Why does posting at the right time matter?

More than 6,000 tweets are posted on Twitter every second as of 2022. After a UI update on Twitter provides user with options on how to see the latest feed, the chronological feed has been back in the game besides the infamous algorithmic recommendation feed. A reverse-chronological feed means Twitter users can see tweets in the order they are posted.

But here’s the catch! Over time, tweets that are previously at the top of the feed will be replaced with the newer ones. This underscores the importance of publishing your tweet when your audience is most active, or scheduling it for the appropriate time.

Yet, finding the best time to post on Twitter can be a tricky business.

Unlike Facebook analytics, Twitter doesn’t directly tell you the best time to post. But still, it gives you enough insight to find out the best time through heuristics by doing trial experiments.

Just break down your experiments into a month-long period. During that time, post your tweets in the morning, afternoon, and evening, at designated times each day.

Now, this seems to be a tedious job, and that is where a Twitter management tool such as Sociograb comes to your aid.

Sociograb lets you dig into your Twitter analytics and gives a complete overview of your account performance. Moreover, you can use Sociograb to track your progress over time and make new posting strategies along the way.

We will show you the two experiments that we ran on Sociograb to deternine the best time to post on Twitter. We utilized Sociograb built-in analytics features to obtain the insight on:

1. Identifying the best time to post on Twitter for topics related to business in general.
2. Analyzing your Twitter analytics to determine the best time to post content related to marketing your product.

Figure 1: Insight on hourly tweets for business related topics analyzed on Sociograb

As you can see in Figure 1, we found out that there is no best universal time to post on Twitter.

The best time to post on Twitter can vary depending on your target audience and location. Different businesses have different audiences, and hence the more effective content posting time will also vary for each business. However, you can leverage some general guidelines that can help maximize your audience reach and engagement.

As an example, we run an experiment on when we should post contents that are related with marketing Sociograb, our social listening tool, on Twitter. Furthermore, we also want to know the type of content that engages users and top key persons or influencers for the topics that we're targeting.

Figure 2: Insight on hourly tweets related to Sociograb target audience

The insight for hourly audience engagement can be seen in Figure 2. The time in the figure is in UTC.

Besides time-series chart, Sociograb has built-in statistical analysis features. You can see the graphical representation of the engagement rate, clicks, retweets, likes, and replies from your project dashboard.

Figure 3: Insight on key influencers for topics targeting Sociograb audience

Figure 4: Insight on top tweets for topics discussed by Sociograb's target audience

Figure 3 shows top influencers for the topics that we've chosen within the time period of our experiment. Additionally, Figure 4 shows us the content that are interesting to aur audience and hence engaging them to interact.

Now, let's take a look at these statistics provided by leading social media marketing firms that recommend the ideal times for brands to post on Twitter.

• HowSociable suggests that 12-1 pm is the best time, and Friday is the best day to post on Twitter.
• Hubspot claims the best time frame is between 11-1 pm and 9-11 pm to share your content on Twitter.
• Trackmaven favors Thursday as the best day to post on Twitter.
• G2 learning hub also favors the 12 pm to 7 pm time frame during weekdays, with Friday showing the most engagement at 6 pm.
• Metricool puts its bet on 6 to 7 pm.

Note that all the above times are in EST.

In brief, relying on the data gathered by various brands, it can be concluded that it is safe to share your tweets during the following timeframes:

1. Rush hour periods when people are commuting to and from work.
2. Posting tweets during your audiences’ lunch breaks is also an option since people tend to check their Twitter feeds during this time.
3. Posting on Twitter during weekends is not recommended as most of your followers are occupied with personal activities, therefore scheduling your posts primarily on weekdays is crucial.

This is also similar with what found in our analysis with Sociograb. The tool suggests that we should double down with our content and audience engagement at around 16PM UTC or 12PM noon EST, which is during the lunch time.

Given the changes and tweaks to the algorithm used by a content platform like Twitter, it has become crucial to schedule your tweets at optimal times. Doing so will enable you to connect with your audience more effectively, and ultimately, capture valuable leads.

You can draw inspiration from commonly popular time slots, examine your data using Twitter analytics like Sociograb, and leverage available tools to determine the best times to post.