Is the time right?

You know what they say about sales/comedy/business/life and just about anything else you can think of, it's all about timing.

The same is for Social Media. It's ALL about timing, well, okay not all, but it's pretty high on the list of things to get right!

I keep seeing people posting tweets/facebook updates at midnight and later. I might be seeing them, but there's not many other people who are as  insomniac as me, and unless you're targeting the American Market, there's very little point having tweets etc going out that late. I would also think that it would be really obvious that they're auto tweets, which people naturally filter out when they're reading through any of the social media platforms.

So, what's the best time for you to be posting? Well, you need to think about a couple of things.

1. Who is your target Market?

2. Which is their most populated platform?

3. Where are your competition posting?

4. Are they getting successful engagement?

And the most important thing:

5. What time are they likely to be on social media?

Let's take an example target group. Stay at home mothers of school age children. Age bracket 30-40 years old.

Ok, so, they're more likely to be on facebook than twitter or google plus, and highly unlikely to be on LinkedIn.

If you're a parent, you know how manic mornings can be, you know that you hardly have a  minute to breathe, let alone look at a computer/phone/ipad to check who's up to what before you've got them delivered to school.

Therefore, there's  little point in posting a lot of content before 8.30am. If you were using twitter, I would suggest you post a couple of tweets between 6.30 and 8, but for Facebook, you need to be very careful how often you update your page, so I would wait until the time is right.

You could wait until about 11am when most people sit down for a coffee and if they're like me, a biscuit, or just before school kick out time, when they might be waiting in the car for the bell to ring. If you're using twitter, I would aim for a tweet to go out at all those times.

Then, in the evening, there's no point posting until around 7, when Mum is (hopefully for them) sat down with a glass of wine having a catch up on facebook.

My point is this. You have to put yourself in your target market's shoes. Think about their lifestyle, and when they are most likely to be having a look at their computer or phone. Have a look at what works, and what doesn't work for your competitors and you can capitalise on that.

**edit** Thanks to Kevin for sending me the link to www.tweriod.com, which is a fab tool that tells you what time your users are twitter!

What you actually post is a whole mother kettle of fish, and one we can talk about another time.


****If you have found this blog helpful, please leave a comment, and you may be interested to know that I will soon be selling a social media template to help you construct your own campaigns. please email info@adoresocialmedia.co.uk****