| If you publish
corporate material on an intranet presumably you want
staff to read it. Yet how many communicators really
think about when is the right time to publish for maximum
impact? Steve Nichols takes a closer look.
The easy answer is to publish your content when you
have something to say. But this presupposes that your
audience is the same, whatever the time of day, or day
of the week. This is just not so. The type of content
management system (CMS) in use on most intranets just
exacerbates the problem.
Most CMS work on a scrolling, "first in, first
out" basis, with new news being given priority.
Once three or four stories have been published, any
previous content is pushed either off the screen or
appears "below the fold", needing a scroll
to see it. This means that for maximum readability an
important news story must be left on its own for a period
of a few hours at the top of the tree.
Once three or four more stories have been published
on top it effectively becomes invisible. But content
management aside, is there a right time to publish?
Anyone working in an office will know that Mondays and
Fridays are usually the favourite days for holidays
or ‘sickies’. The extended weekend, whether
approved or not, is fact of life within most organisations.
The truth is that if you publish important news material
on either of these days a large percentage of your readers
may never see it.
Core days tend to be Tuesday through Thursday, although
you can never guarantee any given day will give you
maximum exposure. If any of these butts up against a
public holiday then, again, you may miss staff. So given
that midweek is best, what about timing? This is another
difficult question, and will depend upon your workforce
and the nature of their work. Before 9am is probably
a no-no, and the period between noon and 2pm will catch
many at lunch. Leave it until after 3.30pm and the chances
are that some will be heading home. So core periods
of between about 10am until noon and 2pm -3pm seem favourite.
But my own experience shows that mornings are usually
the busiest as workers attend to mail, e-mail and generally
clear the decks. This is not a great time for checking
intranet news feeds, unless the stories are short and
to the point.
My experience with an e-zine tends to bear these findings
out. I am able to monitor the response to the e-zine
in minute detail and in real-time too. As soon as it
is published I can see how many people are reading it
and what they are clicking on. The difference in readership
between editions that have been published during mid
morning and mid afternoon has often been dramatic.
The consensus seems to be that about 2.45pm on a Wednesday
afternoon is the sweet spot. Even so, I can guarantee
that I will receive "out of office" responses
from around 5% of recipients, proving that you will
never catch everyone all the time. Either way, "when"
you publish must be as important as "what"
you publish if you expect people to read it.
© Steve Nichols 2005. Steve Nichols specialises
in online communications and has acted as consultant
and trainer for many blue-chip companies including Aviva,
AWG, Shell, Standard Life, HBOS, BNFL, AstraZeneca,
Diageo, Accenture and Australia New Zealand Bank. |
