What’s the Best Time to Blog, Tweet, and Email?

Ever wonder what the best times are to publish blog posts, send emails, or post updates on Twitter?

Dan Zarrella, HubSpot’s Social Media Scientist, conducted research for over 2 years on the best days and times to Tweet, blog, email and more.

• Which two U.S. time zones cover 80% of the population?
• Why should I send my marketing emails early in the morning?
• If I send more marketing emails, will our unsubscribe rate increase?
• What time of day do most people read blog posts?
• Does the volume of re-tweets change throughout the day? When is the best time capture re-tweets?
• What’s the optimum number of tweets per day?

Lots of people share lots of opinions on their blogs — but Dan does the research and has the data to backup his conclusions.

11 Takeaways from this presentation

Here are 11 takeaways from this presentation, grouped by channel:

Twitter

1. Late in the day and week is the most re-tweetable time.
2. Tweet more. It would be hard to over-do it.
3. To get more likes, space out your content frequency.

Email

4. Your newest subscribers are your best.
5. Email very early in the day.
6. Experiment with emailing on weekends.
7. Send more email. Again, it would be hard to over-do it.

Blogging

8. Know your audience.
9. Blog on the weekends for more comments.
10. Blog early in the morning for more links.
11. Blog more frequently.

4 questions Dan gets asked frequently about timing

How does timing vary for B2C vs. B2B companies?

“There are false distinctions between B2B and B2C consumers,” Dan says. “On the sales side, there are definitely tangible distinctions, such as length of sales cycles and decision makers. But on the marketing side, the distinction is less significant. B2B marketers are real humans who check their email late at night and on the weekends. As part of the Science of Email Marketing research , we learned that people don’t really separate their work and personal inboxes. More likely, people would maintain a separate inbox for spam. So stop obsessing over B2B vs. B2C and think about what’s going to appeal to your fellow humans.”

Can you saturate your Twitter audience?

“Yes, if you feature the same exact tweets. No, if you feature the same content but use different messaging. For instance, if you promote a blog post on Twitter, you can announce it using its article title. Later in the day, you can tweet certain stats from the post, or highlight key points, or draw attention to some important quotes. Be creative and just don’t post exactly the same thing over and over again.”

When do you start promoting a marketing event?

“Before you start promoting your marketing event, take some time for testing. At least a month before the event, start experimenting with different titles and see what message resonates with your audience. Then, about 2 weeks before the event, continue with promotion: publish blog posts, use email marketing and finish up with some social media engagement.”

Does experimenting with timing get in the way of consistency?

“Experimenting with timing is valuable for getting to know your audience well. Consistency, on the other hand, is critical for creating certain habits in your audience. Can you marry the two? Probably not right away, but overtime you should be able to get a sense of when your audience is most responsive and how to optimize this timing best.”