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Best time to post on twitter

What Is The Best Time To Post On X (formally Twitter) in 2023

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by

Masooma Memon
in

Are you worried about your consistently decreasing Twitter engagement? Even after posting accurate content regularly and according to your niche. Then Maybe, it’s because you are not posting it at the right time. Yes, you heard me right.

You have only tiny silver of time to grab your audience’s attention with your tweet. The average Twitter user session is the least amongst other social media platforms, just 3 minutes. Undoubtedly, your content is a significant factor behind your Twitter growth but when you post, join hands with it to determine your overall Twitter engagement.

Let’s answer that for you in this guide. We’ll also look at four active brands’ Twitter accounts to see when they post to get a rough idea of the best times to tweet. We’ll ensure you get your audience’s attention each time you post on Twitter. Let’s dig in.

The research behind the best time to post on Twitter

Let’s say you run a local café. When do you think it’s the best time to post on Twitter for such a business? In the morning, because that’s when your audience wakes up and is likely looking to grab a hot cup of coffee. If you have a SaaS business, your audience wouldn’t mind an early evening tweet.

Hence, when answering exactly when is the best time to post on Twitter, only you can tell since you know your audience best. Some questions that pop up here are:

  • Are you targeting a local or an international audience?
  • What does your audience’s schedule look like?
  • When is your audience likely to be active on Twitter?

Recruiters, for example, tend to be active on social networks in the morning. But you’ll find working mothers making the time to use the app late in the day. Similarly, you need to be mindful of your time zone. For example, if you’re based in the Middle East but are targeting a UK audience, you’ll need to post according to your audience’s time zone.

Put, revisit your buyer’s persona (demographics, in particular) to identify possible times when your audience will likely be active on Twitter. Then, match these with the best times to post according to research and identify a few tweeting times. From there, experiment to find out exactly when your audience tends to be active.

Related Read: Twitter Marketing Strategy: How I’ve Grown My Twitter Account

The overall best times to post on Twitter (by Day)

On the basis of 6 million posts scheduled and published via ContentStudio with over 30 million engagement, our internal data chart showed that Wednesday, Friday, tuesday and thursday are the best day to post on twitter for maximum engagement.best time to post on twitter by day

Based on ContentStudio’s study, we divided the optimal times for posting on twitter according to days of the week:

  • Best time to post on Twitter on Monday: 2 pm EST – 4 pm EST and 10 am EST
  • Best time to post on Twitter on Tuesday: 1 pm EST, 3 pm EST
  • Best time to post on Twitter on Wednesday: 4 pm EST, 6 pm EST and 10 pm EST
  • Best time to post on Twitter on Thursday: 12 am EST, and 10 am EST
  • Best time to post on Twitter on Friday: 6 pm EST and 2 pm EST
  • Best time to post on Twitter on Saturday: 7 pm EST and 12 am EST
  • Best time to post on Twitter on Sunday: 10 am EST and 3 pm EST

best time to post on twitter by hour

How to find the best time to post on Twitter?

  • Use Twitter Analytics to find the best time to post

Twitter Analytics lets you track Tweet impressions, profile visits, and other engagement metrics. In addition, you can get an overview of your Twitter profile using free Twitter analytics tools.

Go to the analytics section to get a complete overview of your Twitter engagement in the previous months.

Beneath the “Tweets” section, you can get a birds-eye view of all your tweet activities. 

From the top right corner, you can select what you want to see in the activity data of your tweets.

twitter analytics tools

  • Using ContentStudio’s recommended times:

In contrast to Facebook analytics, Twitter doesn’t tell you when to post. However, it still gives you enough insights to do trial experiments to find the best time. First, organize your experiments over a month. Then, each day this month, tweet at specific times in the morning, noon, and evening. It seems like a tedious task, and that is where ContentStudio can help you out.

It not only allows you to schedule tweets in advance, but also posts them automatically at the time and date you specify. But it also provides you with extensive twitter analytics and the best recommended times to post. It helps you experiment with multiple time slots without any hassle. Schedule multiple tweets and add them to the queue. You can analyze their engagement via the analytics module. 

