was written by a guest contributor. Please see their details in the post above.
Comments
  1. Neat study Lior ;) It relates to my current day blogging question: weekend posts or no weekend posts? I’ve been toying around with this idea because I used to do weekend postings, and got some nice pop from them. But then I stopped posting on weekends because I felt most folks read and share posts during the week. This stat shows otherwise.

    Sometimes I out think myself. Instead of thinking like a reader I think like a blogger, but many of my readers are either newbie bloggers or don’t blog at all, and both of these folks usually don’t think like full time income earning, pro bloggers. Sometimes people do most of their surfing on their weekends; being at home, chilling with the fam and spending more time online means more time for reading blogs.

    Thanks for nudging me in the right direction Lior. I feel like more folks are setting aside weekend time to read and share posts on social media, and this means that it may just be OK to do weekend posting. I’ll publish 1 of my extra posts this Saturday or Sunday and will stop by with the results ;)

    Ryan

  2. Great post Lior,
    I use to think that posts that are published on weekends tends to get less engagements because most people always choose to relax during weekends and some will not even want to look at the internet at all.

    But it seems that mindset has been shifted by this post. But, i think the main thing is to figure out when your own audience prefers being online and if you can share your post with them at that exact time then, expect nothing else than success.

  3. Hey guys,

    This is a pretty awesome case study! I am a huge believer of publishing on weekdays and early in the morning. The whole concept goes around with me. I wake up and check my emails. During breakfast, I will take a quick read before work.

    The above works pretty okay for me but the weekend thingy is really something new! Definitely trying this out over this weekend and can’t wait to see the results after 4-5 times testing.

    Appreciate the share!
    Reginald

  4. Thats really interesting, I thought best time would be the beginning of the week…

  5. you are right lior. but you have to keep on writing and continue your good work.
    thanks for article,

  6. Yes I have also noticed it in my blog. If I publish in weekend or holiday it gets more views :)

  7. Interesting post Lior. I’ve read so much about when to send emails/best times for posting on social media etc. I have to admit I hadn’t given much thought about when to publish my posts. I think I will give this a try over the next few weeks to see whether engagement goes up or not.

    Presumably, following on from this, the suggestion is that it’s best to share new posts via your email list/social media at the weekend too – or is that a stupid question?

    Thanks for this – thought provoking stuff and something I’m definitely going to look into.

  8. Thank you so much for sharing this, I have only read the social media timings on Neil Patel’s blog and buffer app’s blog and now with this one it is clearer now. Thank you so much for sharing.

  9. Interesting, but not really shocking because it makes sense that more people are home on the weekends and hanging out on social media.

    What is surprising is that people use social media instead of starting their own blogs and website, below is linked to a recent article about how I did it and built that blog into a full-time income stream.

    http://www.thesurvivalistblog.net/how-to-start-a-wordpress-blog/

  10. Great post! It confirmed what I’ve discovered last year when I experimented a lot with posting schedule. It appeared that posts published around 8pm were the most shared, with the most pins. Also, Sundays – the best days for social media and blogging. The only problem with Sundays is to organise myself and actually post something decent instead of just going to the beach. lol

  11. Hm. I’m surprised by this. Just a year or two ago, the opposite was true. Most bloggers I knew stopped posting on weekends because traffic was always way down, compared to weekdays.

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