This past week, I realised that one of the few things we all have in common is that we experience the days of the week quite similarly. Most people can’t stand Mondays. Friday is so loved, it has an entire acronym (TGIF) dedicated to it, and all the fun things are reserved for Saturdays and Sundays.
But you’re all wrong ?. All those days are fine but none of them is truly the best day of the week.
The best day of the week is Thursday.
Why Thursday? Because by Thursday, you are past the mid-week mark and are on the slope into the weekend. It’s the sweet spot where your week turns around, holding all the promise of the weekend. It’s humble, understated excellence.
Like days of the week, social media engagement tactics are not created equal. So I thought it’ll be interesting to reimagine some of the most popular tactics for improving online engagement as days of the week, ranking them from best to “i’d rather not”:
1. Thursdays– Smart Scheduling: Scheduling your messages to send at the times when users are most active to increase your reach is so Thursday: it’s special because you can count on it to come clutch and it will stay out of your way when necessary.
Like Thursday, smart scheduling isn’t high maintenance but it’s no push over either. It does great work for you, improving your engagement rate, while not keeping any shine for itself.
It’s the engagement tactic that other engagement tactics parents want them to be.
2. Saturday– Influencer Marketing: Let’s be honest, influencer marketing is pretty great (hence it’s number 2 ranking as the Saturday of engagement tactics). But influencer marketing like Saturdays has a number of things working against it.
First of all, like Fridays, all bets are on influencer marketing. You want it to improve sales, increase your following, define the way your brand is perceived and build brand love all in itself. There’s waaaay too much pressure on this tactic and like Saturdays where we schedule everything– sporting events, house parties, sleepovers and lunch with loved ones, we end up setting it up to fail.
Also, in the same way that Saturdays spend a lot of its time accounting for Friday’s misdeeds, influencer marketing often has the dirty job of cleaning up the mistakes of other engagement tactics.
3. Sunday– Tapping into what’s topical: Despite what you might have learnt in school, Sunday is actually two different days. One part of Sunday (or Sunday the first iteration), is fun and so relaxed you don’t even need to get dressed, while the second part (once the clock strikes 6pm and you remember “Tomorrow is Monday!”) is totalitarian and terrifying.
Tapping into what’s topical or joining in on conversations that people are already having allows your brand to become more like a friend than a brand looking to sell. Being topical is fun and exciting until you realize it’s actually really tough and you can very quickly get stuck for ideas. The terrifying part is when in a bid to be topical, you read the room wrongly and cross the line from fun to offensive. Then suddenly, it happens; doubt creeps up on you and despite what you thought, this tactic isn’t fail safe, the sunday scaries are in.
4. Friday– Giveaways: Giveaways have the biggest ego on this list and so does Friday. Yes, social media giveaways can boost your awareness, drive engagement and increase your follower count. But the rewards of giveaways are often overrated, short lived and the entitlement that it creates in the hearts of your audience is hardly worth it.
Read all about why giveaways as an engagement tactic are problematic in this blogpost.
5. Tuesday– User generated content: Critics may claim that Tuesday’s only have a decent reputation because it’s easy to look good after Monday. But Tuesdays, like User generated content, explained as content created and published by the people (your audience) for the people, can hold their own in a crowd full of engagement tactics. Not only is this tactic an inexpensive way to generate high reach, but when backed by a solid idea as we’ve seen with the “Share a Coke” campaign and many others, can help build a more personal relationship with your audience.
6.Wednesday–Sharing content with your following: Creating and curating valuable content that serves to educate and inform your audience is a staple part of social media engagement. This “on-brand” content allows you to keep your page active and build social connections. But like Wednesdays that are the quintessential middle child of weekdays, it’s one of those tactics that you can describe as safe.
It’s right in the middle, neither exciting nor offensive.
7. Monday– Using scroll stopping imagery: Ask any social media manager and they’ll tell you that the first step in creating social engagement is to attract attention to your posts using visuals that stand out and connect with your audience.
Like Mondays, finding visuals that command attention is tough and sometimes dreadful. But we don’t give Mondays enough credit. Yes, it’s a nerve racking day, but when you really think about it, you’ve gotten years of practice at surviving Mondays. In the same vein, as you go along, you’ll quickly find that you can handle putting together a look and feel for your brand and you can count on audience engagement to tell you what’s working. It’s still pretty tedious, but by now, you know it’s nothing that a little caffeine and words of affirmation can’t solve.
P.S: Speaking of affirmation, my new love language is subscribing to the blog. Scroll down to subscribe. I promise, it’ll only take a few minutes ☺️
I would have typed “mama I made it” but then I noticed that my “I’m in my house come and beat me” didn’t make the cut ?.
You ruined my opportunity to brag to people that I am a part-time blogger. Consequently, please note that “Itz allova Jackie”
P.S I know this comment would not get approved but you will sha see it.??
Wow great, however, I think the reason why people would accept Friday as the best days is the fact that giveaways draw more traffic, whether overrated or not. People can do anything to get a freebie, well I mean most people.
Terv, I have always known you to be great at whatever you do, this is a great piece and I intend to take my learnings.
Thank you.
I agree, people love giveaways and they do the job. of bringing the crowd. The problem is what happens when the giveaway well runs dry and the brand has created a giveaway based engagement dependency. Thanks for reading Bunmi!