Knowing the Right Time for Lead Generation Activities
This morning I attended a fantastic Webinar hosted by Hubspot and Dan Zarella (@DanZarella) on the “Science of Timing.” I highly recommend asking Hubspot and/or Dan for a copy of the Webinar because there was far more to it than I can ever summarize here.
Dan talked about both frequency and the timing of various lead generation and marketing activities, including Twitter updates, Facebook page updates, and Email campaigns (whether unsolicited or via Autoresponder).
I’ll do my best to summarize what I considered the key points here.
Timing Twitter Updates
Dan follows well over 1,000 people (how he does it is beyond my mere mortal mind). Hubspot has well over 100,000 active followers. Now, imagine if either or both Dan and Hubspot re-Tweeted your update that linked back to an article on your blog?
Not only would that help with your search engine rankings, it could get you quite a few new visitors to your website if the article is worthy of re-Tweeting.
Here were some of Dan’s recommendations:
- Post a link to your new blog post before 6am Eastern. Just mention the new post with a teaser.
- Then, pull a quote from the article and Tweet that a couple of hours later.
- Do the same one or two more times throughout the day.
Dan said that the difference in action between 3-5 Twitter posts per day and 20 is negligible in terms of a negative reaction, but can produce a positive reaction. His recommendation: post as often as you like, as long as they’re unique. There’s no harm in 20 Twitter updates per day.
Timing Facebook Updates
Facebook fans are more sensitive to updates because, unlike the thousands of Twitter updates they see daily, their Facebook stream can become oversaturated with your updates quickly if you’re doing more than a couple per day.
A couple of things Dan suggested include:
- Don’t be afraid to engage with B2B prospects on Facebook on weekends. Many companies block Facebook during the week, so people get caught up on weekends. Men tend to spend more time after hours on Facebook than women (if I got this right…).
- Keep your status updates to a minimum – a couple a day at most is adequate.
- If you post your articles throughout the week, then post a summary on the weekend to your Facebook fans. Just list the article titles and teasers.
Timing Email Broadcasts
Some of Dan’s statistics on Email were quite interesting:
- There’s actually a benefit to sending two or three emails per week instead of only one, or one per month. You’ll typically get more active participation, and those who don’t like what you say or aren’t interested will simply opt out.
- The OPEN and CLICK-THROUGH rates are both higher on weekends, probably because there’s less competition and your readers have more available time.
- On the other hand, the “mark as spam” rate also increases on weekends (time availability), so you have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages.
- The best times, other than weekends, are Monday and Friday mornings before 6AM Eastern. People tend to read emails first thing in the morning, or not at all.
Blog Post Frequency
One more important factor Dan mentioned was that the amount of traffic a blog gets is directly related to how often new blog posts are made. Those who post multiple times per day will see an exponential rise in traffic to the site.
The Point
Blog often, and let people know that you’re blogging via frequent Twitter updates, Facebook updates, LinkedIn updates, and frequent emails to your list!
Written by Sid Smith Written by Sid Smith