  • Choose social media post from compose module. Upon selection, under the posting schedule, you will see a clickable link ”View Recommended Best Time to Post”.

contentstudio social media post composer

  • When you click View Recommended Times, a modal will appear with a heat map depicting Engagement probability scores in relation to given dates and hours. 
  • You can see the time-stamp and probability of engagement when hovering over a block in the heat map. If you click over any block, you will be able to select the time stamp for scheduling the post.

recommended best times to tweet by ContentStudio

Read-Up: 30 Twitter Tools to Boost Your Marketing Efforts

  • Focus on Your Business Niche

The best time to tweet also varies depending on your business type. In the case of B2B businesses, the best time to post seems to be standard business hours on the weekdays. Digging further, 9 am-4 pm on Mondays & Thursdays are the most useful, especially between lunchtime from 11 am-1 pm.

In general, B2C businesses see fewer changes week-to-week than B2B businesses. The reason is that customers can shop and research products during off-hours or days, but businesses mainly operate during regular business hours. Even for B2C companies, though, weekdays are better for posting. Therefore, B2C companies should aim to conduct their business during lunchtime, 12 to 1 p.m.

  • Learn About Your Audience

Consider your audience’s average day and when they would most likely have time to browse Twitter when timing your tweets. If you’re targeting parents who stay at home, the best time to tweet would be different if you’re targeting teens or adults. To help you plan your Twitter posting strategy, consider their habits and daily schedules.

  • Keep track of Engagement And Interactions.

Looking at your account’s stats is the best way to find your time to tweet. For future postings, analyze when your most engaging tweets were posted. You can keep a thorough analytical eye on impressions, profile visits, number of tweets, etc. Twitter’s inbuilt analytics would not directly give you the best times to post. But, indirectly, you can find it based on impressions and engagement. Look for a pattern and then try to follow it in the future. Once you have discovered the pattern, follow it to post in the future.

  • Tweet Regularly

To build a strong online presence on Twitter, you must tweet consistently. A tweet’s lifespan is only 18 minutes, so you need to post content constantly to stay in the minds of your followers. However, if you find posting multiple times a day challenge, you can make use of a social media scheduler to schedule your tweets in advance. ContentStudio is a social media scheduling tool that will help you plan and schedule loads of content in one go. It will also create tweet variations that you can use to create recurring Twitter updates.

The best time to post on Twitter: A case study of 4 Businesses

Let’s look at how other brands tweet, including how often and when. Remember: you don’t have to follow them precisely since your industry may vary, and your audience will be different.

1. Notion

Notion doesn’t have a strictly defined tweeting schedule. They either post daily or take a one-day posting gap to post another day. The exciting bit: they don’t tweet in bulk. Visit the Notion Twitter account to see that they typically post once during the day or, at the very most, twice.

Notion's tweeting schedule

Remember that posting once daily doesn’t mean the account isn’t active for the rest of the day. But, it is engaging with their audience (evident from the retweets sprinkled between tweets), responding to brand mentions (tag them to see for yourself as I have in the past), and getting back to customer questions (check out their ‘Tweets & Replies’ section).

2. Grammarly

Like Notion, Grammarly doesn’t have a strict tweeting schedule. However, their Twitter posting schedule is well-defined in that they post twice during the day, almost daily. They might skip a Saturday at times, but the account usually celebrates resting and recharging over the weekends or sharing #SundayThoughts:

In fact, they often tap into popular day-related hashtags such as #FridayFeeling, #WeekendVibes, and #MondayMotivation among others. Other hashtags they use are #amwriting, and #writingtips alongside trending ones such as #MentalHealthAwarenessMonth

On some days, they tweet once. But, needless to say, the team behind Grammarly’s Twitter profile is pretty active in responding to brand mentions.

3. Shopify

The e-commerce giant has a very loose posting schedule on Twitter. Some weeks they post back to back. Other days, there’s a 2-3-day gap. Whatever the posting day, Shopify usually tweets once on any given day.

At times, they might share a thread update too like the one below:

There’s also an occasional retweet with comments in their feed.

That said, the Shopify team is incredibly engaging with their Twitter audience – responding to their comments and supporting them.

4. Innocent Drinks

Of all the Twitter accounts we’ve analyzed, Innocent Drinks has the most loosely defined Twitter posting schedule. Again, they’re very active daily, but when it comes to their tweets, there’s no robust schedule they seem to be following.

On some weeks, they post every two days: On other weeks, they tweet daily. Occasionally, there’s a tweet on the weekend. And, if there’s a relevant hashtag, they even tweet all day long as they did for #EuroVision.

innocent drinks tweeting schedule

The takeaway from these businesses? We have a handful:

Posting times for each industry vary depending on where their audience is located, who they are, and when they’re active on Twitter.

You don’t need to stick with a strict posting schedule – a loose one would do. But, don’t forget; you need to be active daily to engage with your audience and answer any questions they may have (this is all the more important if you’re focused on improving your social media customer service).

