I Shouldn’t Publish This Today
Yes, it’s Friday again. The day that most of the new age white-collar information workers are using to prepare for the weekend after the hard week of meetings, telcos, vidcos, slides, concepts, documents and what have you.
A large number of these people are so busy with their work nowadays, that they don’t have enough time to think about their own image and their personal brand. A steady career path requires many people to have a credible personal brand as an influencer or at least as a specialist of some topic. And one of the popular (and perceivably easy) ways to do that is to publish related content online.
Publishing your professional content has been made easy. You can choose from various, mostly free platforms to create your place of expertise online. And then you just publish and promote your work on social media.
Great. So you have all the tools and means for your influencer success. But, then you start realising that you also need to create the content, and for that you need time and space to think.
But… there is no proper time for this. No time during the weekend, because of friends and family – and you need to relax as well. And during the week, there is really no space to start creating.
So, you make a compromise and squeeze time from your Friday. Because it may be slower day, especially in the afternoon, and fits nicely between the busy work and relaxing weekend.
Friday, the Worst Day to Post Your Great Content
But guess what? Everyone else made the same compromise. They have the same issues and problems, and it seems that too many of them came to the same conclusion. “I’ll boost my personal brand, create content and publish it on Friday afternoon!” Friday, and especially Friday afternoon is the worst time for publishing your great content. Or any content, for that matter.
I’ll boost my personal brand, create content and publish it on Friday afternoon!
Friday is the day when there are most personal blog posts, columns and other pieces of content created by thousands and thousands of people. There is so much information that most of it will just disappear and you won’t reach as many readers as you should. This is because of the huge amount of entries suddenly appearing, but also because people are busy creating their own content, ending the week at work and for many running off to their families to join the weekend.
So my advice to you. Do not publish any original content on Friday, especially during the afternoon. Your efforts are likely to be wasted, because only a minor part of your followers will see it and for those who see it, there’s many other great pieces of content to be reacted on and that will then go viral.
Do not publish any original content on Friday, especially during the afternoon.
If Friday is the only possible time for you to create, fine. Do it then. But do not press the publish button yet. Schedule your post to a much more suitable time. According to my experience, some good times to publish may be:
- Weekday early mornings. People will check their social median at some point before they start their work.
- Lunchtime. People tend to check briefly their social media before and after lunch. This content should be very brief.
- Mid-afternoon. Say 3pm to 4.30pm… many people check their mails and their social media before heading home.
- Late evening. After 9pm or 10pm, when the kids are asleep and people turn on their devices (used to be TV sets)
Good luck with experimenting with your publishing schedules.
Just to proof my point, I will publish this post on Friday afternoon. If you see low traction and engagement for this post, I was right.
branding content content marketing friday personal branding scheduling social media