To get the most from your Twitter account you need to tweet the right messages to the right people at the right time. This is easier said than done. According to research by bit.ly, the half life of a tweet is just 2.8 hours. As your target audience is likely to dip in and out of Twitter throughout the day they may well miss your important messages. So when is the best time to tweet to get the most from your technology PR?
As a guide, the majority of Twitter activity takes place mid afternoon. Analysis of the Publitek account definitely peaks around 3pm but has several spikes throughout the day and some of Publitek’s most engaged electronics and engineering Tweeters active outside of this window. Twitter is busiest on Wednesday but this does not necessarily apply to your Twitter account and most new followers appear on a Friday morning, thanks to the Follow Friday hashtag #ff. If your market is global, you obviously need to take different time zones into account.
How do you determine the optimum time for tweeting to engineering, technology and electronics companies?
There are plenty of apps and sites to help electronics and engineering firms determine the best time to tweet.
Twitter’s own Tweetdeck makes scheduling tweets for later delivery very simple. Combine this with Tweriod and you will be able to make the most of your schedule. Tweriod provides a free analysis of your Twitter account so that you can tweet when your audience is listening. Tweriod also makes the perfect partner to Buffer, a service making it easy to find and share content on Twitter, at intervals throughout the day.
Sproutsocial and Hootsuite have recently added intelligent scheduling facilities to their services. Sproutsocial’s Queue and Hootsuite’s Autoschedule automatically send tweets when they are mostly likely to be seen by your followers.
These scheduling services will help you post more efficiently and make the most of your Twitter efforts but remember that Twitter is a two way communication medium. The most successful tweeters are those people who are genuinely present and who listen, reply and engage.
