It’s important to know when the highest percentage of your audience is eavesdropping on your social networks—so that when you share content you’ll get maximum exposure. Use the following data to learn when your audience is most likely to tune in. Be sure to check in with us next week when we discuss timing & email marketing.
Data courtesy of Dan Zarrella (@danzarrella) and HubSpot. Content available as a webinar by Dan Zarrella here.
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View the other Science of Social Timing Infographics
- The Science of Social Timing Part 2: Timing and Email Marketing
- The Science of Social Timing Part 3: Timing and Blogging
Facts and Stats to Tweet:
- 5PM Eastern Time is the best time to tweet. »tweet«
- The best tweeting frequency is 1 to 4 tweets per hour. »tweet«
- Saturday is the best day to share content on Facebook. »tweet«
- Noon Eastern Time is the best time of the day to share content on Facebook. »tweet«
- The best sharing frequency on Facebook is .5 posts per day. »tweet«
Saturday Facebook sharing was a surprise!
Rajeev: I thought so as well! My personal rationale for that stat was that folks generally have more free time on the weekends.
Hi Jason,
Very interesting infographic,I would love to see a European comparison but I am sure a lot will be similar.
Agree with Rajeev, was surprised about the weekend!
Keep them coming.
Rory: Good call. Companion data for Europe would be really interesting!
I second that! I have an audience that is largely (western-) European for both Twitter and Facebook….
Great stuff. I did an FB ad campaign a while back and saw a similar result with regard to Saturday.
I’ll have to try the 5 PM tweets.
David: Awesome! Your experience with FB really helps this data come alive.
Let us know how your 5pm tweet regimen goes!
I like the stats you provided. I’m a numbers guy and these charts spoke volumes to me. Thx for putting this together.
So glad you enjoyed it. Be sure to check in with us next week when we discuss timing & email marketing.
Great infographic!… it confirms what we tell our customers at Post Planner:
>> that posting outside of normal business hours is key
>> that if you don’t have time to get on your fan page during those hours, a scheduling app like Post Planner can help!
Thanks again! (ps. you might consider putting an RSS link on your blog here)
Great points! Scheduling apps are wonderful tools to help automate your social networking.
If you get a second, check out our scheduling app for Twitter:
http://sharefeed.com/
Jason, would love to have this information for Canada! I just started a social media position there, although living in the U.S.
Laurie: Canadian stats would be really useful. I imagine the data would be fairly similar to the U.S. – might be fodder for some additional infographics. :)
Do you have some Australian stats?
Ian: Hmmm … I’m guessing that Aussie data would be fairly similar to the U.S.
According to Nielsen.com, Australia has the highest per-capita social media usage:
http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2010/01/some_thoughts_o.html
This info is clearly for fan pages which are primarily for the US. Our fans are spread out all over the globe, with approx 25 percent in Asia. What timing advice can you offer?
Sally: Good question. I feel that the social networking cycles for other countries would be fairly similar to the U.S. (augmented by time, of course).
One thing you could try is posting (or tweeting, or whatever) the same article multiple times (with other posts in between, of course). This is what we try to do with our KISSmetrics Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/KISSmetrics
So, for example let’s say that your demographic is 75% North American and 25% Asian. And let’s say you have an article that you’d like to push to Twitter. To evenly circulate that article across your entire demographic, I’d tweet the article once at 5PM Beijing time (5AM EST), and again 12 hours later at 5PM EST. In between the two tweets you could add other relevant posts.
Interesting: I tried to sign up for the updates and Aweber keeps insisting there’s nothing in the fields, even though they are both filled. Get someone to that point only to have a tech glitch has to be frustrating.
Joe: So sorry about that. Please send me an email and we’ll get you signed up: jcaldwell {at} kissmetrics {dot} com
It’s great to read something that’s both enjoyable and porvdies pragmatisdc solutions.
I had no CLUE about Saturdays on Facebook. Thanks so much for that info!
The Facebook data pointing to Saturday as the best day for sharing was quite a dark horse – agreed!
@kissmetrics @danzarrella seems that timing is different for different locations. Twitter spikes 10am + 11pm here. Facebook on weekdays.
