With media that’s updated as often as social media is, timing can be crucial to helping you get the word out about your services, products, or promotions. The internet moves fast, and so an update can easily be left behind or swamped among other updates. Adding a strategic timing element to your social media updates can help to greatly reduce the chance that you won’t see any results and increase the results that you do see. For different social media networks and services, different timing strategies may be needed.
Blogging
The best time to update a blog is in the morning, preferably between the hours of 7 and 9 AM EST. This way, your blog post is guaranteed to show up in feed readers (and inboxes, if you have an RSS to email autoresponder campaign) soon afterwards and stay there the rest of the day, waiting for the time when it’s most convenient for readers to look at it.
In general, it’s best to have a regular update schedule for your blog – something like Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or Tuesdays and Thursdays. This means that readers can be assured there will be new content if they go to look at your website this day – they’ll come to expect it and it will be part of their routine. Internet usage is generally higher during the work week than it is on the weekends, so you may want to make sure your blog posts, especially blog posts you want to receive a high amount of traffic or comments on, go up during the week.
Most posting on Facebook occurs during the week; however, if you’re posting information or content that you’d like to receive a high number of “likes” or “shares”, it’s best to post on the weekend. One reason for this is that over half of US companies block Facebook at the work place, so while users may be browsing other sites, they aren’t browsing Facebook during work hours. Saturday has more activity than Sunday, so try to update on Saturdays, and the best times of day are morning, afternoon, and evening (approximately 11 AM, 3 PM, and 8 PM EST).
Twitter is an extremely effective way to share tips and content, especially when used correctly. Twitter users are generally updating their status and checking their stream several times a day, which means you can share your content several times a day with new people seeing it each time. It’s best not to do any more than three or four repeated tweets (i.e. tweets with links to a blog post or a news update) per day, as any more than that will likely make followers feel as though they’re being bombarded. A good strategy is morning, midmorning, afternoon, and evening (approximately 9 AM, 11 AM, 3 PM, and 6 PM EST). You can also use a tool like 14 blocks to figure out when your followers are online, and adjust your tweeting schedule accordingly.
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