I’m sorry if I missed this, but is this data looked at by device?

this is combined data for mobile and desktop

(Dan — It’s also really illuminating when you split it out by platform, but that’s a different topic for a different day….)

Thanks, Tovah and Josh!

Chris White with a beard. Worth the price of admission.

I know a lot of editors who post 12-6 a.m. to manipulate when stories show up in their automated a.m. newsletter.

Agreed! I'm totally thrown

typically stories posted overnight have similar read patterns to stories posted at 6 or 7 a.m.

How do you weigh posting time against promotion time? For instance, a story posted at 8 p.m. and promoted at 7 a.m. the next day.

It depends on how you treat the content - if it is treated as "new" content in the morning, that makes the difference - in the morning newsletter, promoted on home page. The trends I've seen show that only sites that strategize evening posts for a morning wakeup (like Cincinnati), get the morning traffic on those stories. Often stories posted at 8 p.m. are not promoted the next morning, from the data I've seen.

Next-day rebounds....we're talking re-running on FB? Re-running in newsletters, maybe re-pushing?

Do you attribute that shorter lifespan for an evening-posted story to being pushed off the highest-profile places on a homepage the next morning, or the social media post competing with more content?

Next-day rebounds is a real mix - often the stories have an organic social life or are featured in the newsletter the next day. Your regional strategist would be able to take a closer look at trends for your site.

Will this deck be available after the meeting?

yes, Michael

Mike — Yep. A recording and the deck. As soon as the cloud releases the link, we’ll reply-all to this meeting and send it out.

Has there been any change in our new work-from-home world? Anecdotally we've seen traffic growing a little later in the morning — fewer people up at 6 a.m. for the pre-commute news scroll?

Dan - homepage does play a part in this. Often there are newer stories that compete. If a story is treated as "overnight" and "fresh" for the morning by producers, that can make a difference. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks!

This is fantastic. Assuming this applies to columns and columnists as well?

Rachel - there has been a change, but those reader habits are starting to transition back to normal. Fewer people in the morning, fewer peaks throughout the day. March was extreme. June less so.

Ginger - Chris can talk more to columnists - some columnists have set times of day where they have built readership habits, so I can't give a general answer to this.

a big element of this is breaking/competitive - having urgency can make or break a story

This is very, very good, Chris. We've done similar (not nearly as detailed!) analysis in Sports Media Group and saw some similar trends. We've adjusted publishing times for non-competitive, non-breaking news and have seen very good results.

Excellent work, Chris!

We’ve seen low return from enterprise pieces on Sundays, when they usually run in print. Is it better to hold these a day and publish on Facebook for the first time early Monday?

Also an additional question, what is thought about posting the same story on Facebook multiple times. I haven’t had good return but I don’t know if there is something deeper into with subscriptions.

Yes! More than 2/3 of the time, the first post had the most on-Facebook interactions (likes, reactions, comments and shares)

We work on embargoing several stories for the morning. But with some special projects, where perhaps we feel parents are the key audience, we have developed publishing plan of 6:45p publish, 7p FB post (for the evening audience on FB), in the 6a Daily Briefing and also then pinned on the homefront prominently in the next morning. Wondering how others have developed audience plans on other such projects with specific audience in mind with this info in mind, or if this is something we need to revisit.

Digital budgets have helped a lot

I showed the reporters the graphs you folks share and how much audience they are missing with the 5 p.m. dump and run

^Also re: Facebook analysis, posting a URL again in the chatter of a photo or video post was counted as a repost and included in the analysis (so we're not just talking about multiple link posts for the same URL)

I've noticed our local newsletters drive a chunk of direct traffic for local politics/reopening strategies per city.

Yay Jen! :)

We've had a lot of staff changeover in the last year so with each new hire I made it a point to make sure they know to post rather than wait. We also got in the habit of checking our numbers daily. For the enterprise packages or features, we schedule for the next day in the morning when our readership is a lot higher than say 7 p.m. at night.

Nothing convinces reporters like evidence of success :)

And personal traffic goals. That made a bunch of our folks sit up and listen.

Is there a substantial difference in rebound trends between smaller sites and larger? One would think that volume of content may change this a decent bit?

Hi Caitlyn, the rebound analysis was only done on our larger legacy Gannett sites, so I can't say for certain. It may vary.

Have we seen a correlation between the more successful posting and increased subscription purchases?

On the publish time versus promotion times, I know many newsrooms do publish for inclusion in a.m. newsletters. But these stories should be the exception, not the rule. Digging into data on when most things are publishing is really illuminating. I've also found success in checking the data and checking it often. What was true the first half of the year may change in the latter half. Find out your peak days, back up enterprise deadlines to allow for publishing then.

We have a lot of traffic in the evening hours, how do we optimize that while not losing FB reach

typically we see stories posted in the morning continuing to do well in the evening, through organic sharing and from our evening social posts

I think it

Wouldn't holding off on publishing stories hamper potential Google traffic?

only on breaking news stories if it's more of an evergreen/feature it shouldn't hurt Google

In Mississippi we have also learned that story topics are also important to consider when deciding posting time. We are still working to have good stories to post early in the week vs posting the best stories on Thursday and Friday… which of course indicates a planning problem.

yes - planning for the early week is very important

PLANNING!

this isn’t really on this particular topic but I am going to ask — is it still true that FB likes 30 to 45 minutes between posts?

+1 on planning!

GREAT INFO. Thanks!

Great work all! Awesome info.

Ditto!

This is fantastic –– thanks, all!

Great job. Thank you

Thanks Chris and Tovah!

thank you! so helpful!