Everything’s a science these days. Yes, even social media. With self-proclaimed gurus expounding at length about every aspect of social media in the hopes of getting their 15 seconds of fame, who knows what’s true and what’s not? So we gathered some research to see if we could give you insights, and found out some surprising tips about the best times to tweet to attract visitors to your website, depending on your business goals. Take a look! 
Identify Audience Habits
First and foremost, you need to tweet when your followers are online. That’s largely determined by whether you’re a B2B or B2C business, because they are typically on Twitter at different times. It’s also governed by the age group of your users, because some people have more freedom at certain times of the day than others. For example, if you’re tweeting about fashion to teenage girls, even though it’s a B2C market you’re likely to find them online during the business day because they have free time after school hours. If you’re marketing to homeowners then evenings and weekends are your best bet, while the home remodelers may be more likely to check their social media in the mornings during their breakfast. You’ll need to do some research to find out when your particular target market is checking their social media.
Choose the Right Days of the Week
A report from Buddy Media showed that while tweets published over the weekend are 32% more likely to result in engagement, only 19% of brands actually published during that time. Far too many of the brands felt that tweeting at the beginning of the week was good, when in fact Mondays are a really bad day. Once again, this depends on your target audience, but if you subscribe to the view that even corporate buyers are people first then this tells you that weekends are the best time to get them.
Base Your Tweeting on Data
Of course, it’s not just about the day of the week and the time—it’s also about what’s working for your followers and when. The only way you’ll know this is by analyzing your Twitter data, and that’s pretty difficult to do without using tools created especially for the purpose. Apps such as Buffer, TweetReports and TweetStats give you a clear picture of which tweets are working for you and the level of your engagement. They also show the density of the tweets so you can see when most of your followers are online and apply that information to your tweeting times.
Look for Identifiable Trends
If you spend some time following your followers, you’ll start to identify trends on your Twitter account. In between all the tweets about the latest episode of The Walking Dead, you’ll find the conversations that are happening in your market. Check out when the highest interaction happens and get in on the game. Conversely, if there is a particular market segment you want to reach, perhaps you’ll identify a trend that singles them out from the rest. Watch and learn!
Pick the Best Time of Day for Your Audience
It’s important to maintain context through time of day if you want your tweets to be relevant. How does this affect timing? Well, if you’re tweeting during business hours (and aiming at business people) you might want a slightly more professional tone than you’d use if you’re tweeting after 9 pm to young adults. Also, tweeting while your audience is sleeping isn’t likely to gain you anything much. Include your findings by setting up Twitter lists to help you segment your market. Tweriod, a free Twitter tool that analyzes your account and lets you know when is the best time to tweet shows that the highest number of followers are typically online on weekends between 4 pm and 6 pm EST. Of course, that depends on your time zone and how it plays into where your prospective customers and followers are located.
Don't Overdo it
This one is critical, in terms of knowing when to tweet and when not to. Stacking up tweets one after another in quick succession just results in putting people off, and both your number of views and your engagement are likely to drop. It’s called “stream hogging” and it’s not good. So play nice! Figuring out the best times to tweet depends on a number of variables, but if you do some basic market research you’ll find your social media marketing becomes far more effective than it would be if you simply rushed headlong into it.
*Photo courtesy of depositphotos.com
