Tweeting Often and on Weekends is More Effective, Suggests Data

How often should you post updates to Twitter for maximum impact? Is there a time of day that works best? What about a day of the week?

These are the types of questions that Dan Zarrella is constantly trying to answer. Instead of relying on intuition and hearsay, however, the self-described “social media scientist” prefers to take a look a look at things more objectively, using data.

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Zarrella, who works for HubSpot and has authored such delightfully nerdy reports as “The Science of ReTweets”, recently hosted a webinar titled “The Science of Timing” that took a close look at how the timing of social media activity impacts its effectiveness.

The hugely popular webinar had a number of interesting takeaways, some of which were surpsing. For example:

• Tweeting later in the day and later in the week results in more retweets.
• The click-through-rate on tweeted links appears to spike in the late morning and then again around 5pm.
• The click-through rate on links tends to decline as more links are tweeted per hour. After about six links per hour, click-throughs essentially drop off.
• Still, tweeting more frequently leads to more followers, but Facebook is a different story: Too many posts on Facebook can more easily alienate people.
• Weekends are an ideal time for sharing on Facebook.
• More people tend to open marketing emails in the early morning than any other time during the day. Weekends also appear to be effective for emails.

Check out the slides below for more data-backed social media pointers.

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