Why Timing Matters on Social Media
In comedy, timing is everything. The same is true of social media especially if you use it as a marketing tool. Knowing when to post is just as important as knowing what to post, and just as with comedy, it all boils down to knowing your audience.
I've spent much of the last two weeks getting to know my audience and their habits. More specifically their reading habits on Twitter. What I found was that if I want my posts to be seen by more people, I need to post in the late morning through to the early afternoon.
My following/follower count is roughly equal and stands at just over 4000.
I interact with 5-10% of them semi-regularly across the space of a week. This includes liking, commenting and sharing their posts as well as likes, shares and comments on my posts.
Some weeks, this can dip as low as maybe 1% depending on how much time I spend on the platform and what Twitter chooses to let me see.
Catching your audience is very important. You need your posts to be there when they are most likely to be scrolling through. Most of my audience is in the UK and US.
I've learned very quickly that very few of the people that follow me are up and on Twitter at 5 am (UK time), so my good morning posts, while well-received by those that see them, are seen by very few. My posts on the way back from the school run are seen by more people, helped by the addition of pictures of the moors on a sunny day. No one, and I mean no one, needs early morning photos of me.
Mid-morning, you catch the late rises and those on break at work. This is usually a great time from impressions but not necessarily for interactions as coffee breaks are short and coffee trumps social media interaction.
By lunchtime and early afternoon, the US crowd are usually starting to join the party and those with timed lunch breaks often have a little time, leading to more impressions and the odd interaction. This is also the best time to throw out a few links.
While Twitter suppresses posts with links in, mainly to encourage you to part with money for adverts, the Twitter bots seem to have their lunch around this time. Don't be fooled or lulled into a false sense of security though. Posts without links still get more impressions. Posts with media, including pet pics and for some reason windswept selfies, do even better.
As afternoon turns into evening numbers start to dwindle again. It's not that surprising when you realise that these are real people with real lives outside of Twitter and many of them have mouths to feed, including their own. I often get a brief upturn around dinner time, I guess that's because just as we in the UK are settling down for a cosy evening of whatever crap is on the TV, life is getting into full swing across the pond.
So there you have it, forget the golden ratio, the golden time for posting and getting the most impressions on Twitter is late morning through to the early afternoon, with a few reminder posts thrown out in the early evening.
Increasing your impressions is only half the battle. You also want to increase your interactions and click-throughs on your links. That is a whole different ball game and a completely different post.