Last week I did a Webinar with my friends (and Convince & Convert sponsors) Argyle Social about social media timing. I use Argyle Social to send most of my tweets, Facebook and Linkedin updates et al, and the guys at Argyle (which specializes in advanced metrics and social reporting) agreed to put some of my crazy theories to the test.
We uncovered a great many interesting factoids, and even some “non-advice’ including the finding that if you’re a B2B company what day you tweet (within the work week) is irrelevant.
The big take-away (I hope) from our Webinar is that AVERAGE PEOPLE CARE ABOUT AVERAGES. Listening to some huge survey that says “on average, the best time to tweet is 2pm Wednesdays” is a mockery in stereo. First, that data is totally bogus, and whomever propagates that crap should know better. Secondarily, YOU should know better. The reality is that YOU need to determine what’s right for YOUR COMPANY.
As we talked about in the Webinar you need to create a defined hypothesis, and test that hypothesis with enough data to be significant statistically, while ensuring that you are not changing more than one variable at a time. Easy? Nope. Important? Yep.
Social media success is exiting the era of sympathy, and entering the era of science. Are you ready?
The reality is that your results may vary. However, one finding that we uncovered in the research is that there may be a large opportunity for B2C marketers on Facebook on Sundays. We found that few companies publish status updates on Sunday, yet engagement (clicks divided by audience) is 30% higher that Saturday, and even higher that than versus weekdays.
I know your community management team may be at church and/or gorged on buckwheat pancakes and apple-smoked bacon, but this data from Argyle Social suggests that you need to try Sunday Facebook posts, even if they are staged in advance. (recording of the Webinar available at: this link.
Which of our findings did you find most interesting?