Importance of posting at the right time
As we know, in social networks, there are times where your posts can get plenty of views and times where they can get no attention at all. Posting at the right time can make a difference between getting your post trending with many upvotes and a good amount of money and making no money at all while passing unnoticed.
What established social network can help us out, given Steemit is such a recent project?
We must take into attention different social networks have different peak times. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc, all have different times when it’s best to post. For example, YouTube probably gets more views after work or weekends when people have time to check videos while LinkedIn, being more related to work, probably gets more action during work times.
So what social network do you think Steemit can be compared to? I’d say reddit. They’re both very similar platforms, with the subs on reddit being our tags on Steemit, also users can upvote content they like, etc. The way they work seems pretty similar except Steemit has more advantages for the user. This means reddit is probably the best platform where we can get this data from in order to get the most out of our posts.
What factors can help my post be a success or a failure?
There are some factors that can influence the attention your posts can get. I’d say it depends on the population you’re targeting and its routines.
I guess one of the most useful things we should know is where our traffic originates from. As you can see on Alexa http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/steemit.com most traffic originates from the US. This information is already very useful to us.
Ok, so far we have a platform similar to Reddit that is mostly used from people on the US. Let’s take it on from here.
Next, routines. When do people have time to check social networks, mainly reddit? Probably before starting to work, at lunch break and afternoon, once people go home from work or even during work time because they’re probably near a computer.
Different tags, different demographics
This would work, for what we could call, the average user, but we must also take demographics and different subs (or tags in this case) into consideration. At the moment we don’t have this issue since the community is still small compared to reddit and the range of topics is still relatively limited. However with time, as this grows, the kind of posts you make for a certain tag (or sub) that is frequented by a certain demographic should be taken more seriously. The range of topics/tags/subs will increase and we will see communities forming around those topics. These communities will have their own characteristics and will differ from each other. The example I found where these differences were easier to notice was the NoSleep sub on reddit.
Or what if you wanted to post something you wanted the Chinese to see? You could end up posting when most of them are still sleeping, which could cause your post to be buried by the time they wake up to check on Steemit. In this case, knowing your demographics could prevent your post from failing and help you achieve success!
Spotlight Competition
There’s also one other aspect that can have some influence and that is what’s happening at the time you post. Are there any other posts stealing the spotlights? Certain events can steal the attention and leave your post buried. Is it the final of the FIFA World Cup and your post is about golf? Is everyone posting under the DAO tag about the latest news and most important news and you’re posting under the same tag, photos about your bird named “Dao”? Maybe you should wait a few days until things cooldown before posting.
At the moment it might be too soon to have enough data on this and have accurate results, this is just a rough estimation based on the assumption that Steemit would have similar results to Reddit given their similarities as platforms. Also the fact it’s still a relatively small project gives everyone a chance to get the spotlight on a few posts. With time this will get harder as they will get buried faster and there will probably be a need for this to be properly analyzed, so feel free to step up, I’m sure a useful post like that would get plenty of upvotes. It would definitely get mine! Hope someone is up to the challenge!
Sources:
https://medium.com/@dleybzon/the-best-time-to-post-on-reddit-190762d4fc71#.hz7u8a5qb
http://marketersguidetoreddit.com/choosing-best-time-post-to-reddit/
http://www.deviantart.com/art/Watch-334803415