Time is On Your Side - Part One

Social and online media is all about engagement; more often than not in realtime.  If you are posting on social media sites at times when your target audience are away doing something else then you have a problem.

More of a challenge are enterprises who persist in following their business hours for online activity instead of adopting those of their audience.

While it is true that you need to be where where your market is, it is equally true that you need to be there when that market is digitally engaged.  Logistical challenge aside, consideration of time zones is a must if your business is not locally focussed.

While you can schedule your blog postings to publish at specified hours and use third party platforms to spawn your company RSS to your twitter account on a sequential basis, but do you really know that this scattergun approach is reaching your audience?

This is the first of two articles on timing and what it could mean for you.

Let's Start With Web Sites

Google Analytics should be now be a 'given' for all web sites.  To accurately gauge the times when people visit your site you need to enhance the Analytics reports and fortunately (if you are using Firefox as your browser) there is a free way of doing so. Here's how:

1. Download the Greasemonkey addon for Firefox 
2. Now add the Google Analytics Report Enhancer script (you will be prompted to accept this)
3. Open your Google Analytics window and in the left hand column click on 'Search Engines'

Click on Search Engines

 

Click on Source

  

Click on Time

You can do the same for 'day of the week' . As a result you now have a good idea as to which days andwhat times people are making greatest use of your site.  Check out not only 'visits' but also 'new visits'. Adjust the period to get monthly and annual rates.

Related articles

• The New Google Analytics Available to Everyone (analytics.blogspot.com)