How to Publish on Social Media at the Perfect Time

Smart practices used by the most prominent brands

Originally written in Hebrew. The English version was originally published on Medium's Better Marketing

Elections are now being held in Israel for the third time within one year. Even when the third time isn’t quite the charm, it’s natural for everyone to want their content to be “elected” in terms of views and organic reach. Understandably, they believe the message will have a maximum impact if they respond to events in real-time. However, to get people’s attention, it’s not enough to write something powerful. You need to know the territory and conquer it creatively, to collaborate, and show devotion to the brand’s values. How? Here’s a story.

Back in 2018, the price of a 30-second Superbowl commercial was five million dollars. But in 2013, what got viewers’ attention was not a commercial.

It was an image posted to Oreo’s Twitter account, during a power out between the games. It presented a cookie on a dark background, and the caption said: “You can still dunk in the dark.” The tweet was produced with almost no budget by the digital agency i360 and aired within minutes. 15kKretweets and seven thousand “favorites” later, it was clear what brand “won the match” for viewers’ attention that year.

Now, take Oreo’s dazzling success and think about what could have happened if the brand would have added a link to a post on its home website. For example, “how to secretly eat cookies in the dark without leaving crumbs everywhere,” or “five games to play with Oreo during a power out”. Indeed, it’s hard to compare a tweet, which only takes a few minutes to produce, to creating full-length pieces, all in a newsdesk schedule. But what if such content was already on the website, and you could pull it from the archive?

That’s precisely what they did at the NYC Met, in response to Kim Kardashian’s famous booty picture. Museum staff noticed a surprising resemblance between Kardashian’s post and a current exhibit at the museum, and the result — which produced almost five thousand retweets — is this:

So, when is it right for the brand to break the internet in real-time (what we call Real-Time Marketing or RTM)? The answer depends on the creativity, the speed, and the efficiency of the team behind the content. But, before describing more case studies of simultaneous content and social media collaborations, let’s emphasize that not every piece published in real-time must be written in real-time.

Brands always have the option of creating content based on occasions (a method known as occasion-based marketing, or OBM), based on holidays, special days, and anything that relates to brand values and enables amplifying them with relevant content. Unlike real-time marketing, which generally responds to unexpected events, here, it’s customary to create the content in advance. That’s why you can and should take creativity to the next level with links to further reading to enhance the experience. See, for instance, the piece chosen by mattress brand Casper for publishing in celebration of Valentine’s Day:

Another OBM practice used frequently is producing content to promote sponsorships. Most brands sponsor the same events, exhibitions, and games each year. That creates an “anchor” in their annual Gantt that enables them to resurface relevant content towards, during, and after the event takes place. Mastercard, a company that sponsors many personas and events, used last year’s baseball world series to promote collaboration with “Stand Up To Cancer,” which ended up in contribution of four million dollars to fighting cancer.

On the other hand, when it comes to real-time marketing, the most common practice is active listening to voices roaming social media. These voices brought us the ice bucket challenge and other viral challenges, which brands adopt gladfully to create witty, creative posts — ones that emphasize how connected the brand is to its community. Of course, not every challenge is worth being adopted by brands, since some of those have proven to be detrimental or dangerous.

Some of the voices relate to events rather than people. Non-profit organizations and GMOs regularly follow stories on the media so that they can share or comment on them, thus raising awareness for specific issues. They usually do this when their audience is most engaged, like when there’s a related holiday or a news event. I F***ing Love Science and similar Facebook pages regularly share events on the media that regard science while linking to articles — new ones, old ones, or aggregated from other websites. This, for instance, was the news article they published ahead of Valentine’s Day (The Independent and other sites originally published the story a few days before that):

Brands should also listen to critical voices on social media, especially if these voices justifiably criticize them for a media crisis. In this case, it’s not only essential to adopt a brand voice that responds in an unformal, sensible way — but to show efforts that the company acknowledges the crisis and works to improve customer service.

In 2011, the American restaurant company Taco Bell had to respond to a lawsuit claiming its recipes were practically “vegan” because they “only” contained 36 percent beef. Most networks would react to this by a formal comment, but Taco Bell chose to refer to it by a series of posts on social media. Those included a filmed open letter by the CEO, infographics, and even a dedicated magazine on the home website, which explained the ingredients of each dish in detail (later to be replaced with a general blog). The content created by Taco Bell gave its consumers valuable information, and its messages still echo. Until today, Taco Bell insists its beef courses contain at least 88 percent meat, which makes them far from vegan.

What all these success stories have in common is the fantastic coordination between the social media team to the content professionals. The information delivered to readers served both the timing and the scenario. It also sometimes corresponded with a trend or a positive/negative buzz around the brand.

As a result, the branded content served the brand as well as the consumers. It even gained a new value thanks to the context in which it resurfaced on social media, which serves the brand’s content strategy even outside of the original distribution channels. You can tell that by the gap between the Twitter account of an elitist museum to Kim Kardashian’s Instagram profile.