6 Keys to Rock Star Twitter Engagement

Emily Williams
Published: 07/04/2012
Posted by: RET Staff

Timing is everything. This saying is certainly true when taken in the context of social media. According to a new report, the right time to post on Twitter for maximum engagement is on the weekend, between 1 and 4 p.m. The study also revealed some other interesting keys to improving Twitter engagement. For the purposes of the study, engagement was defined as the number of replies and retweets a Tweet receives (factoring in number of Followers).

1) Post on Weekends
Based on the study (from Buddy Media, reported on MarketingCharts.com) Tweets published on weekends see 17% higher engagement than Tweets posted on weekdays. The study showed that this number is even higher for certain industries. These results are confirmed by a Hubspot study that found that click-through rates are higher on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays than during the rest of the week.

2) Post Between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. EST
It’s not just the day of the week that matters. You also need to consider the time of day when you’re posting on social media. The study found that the most effective time to Tweet is between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern. That time frame gets smaller when you look at other research (for example, Bit.ly recommends Tweeting between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Eastern).

3) Ask for Retweets
When you see “Please RT,” how does it make you feel? If you’re like many people, it annoys you (and the last thing you’re going to do if you’re annoyed is retweet). On the other hand, you might also belong to an equally large contingent that actually does so. The Buddy Media study found that Tweets that ask for a retweet have a retweet rate that is 12 times higher than Tweets that don’t ask for the retweet.

Want to make a retweet even more likely? Actually spell out the word “retweet” instead of merely including “RT.”