What is the best time of day to tweet?

June 26th, 2009

What is the best time of day to tweet?
- automotive sales

When you post a message on Twitter will have a lot to do with how many people see it.  Post at midnight, and not many people are on their computers.  By the time they get on the next morning, your tweet has been buried by all the new messages that have been added since then.

Anecdotally, I find the best times to be first thing in the morning, around lunch, and right before the end of the day.  In the morning people are checking their email, RSS feeds, and social media before they get started for the day.  Lunch is a breaking point in the workday where people can stop what they are working on and check back in to see what’s happening on Twitter.  At the end of the day, there’s often few minutes to kill where it doesn’t make sense to start some new block of work that you won’t get very far into.  What’s great for killing a few minutes?  Twitter!

None of that is based on numbers, though.  ClarityWEB over in the UK did a little research on tweeting at different times of day.  The results show that globally the most traffic occurs around lunchtime in the U.S.  Based on that information you could decide that is when most people are on Twitter, and that’s when you should Tweet.  That’s not a bad approach.  I would point out, though, that some people may log in and read their Twitter account without posting a tweet themselves.  I don’t think that activity is figured into the data from ClarityWEB.

In short, there’s no authoritative answer, but I would recommend tweeting during the work day.  That’s when the largest number of people are on their computer or movile devices and can easily check Twitter.

If you’re curious, here’s a graphic showing when @SilverSquare is tweeting created with a tool by Xefer:

Time of Day on Twitter for Raquel

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How can Twitter help in the promotional products industry?

June 18th, 2009

Can you provide suggestions on how Twitter could help in my industry with promotional products/branded merchandise?
- promotional products

There’s a couple good uses for Twitter that come to mind.  The first two are good for anybody, but the third suggestion below should be particularly useful for your industry.

1.) Run specials.  People are always looking for a deal.  Twitter is a channel that makes it very easy for your customers to get notice about time-sensitive discounts.  When your suppliers run a special on a particular item (or maybe even when they don’t) send an offer for that item to your followers on Twitter.  You’ll need to do this with some frequency so you can train your followers to look for these deals.

2.) Talk about key topics.  People do searches for tweets that talk abou the topics that interest them.  So talk about golf and golf courses.  The people finding your tweets will be people who are more likely to want branded golf supplies.

3.) Follow conferences.  South by South West is a huge music, movie, and tech conference that encourages people attending and talking about the conference on Twitter to include #sxsw in their tweets so that a simple search will return all of the dialogue about this conference.  Other conferences are following suit with their own unique versions of #sxsw.  Seek these out and follow the conversations about who had the best (and more importantly worst!) swag.  That’s a prospect list.

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Why Should Big Business Care About Twitter?

June 16th, 2009

I just don’t see the value of Twitter to big business. Why would those of us in corporate America care or see value in using Twitter?
- CPA

Good question.  We’ve talked before about measuring your return on the time you spend on Twitter, and it’s important to make sure you’re getting value.  A lot of the media attention about Twitter right now seems to be focusing on how an individual can easily connect with a large network.  In fact that was the rallying cry of Ashton Kutcher as he raced CNN to 1 million Twitter followers.  He won that race.  The corporate Goliath fell, and Twitter was the new slingshot.  It’s a compelling story, and not completely baseless.

Twitter had it’s first big break through in the realm of big business, though.  Computer manufacturer Dell created a big stir when they announced at the end of 2008 that they had earned $1 million in revenue through posting discount offers on their Twitter account.  While Twitter can certainly help small business owners who are looking to make personal connections, there’s no reason corporate America can’t leverage this social media platform.

1. ) Create a culture – Twitter is an opportunity to develop a loyal following.  Just creating a Twitter account and sending out headlines isn’t enough, though.  You need to give them something through Twitter that they can’t find anywhere else.  Maybe it’s special discount offers.  It could be links to resources that you only share through Twitter.  How about a channel to get a quick personal response when they’re afraid they’ll need to wade through red tape?  Which leads to…

2.) Give your organization a face - We could blame Hollywood.  There’s a perception among the general public that big businesses are often evil, soulless entities that are only interested in profit.  Individuals are good and corporations are bad.  So give them an individual to connect with.  Ever eat at a restaurant where the chef comes out and asks you how your meal is?  That’s the feeling you should be striving to recreate. 

3.) Brand monitoring – Even if you aren’t personally using Twitter, millions of other people are.  When someone talks about your business or your product, that’s going to be seen by a lot of people.  If the comments are critical, you need to know about it and respond.  When someone complains about you on Twitter, you need to be watching for mentions of your name and immediately jump into the conversation to help find a resolution.

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