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Thursday, June 30, 2011

Strategy is Key to Scheduling Social Media Messages

Have you ever wondered what the most effective time to send a tweet or Facebook post is? A strategic analysis of audience, content, and research can help pinpoint the optimum time for your next social media update.Audience comes first when scheduling a social media update. Are you targeting the tech-savvy soccer moms? How about workaholics or maybe college students? It is important to consider your audience’s schedule in order to maximize the impact of your message.

College students dread mornings, so scheduling a message around lunch or in the afternoon may be more effective. Saturday and Sunday mornings and afternoons may be a good time if you are targeting parents with active kids. This audience may be checking their social media on mobile devices during soccer games, swim meets, or hockey practices.

The content of your tweet will also help determine timing. If you are releasing a report that could affect the stock market, make sure you schedule the tweet immediately after the press release. However, if you are tweeting an event advertisement that will attract working families, think about scheduling the tweet for a Friday lunch hour or the evening commute.

Finally, the most strategically timed updates are based in research. This ADVERBLOG article has great statistics to help social media gurus time their updates. Important takeaways from the article include:

· Almost half of the U.S. population is based in the Eastern Time Zone
· The percentage of retweets per hour peaks at 6 p.m.
· Twitter click through rate by hour spikes around noon and again at 6 p.m.
· Facebook shares peak around noon

With this said, why is timing important to social media messaging? Simple: your message will fall flat if your targeted audience doesn’t see it or if they don’t have time to click a link. So before you schedule your next social media update, be sure to take into account your audience, content, and the facts to make sure your message makes an impression on the correct audience at the correct time.

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