With social media being one of the main platforms for marketing today, there is a lot of importance in the things that need to be taken into consideration while using it. A recent report from Compendium shows the importance of one consideration that sometimes people underestimate; time. Surely, everyone has heard the phrase, “Timing is everything,” but rarely do people apply that advice to their own endeavors. The report and infographic that Compendium has released shows just how timing can affect your social media marketing efforts, and how marketers can more strategically consider timing in social media marketing.

Compendium is an internet marketing software company, and by evaluating the social sharing data from over 200 companies, they have compiled some information that could be quite useful to marketers. Among a lot of information regarding what to include in social media marketing messages, the company’s infographic includes a section entitled “When to say it.” In terms of time of day, the ideal time for B2B marketers to post to Twitter is a few hours before or a few hours after lunch, which is the same for B2C marketers. For Facebook, B2B marketers showed the best results when posting around lunch time. B2C marketers saw their best Facebook results around lunchtime, as well as in the later afternoon hours.

This theory that the time of day will have a huge impact on social media marketing results will seem silly to some, but I have never really seen data as specific as the data laid out by Compendium on the subject. As redundant as it may sound, it could not hurt to try out these time-of-day guidelines. Chances are, they are legitimately effective.

The data also shows what days of the week yielded more clicks for the companies studied. For B2B marketers on LinkedIn, Sunday was the day of the week that showed the most clicks. For Twitter, Wednesday was the heavy hitter with clicks for B2B marketers. For B2C marketers on LinkedIn, the best day to post and get clicks was Monday. For Twitter however, both Monday and Wednesday showed great results.

So, it seems that timing really does play a big part in social media marketing. It’s easy to understand when you look at the times of day that most people are using these sites, in terms of consumers and businesses. Since timing has such an impact though, and many marketers do not consider time of day (as I have seen Promoted Posts on Facebook at around 5 AM at times) there needs to be a lot more attention paid to such a consideration. Sure, marketing is a busy business and social media marketing is no different, but timing seems like something that people have underestimated, not allowing them to see the results they potentially could. So, maybe next time you have a huge company or brand announcement, delay it a few days and see just how much more engagement you get than you would have if you announced it on the wrong day, according to these results.

Written by Michael Levanduski

Michael Levanduski is a news reporter at Performance Marketing Insider. He’s been a writer at one level or another for the past 15+ years. He has three kids and lives in Grand Rapids, MI.

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