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"This post was\u00A0originally published\u00A0on the\u00A0Buffer\u00A0blog.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWe\u2019re pretty keen on optimal timing for social media here at\u00A0Buffer, and I figured it was high time I collected all the information we have about online communication into one place. I\u2019ve collected research and stats on Twitter, Facebook, email and blogging to help you find the best time to communicate with others in each format.\r\n\r\nThe tricky thing I\u2019ve come across is that since the web is still so new,\u00A0a lot of the research available to us is conflicting. We really need more time and more studies to get definitive answers about what works best, and the fact that our audience members are constantly changing their own activity patterns makes it even harder to work out for sure. Looking at the latest\u00A0social media stats\u00A0seems to only confirm that.\r\n\r\nSo my suggestion would be to use this guide as just that\u2014a guide to help you work out what to test for your own audience, so that you can see what actually works best in your specific case.\r\n\r\nLet\u2019s get into the stats then!\r\nFacebook \u2013 find the best time to post your updates\r\nWhen I posted about\u00A0Facebook\u2019s News Feed algorithm, one of the factors I talked about was time decay. This is simply the age of your post: how long has it been since you posted it? With the recent introduction of\u00A0Story Bumping, time decay matters a lot less than how relevant your story is to the user in terms of getting into their News Feed (i.e. does it from a user or Page they interact with often, or have interacted with recently). Still, it\u2019s good to keep time decay in mind, since it does make\u00A0some\u00A0difference: you won\u2019t see posts from 3 months ago in your News Feed today.\r\n\r\nIn terms of specific days and times to post on Facebook, here are some of the stats I found:\r\n\r\nEngagement rates are 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays.\r\n\r\nI love the way this was explained in\u00A0Buddy Media\u2019s study: as they put it, \u201Cthe less people want to be at work, the more they are on Facebook!\u201D\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSpecific industries varied slightly in which days of the week garnered the most engagement, but most of them sit around the end of the week, from Wednesday to Friday.\r\n\r\nAnother study found that\u00A0engagement was\u00A032% higher on weekends, so the end of the week is definitely a good rough guide to start experimenting with.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nThe best time of day to post on Facebook is debatable, with stats ranging from 1pm to get the most shares, to 3pm to get more clicks, to the broader suggestion of anytime between 9am and 7pm. It seems that this generally points to early afternoon being a solid time to post, and anytime after dinner and before work being a long shot.\r\n\r\nFor more\u00A0Facebook stats\u00A0and\u00A0Facebook statistics\u00A0we\u2019ve written\u00A0a complete guide\u00A0for you to check out.\r\nTwitter \u2013 when is the best time to Tweet for engagement vs. clicks?\r\nTwitter is such a popular network for mobile users that it can be a bit tricky to lock down exactly when the best time to post is. Here are some suggestions from the research I\u2019ve found:\r\n\r\nTwitter engagement for brands is 17% higher on weekends.\r\n\r\n\u00A0\r\n\r\nIf you\u2019re tweeting from your company account, you might want to keep this in mind, especially if engagement is what you\u2019re looking for.\u00A0Buffer\u00A0can help you spread out your tweets to post at the optimal times, so you don\u2019t even have to work weekends to take advantage of this! Click-through rates are generally highest on weekends, as well as mid-week, on Wednesdays.\r\n\r\nOn the other hand, an\u00A0Argyle Social\u00A0study showed that weekdays\u00A0provide 14% more engagement than weekends, so this is definitely one you\u2019ll want to test on your audience.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nWhen we look at the time of day,\u00A0retweets have been\u00A0shown to be highest around 5pm.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nFor click-throughs, the best times seem to be around noon and 6pm.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nThis could be due to lunch breaks and people looking for something to keep them occupied on the commute home after work.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nThere are lots of Twitter users who primarily use a mobile device\u2014rarely loading up Twitter on their desktops. Twitter did\u00A0an interesting study\u00A0of these users and found that they are\u00A0181% more likely to be on Twitter during their commute.\r\n\r\nThey\u2019re also\u00A0119% more likely to use Twitter during school or work hours.\r\n\r\nFor more details on the latest\u00A0Twitter stats\u00A0and\u00A0Twitter statistics, check out\u00A0this guide.\r\nEmail \u2013 find the best time to send for the right content\r\nThere\u2019s been lots of research done on the best time to send emails, particularly in the case of email marketing. Some research done by\u00A0Dan Zarrella from Hubspot\u00A0broke down each time of day and worked out which type of emails work best for that period. Here\u2019s what he found:\r\n\r\n\t10pm\u20136am: This is the dead zone, when hardly any emails get opened.\r\n\r\n\r\n\t6am\u201310am: Consumer-based marketing emails are best sent early in the morning.\r\n\r\n\r\n\t10am-noon: Most people are working, and probably won\u2019t open your email.\r\n\r\n\r\n\tNoon\u20132pm: News and magazine updates are popular during lunch breaks.\r\n\r\n\r\n\t2\u20133pm: After lunch lots of people buckle down and ignore their inbox.