...when it comes to social media, anyway. When you're responsible for running a corporate Facebook or Twitter account, when do you post content? When you first come in in the morning? When you need to beat the post-lunch energy crash? Do you consider that, although you may be located in Washington, D.C., most of your followers reside in L.A.? KISSmetrics put together a great infographic called "The Science of Social Timing" that can help you recognize the most impact from your posts and tweets. Here are some highlights:
- Most Americans live in the Eastern Time Zone. The Central Time Zone is the second most populated time zone in the country. This is important to consider if you're going for quantity over a specific demographic, or if you're working out of a remote location.
- About 6% of all retweets happen at 5pm ET. So if people are most likely to be on Twitter at 5pm, the tweets you want sent out into the world need to be on their screens just before 5.
- The highest click through rate (CTR) is achieved by tweeting between one and four times per hour. Any more than four, and your CTR almost zeroes out. And the best days for tweeting are Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. Want your CTR to really go through the roof? Tweet at noon or 6pm EST.
- The best times to share on Facebook are noon and just after 7pm EST; the best day, Saturday. Meanwhile, one post about every two days is ideal posting frequency.
These are some really excellent metrics to be aware of if you want to evaluate whether your company is effectively using social media. Let's also take a minute to appreciate the actual KISSmetrics webpage. They, like most current blogs, have easy access buttons to allow visitors to quickly like, tweet, +1, and pin their content. But my favorite part is that they offer bite-sized information with a link that allows you to tweet a particular sentence straight from their site. This is a great example of social media integration and the ways you can use it to help your customers help you!