To reap the benefits of social media marketing, brands need to understand their customers' social habits - and what they want to get out of their online outreach.

As long as you have consistent social media marketing throughout the week, you can reach target audiences with your content. But if you’re concerned about getting the most out of your Twitter campaign, you should take note of the latest research from ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, which found that weekend posts actually get the most traction with users.

The bottom line is that Tweets have the most engagement potential when they’re sent on Sunday, between 9 PM and midnight, and contain a picture. How did we arrive at that very specific set of criteria?

 Brand Tweets sent on Sundays get more replies than any other day of the week
 The highest engagement rates (4.9 replies and 27.3 Retweets) happen from 9 PM to 12 AM
 The average photo Tweet gets nine consumer Retweets, compared to four for text-only posts

Does this mean companies should hoard their best Tweets until everyone is watching TV the night before they start the work week? Absolutely not – but it does show that an understanding of a brand’s audience can reap marketing rewards. In this instance, companies that want engagement and referral traffic might want to consider embargoing some Twitter posts for the end of the weekend.

Want to learn more about optimizing content for specific channels and users?
Check out this blog post on the subject of publishing content for maximum impact.

Engagement = followers = referrals

On Twitter, or any other social media marketing channel, engagement is generally the first step in a process that leads to more followers, more referral traffic and eventually more conversions. This path was on full display during a campaign we coordinated for a client in the commodity futures and trading industry.

By taking over management of the business’ Twitter feed, we were able to perform social listening to better understand industry conversations taking place online. From there, we could customize headlines and optimize post timing.

Within a year, engagement was up, and the total number of followers increased from 1,000 to 3,200. There was a commensurate growth in referral traffic from Twitter (197 percent), and conversions that began on social media similarly increased 178 percent.

A strategy that’s implemented to help a brand’s bottom line needs to start with the basics: Where do likely customers go online, what do they talk about, what do they like to see and how can you reach them? By optimizing the subjects and timing of posts, business’ can tilt the odds of social conversions in their favor.

If you find it hard to believe Sunday nights are great for Twitter engagement, check out our recent post. It had some of the highest engagement figures for the month, including six Retweets and 18 Favorites.  

 

Alex Butzbach is a Marketing Writer at Brafton. He studied Communications at Boston College, and after a brief stint teaching English in Japan, he entered the world of content marketing. When he isn't writing and researching, he can be found on a bike somewhere in Metro Boston.