How To Find YOUR Best Time To Increase Twitter Engagement

Did you know weekends are the BEST days to tweet if you want more clicks?

Oh wait, no sorry.

Did you know weekends are the WORST days to tweet if you want more clicks?

No wait…

Confused?

So am I.

Every so often a new Twitter study offers us the holy grail of optimal tweet timing. Most are based on comprehensive studies and are plausible in their own right. So being a blogger, I quickly jump on board the media bandwagon to preach these guidelines to my readers.

Then I sit satisfied with myself for passing along this valuable information to you. [*insert pat on back]

Yesterday, however, as I was scheduling our company posts on SocialMotus, I started thinking about these Twitter studies. These conflicting Twitter studies.

Should you believe a study from bit.ly, the world’s most popular URL shortening service OR Dan Zarella, an award winning social media scientist?

To find the answer, lets look a little deeper at the results of the two most popular studies on maximizing the impact of tweets.

Dan Zarella

Dan Zarella conducted a study on the timing and frequency of tweets receiving the most engagements. He found that:

• Almost 80% of the US population goes by the Central and Eastern time zone.
• The highest % of retweets occur around 5PM EST midweek and weekends.
• The highest CTR (click through rate) occurs between 12PM and 6PM EST midweek and weekends. With 12 PM and 6PM having the highest CTR. Best days to tweet (as these have the highest CTR) being midweek and weekends.
  
• Higher CTR’s are seen when tweeting 1 – 4 times per hour during midweek and on weekends.

Bit.ly

Now according to bit.ly’s research, optimum tweeting occurs:

• In the afternoon between 1-3pm EST with the highest CTR.
• Weekdays from Monday to Thursday, AVOID Fridays to Sundays if you want more clicks.
  

The truth shall set you free

Who should you listen to?

Should you avoid tweeting on weekends due to low CTR’s as indicated by Bit.ly.

Or trust Dan Zarella and tweet on weekends as it as he has found it has high CTR’s?

Look deep inside your heart to discover the truth.

Kidding.

I have a better response than that.

The truth is, with the proliferation of data sources, methodologies and sample sizes, studies will continue to come out of the woodwork challenging what is commonly accepted.

There is no right or wrong. I’m always grateful these companies are willing to share their valuable data. In exchange for backlinks, and improved reputation of course. Nothing’s free in this world.

What you need to start doing is to figure out what works best for YOU and YOUR followers.

Rather than taking a study at face value, use it as a guideline for your own Twitter strategy. It might become a catalyst for a complete revision of your strategy or something that’s thrown into the rejected pile as you move on to new studies and strategies.

Then test, tweak and test some more.

Rinse and repeat for every new study that comes along.

In the mysterious case of optimal tweet timing, you would start by posting your normal tweets during these suggested periods and track any growth in engagements.

Here comes a hot tip.

While a certain time period may be best for retweets, other times may be best for CTR. So keep track of optimal timing for getting retweets (post tweets with or without links during this time) and optimal timing for increased CTR (always post tweets with links during this time).

Shortcuts set you free faster

Have you ever met a marketer or business owner who was happy to take the longer route towards completing their tasks?

Didn’t think so.

Obviously I have a shortcut up my sleeve.

That shortcut goes by the name of Tweriod.

Tweriod provides you with the best times to tweet by analysing both your tweets and your followers’ tweets.

What I like about this is it lets you view the number of followers online during the day. This alone is a strong indicator of when your tweet would have the most impact. The more followers see your tweet, the more likely they are to engage with you.

Okay now you have these coveted statistics in your hands.

Now what?

Here are the steps I took.

Kind in mind, rather than CTR, we were more interested in garnering retweets to increase awareness of our new social media tool. Hence, the example details how we personally increased our retweets, but using Tweriod helps with both retweets and CTR.

1. I created a document noting the days and the time when the most followers were on. I first wrote down the day, then the time period I have the most exposure. Then jotted down the top 3 times of the day when I had the most followers online in the order of most followers. In the example above it was 9am, 7am, 2am.

2. I printed out the document and pinned it to the board next to my desk for quick reference.

3. Then I would schedule my posts during these times.

SocialMotus came in handy for my scheduling needs. I simply installed the bookmarklet into my Internet browser toolbar. Then when I find a webpage I want to share, I click on the icon to schedule my content right from the webpage I’m viewing it on.

You might have your own Twitter tool for this.

Now here comes the hot tip.

Rather than just randomly posting anything at optimal times, make sure you schedule your most important content at the absolute optimal time each day/week. This could be any company news, promotions or new articles you want your followers to read. In the screenshot above, mine would be 9am on weekends so I make sure to always have my most important news scheduled around this time.

4. Throughout the week, I paid close attention to the number of Twitter engagements I was receiving.

For example, I posted the following tweet:

Then I posted this tweet not long after:

I checked my engagements a few hours later and found these retweets and more!

Not too shabby.

5. After about 3 weeks, I viewed my engagement history to see if there was any noticeable difference in my engagement levels.As the examples above show, I definitely saw a nice improvement I was happy to showcase to my manager.

I made sure to check individual engagements to see how certain times performs, and the accumulated engagement levels for clicks, retweets, mentions and reach to see overall increases in my Twitter impact. If you are using SocialMotus, you’ll be able to quickly view them here in the ‘Measure’, then ‘Publish Stats’ module.

If you’re not seeing any improvements in your Twitter impact, don’t be so quick to dismiss Tweriod.

The problem might not be the timing of your tweets, but rather the content of your tweet.

Stay tuned next week for simple, yet effective changes you can make to your tweets to help you build a thriving Twitter community.

In the meantime, I’d be really interested to know if you’re tweeting at your optimal time and if so, how did you find it out?

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