Social media marketing is a powerful strategy for getting more name recognition and increasing your market share. One of the beauties of this medium is how easy it is to publish a post or an update. However, for that reason many organizations figure they can connect with their audience whenever they can carve out a few minutes to draft a post. The truth is, it not only matters what you say to your audience, but when you say it.
There are lots of "hunches" posing as facts about the time of day that your tweet will be most effective. But, they are just that—hunches. Nobody really knew for sure. Until now. Marketing schedule company CoSchedule analyzed results from 20 different studies to come up with the definitive info on when to post.
Does this really matter? Absolutely! That person who doesn’t see your social media post because it came at the wrong time of day doesn’t learn about your new offering so they don’t research it further, become a customer, and ultimately a true advocate and champion for your company. OK… obviously that’s a bit of an extreme example, but you get my point. If posting at the right time of day can increase readership by even a few percentage points, it’s worth taking note of the data.
Timing is Everything
The infographic that CoSchedule produced has a tremendous amount of actionable insights. And if you’re using a marketing automation platform like HubSpot, it’s easy to capitalize on them. Some of the facts that really caught my eye include:
- 80 percent of the U.S. population is in the Eastern and Central time zones. If you market nationwide, those times should drive your scheduling. If you market regionally, say on the West Coast, the Pacific time zone is for you.
- With Twitter, tweets at noon, 3 p.m., and 5–6 p.m. get the most attention. And not surprisingly, B2B tweets perform 16 percent better during business hours, whereas B2C tweets get 17 percent better performance on weekends.
- On Facebook, posting at 1 p.m. will result in more sharing, but posting at 3 p.m. will get you more clicks.
- LinkedIn updates are most welcome mid-week and right around the close of business at 5–6 p.m.
- People may be looking for a morning boost from Instagram, as posts at 8–9 a.m. perform best.
These findings all make sense if you stop and think about them. What doesn’t make sense is refusing to update your social media schedules based on these numbers! It’s easy to do and may have a significant impact on your social media marketing performance.
Is It Time to Talk Social Strategy?
At 30dps, our teams in Colorado Springs, CO, Olympia, WA, and Springfield, MO, are experts in helping companies drive engagement through social media, especially using the monitoring, publishing, and reporting capabilities in HubSpot. If you’re looking to optimize your social media marketing strategy as a part of your overall marketing plan (and who isn’t?), give us a shout!
