media seo analytics | push2digital

It's a good question, "What is the best day to publish content?"

It depends on your content, target audience and approach ... basically your digital strategy [if you don't have one, check out this post on building a web measurement model].

WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?

Let's assume you're a media site that generates 20% to 30% of your traffic from search and another 10% to 20% from social. That's a pretty good chunk of your audience acquisition that depends on others (ie. Google, Facebook, Twitter etc.)

So what if you could obtain greater exposure by analyzing what days generate the most referrals? Good start huh, because if you average 50 FB referrals on Mon., 62 on Tue., 64 on Wed., 48 on Thu., 52 on Fri, 22 on Sat. and 18 on Sun. -- that tells you something right?

It does, but not entirely.

To get a clear picture, you have to factor in how many pieces of content you're pushing out on those days. If you're publishing 95 stories on weekdays and 32 stories on weekends, that's significant. Therefore you want to know the referrals-per-story.

WHERE’S THE OPPORTUNITY?

Dan Zarella published a study on the ideal time to submit blog posts that states the ideal Twitter retweet sweet spot is Friday @ 4p ET.  He also claims that Facebook sharing is highest @ 9a ET and spikes significantly on Saturday.

This confirms data I've seen that stories published on Saturday generate approximately 60% more Facebook and Google referrals per story than those published during the week. Sunday stories show @ 25% more Facebook and 40% more Google referrals per story. The problem is that these spikes are often masked by the total number of referrals which are typically lower on the weekends.

HOW TO MEASURE REFERRALS PER STORY?

Your results may vary, so you should review your own metrics and build this formula. The trick is to compile total number of stories published for the year and break them down by day. In Excel you can apply a formula =WEEKDAY(A1) [A1 is your first date] to convert that date to a simple day of the week. Then you can apply a filter by clicking the header of the Day of the Week column you just created, click Data Tab and Filter button. That will allow to group your yearly data by all the Mondays, Tuesdays, etc. If that sounds confusing, read this post on using Excel's WEEKDAY function.

Once you have the year's stories published and referrals broken down by day of the week, you can build your weekday referral rate. Repeat for each day, and repeat for each source (Google, Twitter, Facebook or any other key referral source.)

(Monday Facebook Referrals / Monday Stories Published = [Monday Facebook referrals per story])

OPPORTUNITY FOR ACTION

The takeaway here is not, "don't publish on weekdays", but that there is a greater opportunity to be shared and ranked on the weekends, Saturday in particular. And content published that is geared towards a Facebook morning audience or Google topics could do significantly better during this time frame. It’s not a simple task, but it’s not rocket science either and worth the time, especially if you can generate more audience with no real extra work – just a smarter choice of publish times and content topics.

What do I do with my video? For media properties, it's a much-debated question that's central to their web strategy.

Should I post my best stuff to YouTube where it will undoubtedly outrank my original version, be difficult to monetize and come wrapped in Google's ads?

Or, should I hoard my video (I'm picturing Golum from Lord of the Rings caressing his "precious" moving pictures) and ignore the thousands of potential visitors that could be exposed to my site, brand and content?

Kate Matsudaira, from SEOmoz, posted one of the best primer's I've seen for getting your head wrapped around your video strategy. But more importantly, she struck upon a strategy "sweet spot" for media groups that could offer the best of both worlds with a little thoughtful planning.

The "Mini YouTubeVideo" strategy plays well to media properties' strengths in that they can offer multiple lures back to the originating site if presented properly -- including better quality video, extended video, related video, related text content and archives of each of the above. It also avoids the SEO pitfall of duplicate content. Granted it would require some change, separate production of video snippets for sharing sites, but could provide a measurable and effective way to tap into these huge audiences for video without giving away the farm.

If you don't like change or don't feel you need to ... see my favorite parable, "I'm not changing, you change."  If you're open to new solutions to new problems, check out KateMats below. 

"These sites can provide a powerful marketing channel to your site, brand and content. However, if your ultimate goal is conversions you need to have clear plan on how to get traffic and viewership on that track (and that for most of us, means back on your website).  This means that you need to think carefully about a strategy that makes sense ... of course you don't have to pick one or the other, you can use a hybrid strategy."

Here is an example of a Yoga web site trying to sell their DVDs - in this case they are trying to build up their YouTube brand (see the call to action encouraging users to subscribe), but are also trying to drive traffic to their site by enticing you with the first part of a DVD series.  =

Creating an Online Video Strategy | SEOmoz.org