EP #012: How timing impacts post performance

Executive Summary

• Engagement rates vary across days of the week, debunking common beliefs like "Wednesdays are best."
• Some days witness universally lower engagement rates, regardless of content or client.
• Consistency in posting is crucial; regularity outweighs the choice of specific days.
• Recycling content can maximize its reach, emphasizing the importance of timing over content quality alone.

Let’s talk about the role that timing plays in your post’s performance. To start, I’ll share some post data from September. Next, I’ll share a specific example post that illustrates what I learned from that data. Lastly, I’ll wrap this up with specific recommendations.

#1 - Data about posting

I looked at 394 posts that Executive Presence created in the first part of September for our clients. Here’s what I saw:

This chart shows the average engagement rate (ie. someone likes/comments on a post) across all posts we published on that day.

The first thing that stood out to me: engagement rates are not consistent with the day of the week.

I’ve often heard people say, “Wednesdays are the best day to post” or “Don’t post on Fridays…you won’t do well.”

However, this limited data set does not show that. Take, for example, posts published on Saturdays. Saturday has both the data set’s lowest engagement rate (0.7% on 9/9) and its highest engagement rate (3.2% on 9/23). Clearly, the day of the week does not universally correlate to how a post performs.

The second thing that stood out to me: some days, posts just don’t do well. I have the benefit of being able to witness how posts perform across a large number of clients. As I observe our client performance each day, it becomes clear that some days, every client’s post does worse than usual.

Take, for example, the day after Labor Day. While Labor Day posts actually performed quite well, the day afterwards saw a lower engagement rate than is typical for a Tuesday.

Intuitively, this makes sense. People are back in the office, digging out of email, and less active on LinkedIn. However, I’ve seen this trend play out on more random days as well.

Some days, all posts do worse than usual.

#2 - An example of a post

Let’s look at a specific example: Shane Arthur showed me how he posted the same content (with minor variations) twice on LinkedIn.

The first time, the post did fine - but not great:

The second time, the post turned out to be Shane’s top performing post of the year:

The content didn’t change (much). His audience didn’t change (significantly). The primary difference was timing.

# 3 - My takeaways

So, what to make of the data and the example? I draw two conclusions from this.

First: consistency is vital.

Rather than gaming (eg. just post on Tuesdays), I believe that consistently posting is the most important rule of LinkedIn. If you’re consistently posting a few times a week on LinkedIn, it doesn’t matter as much if its “an on day” or “an off day” on LinkedIn. Performance evens out over time.

Second: recycling content is key.

If a post doesn’t do well, it may be that that topic or your writing is to blame. However, it might have nothing to do with that and everything to do with timing. By recycling content (1) that performs well, or (2) that is important to you, you get extra mileage out of a post that may not have been seen by your audience.

I’m curious: what stands out to you from this data set? What other information would help you better understand LinkedIn? I read every response to my newsletter, so feel free to let me know what’s on your mind.