By Alexandra Smith

Hubspot‘s social media marketing scientist Dan Zarrella takes a look at timing in social media, email, and blogs.

Zarrella offers some important advice on timing your online communications, an element seldom analyzed. He uses a scientific approach, which he likens to the study of medicine, to compile data and create visual representations of the best time to accomplish your online objectives.

Picture social media as a cocktail party: Why should I want to listen to you? What do you have to offer? He also explains the concept of contra-competitive timing — that is, putting out content when other people aren’t, in order to be noticed.

Zarrella explains the best times to tweet, update your Facebook status, post blogs, get click-throughs on links, get comments on posts, and send email blasts. He offers specific advice according to each platform and your objective.

Social media timing

Twitter

• Retweets: If you want retweets, post your tweets late in the day (2-5pm) and late in the week.
• Click-throughs: Saturdays and Sundays are best for click-throughs from Twitter. Monday and Thursday are the worst. Click-throughs do not decline at night.
• Do not be afraid to tweet too much. People who tweet 22 times a day have the most followers.
• Tweet the same thing without posting the same tweet – highlight a part of your previous tweet.

Tips

• bit.ly links: You can paste someone’s bitly link into your browser and put a “+” sign after it to see how many click-throughs they got on the bitly link. Compare how many followers they have to determine their click-through rate ratio.
• Check out tweetwhen.com. Enter your Twitter username and find out when your most retweetable time and day is!

Facebook

• Pages with updates posted every other day have the most likes.
• Be more careful about how often you put post on Facebook; it’s easier to flood someone’s news feed.
• If you want shares on Facebook, Saturday is the best, Sunday is good.
• Thursday is the worst day for sharing. (Facebook sharing is probably less during the week because many workplaces block it).

Email

• Most people do not have separate work and personal email accounts. This blurs the line between B2B and B2C.
• Most emails are read in the morning. The best time of day to send emails is 4-7 a.m. Nighttime is the worst time for email reading. Try sending emails very early!
• Email bounces are highest on the weekend, and more occur early in the morning.
• People are most likely to submit abuse or spam reports on Saturdays and Sundays. (They have more time to read emails on the weekend, and thus have more time to report spam).
• Click-through rates are higher on the weekend. People get fewer messages on the weekend, so your email is likely to get more opens and more click-throughs. The downside about weekends is that your bounce rate will be higher, and you may have more spam reports.
• If you’re sending frequent emails and want click-throughs on links, you are most likely to get click-throughs if you send one email a month. However, increasing the frequency of your emails will have little effect on the click-through rate.
• Unsubscribe rates are also highest when you email once a month. However increasing your email sends will have little effect on unsubscribe rates.
• New email recipients will click through most. They are the most interested and have the most brand recognition.
• Unsubscribe rates are the highest after the first one or two emails you send to new recipients. After this point, the effect of recency is insignificant.

All in all, send more emails, and experiment with sending on the weekend!

Blogging

• Most blog followers read in the morning. There is little decline in reading throughout the day, however. Men are more likely to read blogs at night than women.
• The most popular blog reading hour is 10-11 a.m. Blog readership DECREASES on the weekend.
• Surprisingly, most comments on blogs occur on Saturday, and also on Sunday. People who do read blogs on the weekend have more time to comment.
• If you want click-throughs in your blog, 6-7 a.m. is the best time. The rest of the day and week is irrelevant for click-throughs. Blog early in the morning if you want click-throughs!
• Blogs published more than once each day have more views than click-throughs. The more often you blog, the more click-throughs and comments you’ll get.

All in all, blog more!

Check out Dan Zarrella’s timing webinar. Follow him on Twitter.