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  • Create relevant tweets to your audience so they can engage with you. Also, engagement isn’t one sided – you’ve got to retweet relevant content and respond to comments.
  • Leverage trending or evergreen hashtags only if they are relevant to your audience and business.
  • In short, you must tweet consistently. Best you start by creating a social media content plan, so you have a clear idea of what to publish, how to engage with your audience, and how to self-promote yourself without coming across as overly salesy.
  • With the blueprint ready, set up a social media content calendar to follow a posting calendar with pre-baked tweets. This saves you time since you don’t have to decide what to tweet daily and allows you to be consistent.
  • One more tip to tweet regularly: use a social media scheduler like ContentStudio that can schedule tweets to go out at a time when your audience is active. This way, you won’t miss posting on Twitter if you are neck-deep into social media audits or other work.
  • With that said, let’s discuss how to get engagement on your content every time you post on twitter.

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Read-Up: 10 Twitter Trends to Follow

How do you Increase engagement each time you tweet?

Follow these tips as you use Twitter and write content for it.

1. Grow your audience: I don’t say ‘grow your Twitter followers’ because growing your brand on Twitter isn’t a numbers game. It’s ???? that ???? simple.

Here’s how you can build an audience—one, consistently tweet relevant (and helpful) content. Two, engage with your followers – it’s what keeps them around and, eventually, converts them into paying customers. If not, they’d probably recommend your business to an interested friend or colleague, generating word-of-mouth referrals.

So how do you engage with your followers to grow a dedicated audience that loves each tweet you send? Try these tactics:

2. Ask questions: They could be audience-related, as Shopify does in this tweet:

shopify tweeting schedule

Or, ask product-related questions like Microsoft does here:

microsoft onedrive tweet

3. Reply to the comments on your tweet. I’ve seen tons of brands that don’t do so and it does nothing but signal interested folks to NOT engage with you.

4. Share your audience’s content. Either retweet it directly or retweet with a comment.

tweet by gmail

5. Track your brand mentions and respond to them (this is essential for both negative and positive mentions). Doing so helps you grow brand enthusiasts too!

mention brands in your tweets

6. Poll your audience. This is a helpful way to not just interact with your audience but gather feedback too.

7. Join Twitter chats. Take a page from Biteable when it comes to engaging via Twitter chats:

join twitter chats

Speaking of Twitter chats, once you’ve made many relationships with your target audience on other chats consider starting your own.

However, before you rush: it’s crucial to do your homework. Ask yourself:

  • Does my audience need another Twitter chat?
  • What will the chat cover?
  • How do we plan to engage and give back to the Twitter chat community we build?
  • What time would you host this chat?

At the same time, ask your audience if they’d be interested in a Twitter chat. Scrap the idea entirely if the initial response to your research is poor – nobody wants to invest resources in something that likely won’t pay off.

Alternatively, consider hosting a trial Twitter chat for a quarter if your response is neutral. Then, determine if you should consider carrying on with the chat based on the answer you get.

So how does a Twitter chat get people to engage with your tweets? Such a chat helps you build a community that interacts with your content and helps spread the word, too (Remember: retweets expose your business to new audiences, and building a community is an excellent answer to getting retweets on Twitter).

Share content that educates entertains, and shows your brand personality.

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So far, among the types of tweets that drive engagement, we have question-based tweets and those that poll your audience. 

8. Tweets that educate and inform 

This means you either teach something in a tweet (or Twitter thread) as Todoist does:

education related tweets

And, share updates to keep users/customers informed.

Instapaper tweets

9. Tweets that entertain

It’s also essential you make an occasional entertaining tweet to keep things light and human – such tweets fall into the category of most-liked tweets of all time since they offer a blend of personality, your human side, and a few behind-the-scenes (BTS).

10. Tweets that show your brand personality

The goal here is to showcase your human side and brand values. A BTS tweet content that shows a day in your life or ‘here’s how we’ve been working on product line X’ impresses your audience.
Similarly, you can share what you stand for – just as Stripe has done in this tweet:

Stripe tweets

Bonus: When curating tweets, make sure you’re either adding your opinion on the curated content or mention what it offers as opposed to simply tweeting a link. Here’s a complete guide to content curation.

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11. Give back to your followers.

Here’s another way to keep your Twitter audience engaged and happy: don’t just take, take, take – return as well. How? Plan occasional discount codes for them, host giveaways, and plan content to help them, for instance, webinars.

