eMarketer: Brand blogs get the highest ROI from weekend posts

Blogs post the most on weekdays, but shares are highest on Saturdays and Sundays.
Brands’ blogs post most often when clients are working, which may affect their purpose.

According to an April 2014 TrackMaven study, bloggers are most likely to publish their content on weekdays, with 87% of weekly blog content pushed out Monday through Friday.

But for blog readers—estimated by eMarketer to reach 76.1 million in the U.S. this year, or 23.9% of the population—are they also sharing content on social networks during this time? Based on research from TrackMaven, the opposite is true. While only 13.1% of blog posts are published on Saturday or Sunday, they account for 32.6% of all social shares for the entire week. Broken down by day, content published on Saturday and Sunday has a higher percentage of social shares than any weekday, suggesting that marketers can get a bigger payoff if they publish blog posts on the weekend when readers have more time to read and share.

• When readers share via social media, they’re likely to do so on Facebook. TrackMaven found that Facebook shares and likes account for the majority of social sharing of blog posts. Twitter is also popular, accounting for 38.6% of the total, while Pinterest and LinkedIn are barely visible.
  Businesses don’t have to wait for readers to share their content on social networks — they can do it themselves. An August 2013 survey conducted by Skyword for Unisphere Research found that the majority of marketing professionals in North America already share blog posts on their social pages, and 44% said they would like to increase this behavior.