The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn Groups and Yahoogroups for Maximum Exposure

Posted on November 26, 2012 by AvivaB — 4 Comments ↓

linkedin and yahoogroups best timing when to post

Timing is everything.

Well, maybe not everything. If you have perfect timing but a boring post, you won’t get very far. But even if you have a piece of earth-shaking, groundbreaking information and you phrase it well, if you post it when no one is looking, it will vanish into the bits and bytes of history.

A lot has been written about the best time to post to get your posts to be seen and spread. For data-backed, well-presented general information on timing, I recommend watching Dan Zarrella’s webinar The Science of Timing. (As a general rule I recommend Dan Zarrella’s webinars on whatever topic he’s talked about.)

But Dan’s information, researched as it might be, is very general. True as it might be that if you look at millions of tweets, the best time to send a tweet might come out to be 3PM – but that’s not always true of your audience.

How do you figure out the best time to post on LinkedIn groups, send tweets or email Yahoogroups – the specific ones that you belong to?

The Principle: Basically, you’d like your post to be among the first things that people see whenever they sign in to the network.

Let’s take it one by one:

LinkedIn Groups

When people join Linkedin groups, they get updates one of three possible ways:

1) They get emails every time someone posts or comments

2) They get a daily (or weekly) digest of all the new posts and comments

3) They go to the group when they have time and read whatever they want

If it’s 1) or 3), you’re going to have a hard time figuring out when all those group members go online and check their email or their LinkedIn account and that particular group.

BUT – if they get the daily digest, you CAN figure out how to be among the first entries they’ll see.

Here’s a typical daily digest and its structure:

Now take a look up at the top of that email for the time this email was sent. Gmail makes this easy, but I’m sure other providers also list it pretty clearly. Even if the email was sent a few days ago, and Gmail just lists the date (Oct 26), if you mouse over that date, it will show you the time it was sent.

This is the key.

Daily digest emails for any particular group are sent out at the same general time each day, whether that time is 9AM or 5PM. Posts are listed in order of most recent posting before the sending of the digest.

So before posting anything, check out what time the daily email has been sent for the past few days. (*Do note that this time can change over time, so if you haven’t checked in a while, check again.)

If the email goes out at around 11AM, as does the one above, the best time to post to your LinkedIn group is around 10:30AM. The more active the group, the closer to the time you’ll need to shoot (without going over – a la The Price is Right).

If you time it right, you should be the top discussion that people will see.

Notice, though, that comments to existing discussions come before new discussions. If you want your comment to be seen, the above is also the tactic to use. If you want to make sure your new post isn’t overshadowed by comments, that’s a little trickier. Depending on how active your group is, you can take a look before you post and get an idea of how many people have left recent comments – if it’s a particularly active day, you might want to wait until the next day to post.

Moving on…

Yahoogroups

Depending on what industry you’re in, Yahoogroups might be one of the valuable ways you communicate with your audience.

If it is, know that Yahoogroups basically work like LinkedIn Groups above – but in reverse. LinkedIn Groups daily digest emails put the most recent post first. Yahoogroups put the most recent post last. So if you want to get to the top of the daily digest email, the best time to post is as soon as possible after the previous daily digest email comes out.

Competition for this one was pretty stiff – my post went out right away, and yet I came in as the number 4 listing, because 1, 2 and 3 had gotten in about a minute or two before I did.

Twitter

This post has gotten a lot longer than I expected, so we’re going to save Twitter for next time, especially since it involves some skills like making lists in Twitter and displaying them as a stream in a Twitter client. Even if that sounds complicated, don’t worry – we’ll do it step by step, with plenty of pictures.

Make sure not to miss it – sign up to get blog updates by email (and you’ll also get a free copy of our interactive presentation on building a personal online marketing plan that will attract customers)!

Posted in Effective Marketing, LinkedIn

The Bee, the Window and the GPS – A Marketing Fable

Posted on November 1, 2012 by AvivaB — 3 Comments ↓

The following is based on a true story. The name of the bee has been concealed so as to protect innocent wildlife.

Once there was a bee who flew into a house through an open window. He buzzed around a bit and then decided he preferred the great outdoors. He turned around, spied the great outdoors and zoomed right toward it. Bzzzz… BUMP! The bee crashed into the other side of the sliding glass window – the closed side. That’s funny, he said to himself. I can see the sky and the trees out there. Let’s try again. Bzzz… BUMP! Can’t be!

Buzzes and bumps alternated as the bee tried and tried again to push himself through the glass. He tried a little higher; he tried a little lower. Eventually he collapsed, panting, on the window ledge from exhaustion. When he had recovered, he tried again. BUMP! It…has…to…be… BUMP!

Unbeknownst to him – about two feet to his right was the open part of the window.

Moral of the story: even if it looks like the way is clear, if you keep hitting a closed window – go get a GPS. If you can’t, at least get Google Maps so you can zoom out. If you can’t – at least move and try to go a different way!