Hmmm … interesting observation. This may warrant another study on international social timing. :)
Are your timezs above in EST??
Karen: Yes, most the information above is presented in the Eastern Time Zone.
Thx to for your sharing, that is very useful :) …. you’ve share a great post which gives more knowledge for the readers.
Glad you like it! Be sure to check in with us later this week when we discuss timing & email marketing.
Interesting statistics here. Very nice post, and the infographic is slick!
Renee: Glad you enjoyed it!
Great Stat very useful thanks nice presentation
Thanks! Keep your eyes open for the next installment in this series.
social network can be connected to another person it is a very grateful tract that can be link and may be connected to another person .
so that when you share content you’ll get maximum exposure. Use the following data to learn when your audience is most likely to tune in. Be sure
I thought that Saturday posting on FB would not be a good idea… until I tried it a year ago and realized that in fact it was the perfect day to post.
Just goes to show you need to test, test and then test some more… some results will surprise you and make a big difference to your ROI.
Kathy: Excellent point. This infographic was intended to be a general reference – try experimenting with different dates and times and see what works best for you.
Everyone shares on the weekend, but that doesn’t mean they’re reading stuff though.
Good point. Sharing vs. absorption are two different things. However, sharing rate and the absorption rate are directly related to each other.
This is cool and insightful. The use of social media feedback tools is far more helpful when compared to trditional forms of marking… Good job guys
Thanks! So glad you enjoyed it!
I’ Canadian also and wonder what the stats would be. Logical though noon and dinner or just after. We’re all supposed to be working at the other times!
hey, interesting research. Actually i would be curios to see the same research with the comparison between the different countries! Europe i’m sure is much different from us.. as within Europe things are really different!
Any way we could get some information about the west cost? Is it okay to assume that this information can be used on the west cost?
to be able to get your blog post read by a lot when it is still fresh, you may want to read this blog and learn. I think you can help a lot of people!
- Jack Leak
This is an amazing article. It is really helpful in getting more traffic to your blogs. I shall take note of this from now on.
Any breakdown available on what it is exactly people are sharing? What are the topics and these conversations about? What percentage of content shared on a Saturday is from a corporate source? Is it higher than during the rest of the week? Without this breakdown can you justify your Saturday recommendation?
# justify for a corporate that is.
Wow! This is very valuable data for all of us Internet marketers. Jason thanks so much for making this available to us for free…people would pay for this kind of data!
It is also good to note that approx. 38% of referral sharing comes from Facebook and 11% from Twitter (according to a study by ShareThis)….So it would appear to be crucial to get maximum exposure via Facebook using this timing data.
Thanks again Jason!
Very good information. Thank you Dan Zarrella and HubSpot for taking the time to prepare this infographic. – @Callistecomm #consulting
Great information regarding social network timing. Here are some more thoughts about the subject! http://venpop.com/2011/5-timely-tips-for-more-fan-engagement/
The Science of Social Timing Part 1: Facebook and Twitter Social Networks was stored as a favorite :), I really like your website!
1. It looks very much like you’ve plotted the day with 12 points in the re-tweet plot, one every two hours. What do the underlying data look like?
2. The entire late-afternoon into evening is very similar in re-tweet rate, and picking out the peak at 5 pm (though see point #1) really obscures that.
3. Best day for tweeting: Monday is worst, but others are all about the same.
Similar things could be said about the FaceBook data.
I’d need a lot more detail before I put too much trust in this.
Fantastic infographic! We will definitely share this on Twitter. 6PM, of course! ;)
With social networking crossing time zone barriers and reaching across the globe, I’m wondering what time zone this graphic is derived from. Obviously that will make a significant difference.
Our target audience is more West Coast heavy, and middle age to older. I wonder if an infographic could be done that broke out those things. For instance, if you don’t care as much about hitting the East Coast peak (where 48% of the US population is, but just not our target audience), is Noon east coast time on a saturday still true for facebook posting? Or if the target audience is older, is the 4 tweets/hr still true for an audience that is on twitter less?
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