The big question for which there is only a right answer just for you is? – When do I release my tweets and posts?
You can only imagine the answer when you consider who your target audience and where they live.
First, we have to consider who your target audience are and when is the best time to catch them.
- Will a tweet on the way to work gather attention and shares?
- Is your content something they should be reading about at work with their emails?
- Maybe you are subject for reflection at lunch time?
- Will your message hit home on the way home?
- Is the evening a good time to catch people between gaps in the TV schedule?
This may not just depend on your audience but on your content too. Once you decide when you will be sending out the content, you may want to tailor it to that time so that it becomes more relevant to the audience at that time.
Then there is the issue of where they are and the time differences between different zones.
This is why it is powerful if you can build to the state where you may launch two or three new messages a day on the blog. Maybe a video message too. Now you can mix these up on your twitter feed and drop in a few popular messages from the recent past.
Now this is all sounding like a lot of work and it can be a pretty hard time. This may make you realise that competing on a daily basis is not for you. That is fine. The Internet does not demand hourly content, but what it does demand is regularity of posting. Better to start with a weekly item and then try and move up to two or three a week. Like all activities, it does become easier the more you practice. As you build up your library of posts, you can refer back to an older post, or just re-invent the same message.
Don’t forget that twitter is about curation as well as creation. So, if you see other good content by others, do not be afraid to re-tweet it. If you see a good article that you can add to, then write one and remember to clearly link back to the original, tweet them and they may well thank you. You have just used their post for your subject idea and revitalised their content discussion too.
Then there are the short videos, the memes, the ‘living photo’. There is plenty to choose from and chose you should do, not try and copy everything. I tried it for a week and did not make it past Tuesday! – And note that different content can be consumed at different times.
Most my ideas come with meetings and conversations with others. So don’t sit on your own when out of ideas. Go to some B2B meetings, mix with customers and listen out for questions to tackle. No time to go out, then take inspiration from comments by groups on Facebook, or Twitter.
Once you have the subject, you can then think when it is most applicable and target your content to that time.
So when is my best time? – actually, I just create when the thought takes shape. Then I ‘release’ content mostly mid-afternoon to catch us morning as well. Unless it is following from other comments or posts on social media, in which case I release straight away to catch the thread. I need to be more organised too.
Many email marketing companies have provided stats to claim Thursday, or Tuesday as the best day to email. However, a quick look at the graphs shows you that most days of the week are similar, except people are not so interested on Friday and these work emails are almost ignored at weekends.
Information published by MailChimp, an algorithm (“Send Time Optimization”) was used to gather information on the best time to send to individual email addresses in their local time zones. Data collected from millions of emails shows even Friday holding up well.
GetResponse also published data and shows that Tuesday has a slightly better open rate and click-through rate, as well as being the most popular day to send emails. Not surprising, weekends are down here too.
Hubspot has similar results. Please also notice which way of showing the graph data is the most useful to you. Producing data in an interesting way is an artform in it’s self and quality infographics can really make your posts stand out.
These are compared open rates. Trying to show that Tues is 20% better than the average, but this graphic does not really make sense to me. The weekend data is different, it distorts the average. Is this data manipulation?
Finally, I pick up one more graph that disagrees with all the previous and shows that weekends are the best. Dan Zarella’s research from his book, The Science of Marketing, shows that the best days for open rates and click rates are Saturdays and Sundays!
This simply proves my point that it depends on YOUR customer list and their habits. So make sure you collect data and monitor the habits of your own mailing list- that is the one that matters.
If you want even more statistics then a long post was produced by option monster and you can read that here. But do not expect any big conclusion.
