Say what?

There I was on Friday night, posting a brand new message on Twitter and something struck me.

I didn’t usually Tweet on Friday nights because I was typically socializing.  Come Friday (the end of the week), people tend to spend time with friends, family, and in a lot of cases remove themselves completely from their connected social life. 

This is definitely not the case for everyone, but according to a recent blog post by bit.ly indicates that posting after 3pm on Fridays and throughout the weekend has proven to be a poor time to post. 

I can personally verify that this is the case from all “tweet” activities that I have been involved with as we have seen a deep decline in terms of new followers and @ mentions to our account when tweets take place on a Friday evening or weekends.

It is simple logic, people are busy doing other things.

Here are some other interesting Twitter “Time” Trends:

BEST: 1-3 pm Monday - Thursday
WORST: After 8pm, Fridays after 3pm, Weekends
Peak Traffic Times: 9am to 3pm

Facebook is very much the same.  According to Bit.ly, links posted from 1pm to 4pm receive the highest average click-through ratios, whereas the lag time is between 8pm - 8am.   Like Twitter, weekends are very much a quiet time within Facebook.

Here are some other interesting Facebook “Time” Trends:

BEST: 1pm - 4pm Monday - Thursday
WORST: After 8pm, Before 8am
Peak Traffic Times: 1pm to 3pm

Many people automate their posts to Twitter and Facebook through scheduling applications like TweetDeck and Hootsuite and the time of the day should be a definite consideration. 

Obviously there are different time zones, so your particular time zone should be based on your target audience.  If your target audience is worldwide, then you are going to need to consider which area of the world will lead to the most traffic and choose accordingly. 

And the Holidays...

Extended holidays like Christmas break and Spring break are very active times for social networks.  However, vacations that typically surround people hanging out with their families and traveling are far less active. 

You should not expect much traffic on Thanksgiving and Labor Day weekend. These are very quiet times and you should refrain from trying to accomplish anything within social networks during these times...or than perhaps wishing people a Happy DAY_GOES_HERE)

And timing becomes meaningless if you cannot ENGAGE!

If you are going to benefit from having a following though, you need to treat your friends and followers as real people, not promotional tools.  I have seen on a number of ocassions people with a rather large following on Twitter and Facebook that don’t get any response.

Why? Because they promote every single time they post something.  So regardless of whether they hit the “HOT” hours of the day, their social activity will never benefit from timing.  This is something you need to remember when working within the social networks.

Offer value. Engage.  DO NOT over promote.

Timing is everything.  Hopefully you are now armed with the right information that will lead to the greatest enagement, click-throughs and success! :)