Taking Time to Twitter: Maximizing Engagement through Targeted Scheduling

Social media can be a great tool for building not only your brand but also a rapport with current and potential customers.  It can allow you to maximize your visibility, keeping your brand fresh and foremost in your customers’ minds, by engaging them in direct, relevant dialogue.  However, navigating the constantly shifting landscape of social media platforms can be extremely tricky, and trying to make your content stand out amid the veritable ocean of tweets that make up a daily Twitter stream, for example, can seem nearly impossible.  While we understand, at McCauley Marketing Services, that generating thoughtful, engaging content is absolutely vital to holding the attention of your audience on social media, we also realize that this is only part of an overall social media marketing strategy.  Paying careful attention to the optimal times to post your content can also go a long way to keeping your presence trending and keeping your brand foremost in the minds of your customers.

Research has shown that there are specific times of the day and week that are best to boost your social media airtime.  Rather than trying to wade through mountains of data to determine which times are best, it is often more efficient just to take a moment to consider what your target audience is doing at any given point during the day.  Twitter click-through rate (CTR) increases significantly during lulls in work day activity, specifically while people are on their way to work (6-9am), on their lunch break (around noon), or when they’re traveling home (around 6pm).  Posts at other times might have a tendency to get overlooked.  Still, no general rule can ever substitute for really understanding your social media target market.  For example, if you’re targeting parents, tweets made between 3-3:30pm (when they’ll be waiting to pick their kids up from school) may attract more attention and generate more activity.  Similarly, tweets aimed at an audience of business professionals tend to do better if posted ten to fifteen minutes before the hour, so they can catch the eyes of people before they get trapped in meetings.

The particular days you choose to post can also have a powerful impact on your campaign’s effectiveness.  Statistically, social media engagement levels reach their weekly peaks on Friday, so make sure to save some particularly interesting content to post that afternoon.  Even more importantly, a huge percentage of companies tweet during office hours and then don’t bother past their 6pm cut off, so take advantage of the relative quiet on weekends and holidays to make your tweets really stand out.  Scheduling tools like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, and Buffer all allow you to pre-schedule posts to take advantage of this prime Twitter time.  Not only does posting in the evenings and weekends give you a leg up against the competition, but it also ensures that your tweets reach a huge audience in the midst of their most intense browsing.

Remember that understanding your specific target audience is always the best way to optimize your results.  For more insights on social media or if you’re interested in learning how to effectively take hold of your marketing, contact McCauley Marketing Services today. Be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.