For the longest time I hadn’t really paid any attention to the timing of my posts. In the beginning it was tough to even complete a post, so just hitting the publish button was a relief. The truth is that even with practice, it’s hard to produce decent content. So I started wondering how I could make each piece of content go further.
It turns out that SocialBro produces a great little chart that highlights when your twitter followers are online. Which is precisely when each of your tweets is going to have maximum reach. So I reactivated my bufferapp account and started driving all my non-reply tweets through buffer, with buffer posting based on my SocialBro recommended schedule.
Here’s my SocialBro “Best time to tweet” chart:
Here’s what happened after I actually used the tweeting schedule:
The engagement and impact of my twitter posts more than doubled! In hindsight the logic seems simple, post when my audience is online for maximum reach.
Whilst your twitter audience might not be a 100% accurate representation of your blog readership, if you’re attracting a similar audience, it stands to reason that the timings are likely similar. It’s a great starting point to experiment with.
There are several tools that can help you figure out your ideal tweeting time including FollowerWonk (by Moz), SocialBro and Tweriod. I’ve used FollowerWonk before, and I’m currently using SocialBro. They both have the same sort of features, but you can only get FollowerWonk if you take the complete Mox bundle (which I don’t need personally).
As a word of caution, there are lots of infographics and articles advocating a best time to post. Please remember that it’s entirely dependent on your audience. Don’t make any assumptions, monitor your results, experiment and find out what works best for you. Check and update your schedule regularly, but don’t get too crazy – some things still need to happen in real time.