‘Bear Notes App’ organized a great giveaway relevant to their brand and target users.

Bear tweet

It’s also a good idea to celebrate your audience or a slice of them if your target audience is vast.

tweet by whatsapp

12. Pair up with Twitter influencers and brand ambassadors

This helps you tap into new audiences. The best part? Influencers typically have highly engaged audiences, which means any people coming your way through them are likely going to engage with you too. On the plus side moreover, you’ll get more exposure for your brand.
If you can’t find industry-relevant influencers to collaborate with, consider giving credit where it’s due. Slack, for instance, worked with a creator for their emojis design, so they both shared the news by tagging each other in their tweets. The result? Both parties got exposure to unique audiences.

Related Read: How to Make a Twitter Header/Banner That Wins Followers

13. Get your employees involved

This is another way to get more eyeballs and engagement on your tweets. Plus, it shows your business’ humane side as well. Overall, it helps you build a community around your content, employees, and target audience.

Here’s an excellent, product-centred (but humane at the same time) Twitter thread from a Notion employee:

Similarly, the Ahrefs’ team takes the time to not just share their insights and experiences, but also posts from the company’s blog.

tweet by ahref's

Similarly, freelancers writing for Ahrefs do the same – helping everyone involved grow:

freelancers working with ahref's

Keep in mind: not all employees make company-related posts. Incentivizing them can help though. To this end, developing a company culture of sharing, supporting each other’s growth, and encouraging employees to grow their personal brands is a good idea.

14. Play with different content formats

Lastly, add variety to the tweets you create – this will always help you grow your engagement. Besides, it also tells you which format your audience likes the most so you can double down on creating more of it.

Formats you can try include videos, GIFs, memes, and even TikTok videos. Here’s an epic example of a tweet educating its audience with an attention-grabbing video:

And here’s Shopify sharing an audience-relevant, entertaining TikTok video:

Another amazing video-tweet idea is to create a screen recording based video or one that features your product like this:

As for GIFs and graphics, consider designing branded assets to stand out from the crowd and leave a memorable impression. Branded visual assets also show you’ve put in the work, therefore, garnering more engagement.

The goal is simple: create a visually appealing Twitter feed that your audience wants to follow and interact with. And, don’t forget to write tweets in your brand voice. Brands like Grammarly and Innocent Drinks quickly stand out on account of their unique voice – you can too!

Our case studies on the four brands above make it crystal clear: you don’t need too many tweets to stay on top of your audience’s mind. 1-2 tweets daily or one tweet every other day work best. Of course, it’s okay to take it to 3 tweets in a day too. But, increase your tweet frequency only when there’s something you have to say or when there’s a relevant hashtag that’s trendy, as Innocent Drinks did.

Whatever tweeting frequency you settle on, ensure you aren’t adding to the clutter. Aim always to add value instead.

One last question before we wrap this up. How much tweeting is too much? Tweeting too much typically means you aren’t sharing high-quality content. In that case, it doesn’t make sense to tweet so much since you should always be aiming to share valuable content.

What’s more, the idea behind consistent tweeting is to stay on your audience’s mind – educating them, and entertaining them. If you are tweeting way too much, you might end up just the opposite – frustrating your followers with a tweet overload.

So, it’s best to start with 1-2 tweets daily. If you have to turn up your tweet volume, aim for three daily tweets at most.

Also Read: How does Twitter Algorithm Work in 2022?

Let’s Conclude: What’s the Best Time and Day to Post on Twitter?

The ContentStudio data revealed that Wednesday, Friday, tuesday and thursday are most suitable days to post on Twitter.

Surprisingly, some of our twitter accounts insights showed a similar trend. However, every twitter account is different. So don’t take my word on this. Instead, dig deeper into your twitter insights and find the best time and day for yourself.

Since every social media platform is different, don’t be surprised if you find the best times for Instagram and facebook quite different from twitter. Figuring out the best time and day to post on any social media platform means you’re halfway through the process.

Remember that now you need a secret sauce to get attention on that social media platform – a recipe to cook something worth tasting.

It all comes down to the “great engaging content” that hits the bullseye. Don’t shy away from experimenting with different topics to see what your audience likes the best.

At the end of the day, though, you’ll need to experiment with the timings to tweet so you can nail the exact time your target audience will be more likely to see your content. Whatever you settle on, don’t forget to be consistent and focus on creating quality, audience-relevant tweets that encourage engagement.

Also Read: Best time to post on Social Media in 2022