Moral of the moral of the story:

How many times have you gone Bzzz…BUMP! when marketing your product or service?

Our poor battered bee was very convinced that the window was the way to go – after all, he could see the outdoors right in front of him! And even try after try couldn’t convince him that this wasn’t the way out. It looked so RIGHT.

Had he had the Bee-GPS, it would have told him that he needed to take another path. Had he even backed up five feet, instead of the two centimeters that he did before executing yet another bump – he might have realized that there was a difference between the closed-window path and the open-window path. But his field of reference was too narrow. He couldn’t see the other paths from where he was, and he didn’t back up to take a new, fresh look at his surroundings.

When we’ve poured time and effort into marketing in a specific way, and it’s not bearing fruit, do we back up? Do we take time to re-evaluate?

If my ads aren’t getting me as many customers as I want, what’s my response? Keep putting in ads in the hope that next week will be different? Put in more ads?

If my Facebook posts aren’t getting me clients, what do I do? Keep posting? Post more?

Do I do more of the same, convinced that eventually it HAS to work because it looks like this HAS to be the way to success – or do I back up and take another look? Am I limiting my marketing field of vision?

If it ain’t broke – don’t fix it.

If it “is broke” – don’t stick with it.

Back up, take another look, try another path. Don’t limit yourself to one technique or strategy of marketing in the hopes that it will eventually work. And if you can get yourself a GPS – go for it.

Wishing you a clear flight out an open window!

If YOU feel that you’re stuck buzzing and bumping against a closed window with your marketing, and you’re sure there must be an open one around close by, you’re invited to check out our practical, hands-on, internet marketing workshop starting in a week. Offered live over Skype, with a maximum of 5 participants, this workshop is geared to help you get unstuck in your marketing and find the strategies that will work for you to get more customers.

This isn’t about lots of information that you have to figure out what to do with – this is about personal guidance to help you to create a working marketing plan, with lots of feedback and review from me and the other participants. You’ll have two weeks in between sessions to apply your specific plan, and then plenty of time to share the results and get more feedback and guidance in the next session before we move on.

Ready to soar through the window? Send me an email at aviva [AT] speciphilia [DOT] com to reserve your place or discuss how this workshop can work for you.

Posted in Effective Marketing

No, You Don’t Need To Be On Facebook

Posted on October 24, 2012 by AvivaB — 2 Comments ↓

Heresy! the web marketers shout.

At least, that’s what it seems the vast majority of the web marketers would say.

Here are the search results for the phrase “you need to be on Facebook”:

And for “you must be on Facebook”:

Now, did I check all 9,574,000 results to make sure they’re all from web marketers saying you need to be on Facebook if you want your business to succeed? No.

Are some of these results from irrelevant sources explaining how “you must be on Facebook” if you want to use Facebook features to message your friends? Yes.

But that still leaves a lot of results claiming that if you’re not on Facebook, you’re doomed.

Are you, really?

I think not.

Back in the days before internet, lots of people walked through Times Square every day (still do, in fact, although now they’re probably looking at their iPhones, so this analogy isn’t going to hold). Would you have listened to a marketer who said, “You NEED to be in Times Square marketing your business”?

There are lots of people there. True.

But think about these questions:

Is your target audience there?
Are they there more than in other areas/mediums?
Do you know what to say to reach them there?

If the answer to any of those questions is “no” or “I don’t know” – you don’t need to be on Facebook (or any other medium that web marketers say the “you need to be on” declaration with.

At least not right now.

Facebook is a tool. If it will serve you better than any other tool, use it. If you know how to use it effectively to do the job, use it. But if really a screwdriver might work better than the power drill, and you know exactly what to do with the screwdriver to get the job done – so no matter how popular and cool-looking the power drill is – you’re going to be wasting your time and energy.

Be efficient. Use what has the best chance of working for YOU. And if you think something might have a chance of working, but you don’t know how to use it yet, go get trained in how to use it to construct exactly what YOU need – before you jump in.

Do you need to consider being on Facebook? Wise idea.

But if you’ve considered it and the answer is “no,” don’t fall prey to pressure from those thousands of internet marketers with millions of results in Google who tell you that “you need to be on Facebook.”

Posted in Effective Marketing

Of Google Analytics and Gastroenterologists

Posted on August 16, 2012 by AvivaB — No Comments ↓

I had a chat with a potential client recently who was frustrated that his site wasn’t producing leads for his business. Of course he wanted me to solve the problem and turn his site into a mean, lead, lead-producing machine.

The first thing I recommended doing, it sounded as though his partner wasn’t too happy about.

What did I recommend? Put Google Analytics on the site (it wasn’t) and wait 2-4 weeks so that we could get data on:

how many people are coming to the site
how they’re getting there
what they’re doing

His partner’s reaction was something along the lines of: “We don’t want to wait that long. We want to improve the site now.”

It sounded like they were going to put the Analytics on anyway, so I didn’t push the matter, but reflecting on it afterwards, I thought: would they say the same thing if I were a doctor?