\r\n\r\n\r\n\t3\u20135pm: Property and financial-related offers are best sent in the early afternoon.\r\n\r\n\r\n\t5\u20137pm: Holiday promotions &amp;amp;amp; B2B promotions get opened mostly in the early evening.\r\n\r\n\r\n\t7\u201310pm: Consumer promotions are popular again after dinner.\r\n\r\nWhat I thought was really interesting about this breakdown is why each type of email is more popular at certain times. From 3\u20135pm, for instance, the reason people open financial and property-related emails is that they\u2019re more likely to be thinking about their life situation and how to improve it. Understanding how these time blocks work can be a good start to sending your emails at just the right time.\r\n\r\nAnd since\u00A023.63% of emails are opened\u00A0within an hour of being received, this is something we definitely want to get right.\r\n\r\nFor more general emails,\u00A0open rates, click-through rates and abuse reports were all found to be highest during early mornings and on weekends.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nThis probably means that most of us have more time to dedicate to our inbox during these periods, rather than during the day when we\u2019re trying to get work done.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nIn\u00A0a different study by MailChimp\u00A0open rates were shown to be\u00A0noticeably lower on weekends.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nThey also found that\u00A0open rates increased after 12pm, and were highest between 2pm and 5pm.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nA\u00A0GetResponse study\u00A0backed this up by showing that open rates drop off slightly, and\u00A0click-through rates drop significantly on weekends.\r\n\r\nGetResponse found that\u00A0Thursday is the best day for both open rates and click-throughs.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nMark Suster offers\u00A0some great advice\u00A0when it comes to sending emails:\r\nOften I\u2019ll write emails on the weekend and then send first thing Monday morning. I want to be on top of the stack, not at the bottom of the pile. Most people process email first thing in the morning (although productivity experts say not to!).\r\n\r\nBTW, when I wrote blog posts on Sunday\u2019s I always Tweet again Monday morning for exactly this reason.\r\nBlog posts \u2013 what time should you hit publish on your posts?\r\nSo let\u2019s take a look at when to publish blog posts.\r\n\r\nDan Zarrella has some more\u00A0great stats\u00A0on this topic, but he makes a good point about the pros and cons of the timing you choose. One thing Dan suggests we consider is that\u00A0if we post during time of higher traffic, we\u2019re more likely to have higher bounce rates and get lost amongst the noise\u00A0of other content being published.\r\n\r\nOn the other hand,\u00A0posting at times when fewer people are online will garner less traffic and engagement, but give our posts more prominence and less competition against other content.\r\n\r\nHere are some useful stats from Dan\u2019s research into blog timing:\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\n\t70% of users say they read blogs in the morning\r\n\tMore men read blogs at night than women\r\n\tMondays are the highest traffic days for an average blog\r\n\t11am is usually the highest traffic hour for an average blog\r\n\tComments are usually highest on Saturdays and around 9am on most days\r\n\tBlogs that post more than once per day have a higher chance of inbound links and more unique views\r\n\r\nKnowing your audience is obviously important for working out the best time to publish on your blog. If your audience is women, for instance, mornings are probably a better bet than nights.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n&amp;amp;nbsp;\r\n\r\nWhile Mondays are the best days to publish for traffic,\u00A0Social Fresh\u00A0suggests\u00A0posting on a Thursday for more social shares\u00A0across the web. Here are also more ideas\u00A0to find the best time to publish blogposts.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThis study also found that most content sharing happens in the morning, which backs up Dan\u2019s stats that mornings are the most popular time to read blogs.\r\n\r\nWith Buffer\u2019s new\u00A0custom scheduling feature, you can now publish your post whenever suits you and schedule it to be promoted on social networks at a more optimal time. Plus, you can nowsend and schedule posts to Google+ from Buffer!\r\nTiming depends on the individual\r\nTiming is difficult to get exactly right, and a big part of this is because we all have different schedules and routines for checking email or using social media.\u00A0An experiment\u00A0by online retailer eBags showed this point perfectly. Looking at the latest\u00A0social media statistics\u00A0the range of different schedules seems to only increase too.\r\n\r\nThe company thought that when users were signing up to an email list, that was probably a good time of day for them to be online, so sending emails to them at that same time of day would work best. By analyzing the behavior of each individual user, eBags sent out emails to users at the same time of day they had signed up for the email list.\r\n\r\nThis actually worked incredibly well:\u00A0click-through rates rose by 20% and conversion rates rose by 65%.\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, this is such a complicated and time-consuming process that it wasn\u2019t sustainable. Hopefully these kind of features can be built into social media and email management tools in the future so we can all take advantage of these insights!\r\n\r\nHeader image credit: Thinkstock\r\n\r\nImprove your email marketing skills and efficiency in less than 2hrs.\u00A0Sign up for this upcoming TNW Academy class."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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