Timing Is Everything On Social Networking Sites

One of the challenges of using Facebook and Twitter for marketing is making sure that your message reaches your target audience. There’s no sense spending time on these social networking sites if your message is getting lost, and you can’t get your prospects and customers to engage with you.  

When should you post for the best results? Dan Zarella, social media scientist at Hubspot has studied the best time to tweet on Twitter and post on Facebook. Here are some of his recommendations:  

1. If you want to get your content shared on Twitter in the form of retweets, try posting at 5 pm. 

2. The best days to tweet are generally midweek and on the weekends.  

3. The best time of day to encourage people to click on the links included in your tweets is at noon (lunch time) and 6 pm (after people get home from work). 

4. The best day for sharing on Facebook is Saturday, and the best time is around noon and a little after 7 pm.  

However, Saturday is not necessarily the best for day for posting for every industry. BuddyMedia did its own study and found that engagement on Facebook posts peaks on Thursday and Friday. That coincides with Facebook’s own study that its “Happiness Index” – which measures the positivity of users’ posts – rises by 10% on Friday.  

The company also found that shorter posts, or those with 80 characters or less, have a 27% higher engagement rate. In addition, BuddyMedia’s study found that brands that post outside of business hours, such as in the early morning, at the end of the work day and late at night, had a 20% higher engagement rate.  

The best advice here is to experiment and see for yourself what time works best for your company and your target audience.