You come to a gastroenterologist with a complaint about your stomach. You’ve been having awful cramps every few days.

The doctor listens, asks a few questions, then says: “I have a few different ideas as to what it could be. We need to do some blood work, which will take up to three weeks to come back, and depending on how that comes out, we may need to run some other tests before we start on any kind of treatment or diet changes.”

What is your response? Is it: “No! I can’t wait that long! Put me on a course of treatment now!”

Or is it: “Makes sense. It’s very frustrating that I have to wait while I’m suffering from these cramps, but I’d rather have the best shot at an accurate treatment. Otherwise I might spend weeks on a treatment – only to find out that wasn’t the problem.”

To make accurate decisions for the health of your website and your marketing – you need to know the root cause, not only the symptoms.

Take the time to get to the root of the problem. Why isn’t your website producing leads?

Is it because you have very little traffic getting to your site?
Or because you have lots of traffic but it’s not relevant (i.e. they’re not looking for what you’re offering)?
Or do you have lots of relevant traffic but your website is not communicating well what you can do for them?

Figure it out. Do the blood workup. Go for the tests. Then you have a shot at an effective treatment.

If not, you may spend time, money and emotional energy putting your website on a gluten-free diet for months when in fact it’s lactose intolerant.

Posted in Effective Marketing

It’s 10 o’Clock – Do You Know Where Your Audience Is?

Posted on July 18, 2012 by AvivaB — No Comments ↓

You know. You know exactly who would be interested in your new product that enables you to lose 10 pounds a week while eating only ice cream and chocolate. You can describe their frustrations and their deep desires better than they can. You’ve got their persona down to a T. You’re just stymied as to…

Where are they all hanging out online?

If this is what’s holding you back from being able to bring the greatest weight loss solution ever (or whatever solution your product or service provides) to those who need it, let’s take a look at some resources that might help:

DoubleClick Ad Planner

“But I don’t want to advertise!” you say. Don’t worry – while this tool was intended to help advertisers know which sites to request for their Google Adsense ads, it ended up being a wealth of information about the demographics of those sites. So if you can find a different way to get on the site (preferably more appealing than an Adsense ad) – you’ve got exposure to your target audience.

Let’s see how it works:

Go to https://www.google.com/adplanner/. (You may be asked to sign in with a Google account and agree to a long list of terms of service. Just do it – it’s annoying, but no lightning should strike.)

The default tab you’ll see is “Search by site”, and an evaluation of Wikipedia’s audience. Click on the “Search for placements” tab right next to it. You’ll see something like this:

As you can see, in the “Audience” section I clicked on language and chose “English”, then clicked on “Interests” and chose “Fitness” and “Candy & Sweets” (no direct “Weight Loss” interest, unfortunately).

Then in the “Content” section I chose the topics “Obesity,” “Candy & Sweets” and “Baked Goods.”

That seems to describe the audience I’m looking for with my fantastic weight loss product, right?

You can see the beginning of the list of sites the Ad Planner came up with for me.

Some may be more helpful, some may be less helpful – but they’re a good start in your investigation.

Let’s go on to another Google tool (can’t get away from them…) – Google Search itself.

Google Discussion Search

While most of us use Google as a search engine, usually we stick to the default search. But in the left sidebar there are ways of filtering your search to show very specific types of results or sites – one of which can be very helpful in finding the places where your audience gathers.

A general search for “weight loss chocolate” will return:

Then click on “Discussions.”

Now you get:

Wow – that’s a lot of discussions, in different forums. And there are pages and pages of results for this! These seem to be places where this topic comes up – especially if there are multiple threads showing for a particular forum.

Don’t use this to then jump in and spam each of these discussion threads with an ad for your product. Find the places where the audience seems most interested and ripe for this topic (hint: are a number of members/threads talking about different weight loss products and programs they’ve purchased?) – and start participating in other threads. After a little while – you can start a thread on this topic – or contribute to one.

Do it smart, and you’ll do well.

One more resource – let’s go and search for Facebook Groups.

Facebook Group Search

I happen to find Facebook Search rather unintuitive – since whenever you type in your search phrase and press enter, the resulting page is not a list of your search results, but whatever was the first entry in the little drop-down menu that showed while you were searching.

Not to fear – if you type and then click the little magnifying glass to the right (Don’t Press Enter!) – then you will get to an actual search results page.

Did you know there were that many couples of Mr. and Mrs. Loss who named their child “Weight”? Hmmm… :)

But if you’re not interested in friending Mr. or Ms. Weight Loss – you can try clicking on the “Groups” filter on the left sidebar.

That’s more like it. And this is just a handful of the groups out there. Why there are so many groups and what the difference is, I don’t know. But you can check it out to see which is the most likely to have the audience ripe to hear about and buy your weight loss product.

And if you don’t have a weight loss product – go ahead and try one of these for your target audience.

Have any other favorite tools for finding where your audience is online? Share with us in the comments below!

Posted in Finding Your Audience