Last week I took a class from Dan Zarrella, the Social Media Scientist from HubSpot on The Science of Blogging. I’ve been writing a bit lately about blogging, FaceBook and Twitter for small businesses and I was very interested in hearing Dan’s perspective. The great thing about Dan Zarrella is he doesn’t opine about things, he test and tests some more. Dan talked about 50 minutes and if you have ever heard him speak you know that in 50 minutes you can get as much information from Dan as you would get from another lecturer in 100 minutes. Dan talked about the science of blogging but I’m only going to talk about a small part of his lecture, when to tweet and post to your Facebook page about your blog.

When Do People Read Blogs

Dan is based in Boston and all of his tests are related to Eastern Standard Time but it is clear that people read more blogs in the morning. Blog reading seems to peek about 10:00 AM EST. If most blog readers are like me they get to work, get a cup of coffee and sit down to see what is in their in-box. Before the day starts to get busy is the best time to take a few minutes to read a blog. The lesson here is to make sure your blog is posted before your first readers sit down with their cup of coffee to read what’s in their inbox.

When should you post in Facebook

Facebook is not considered by many businesses “mission critical” and many people are discouraged from reading Facebook while at work. This is true even if Facebook is your source for blogs and business news. Dan’s research shows that Facebook usage peaks twice during the day. The first time early in the morning about 9:00 AM EST, this is before most people across North America have punched in for work. The second peak is about 7:00 PM EST after everybody is off the clock. You should post your blog early in the day but you can post it on Facebook later in the day so it’s at the top of the list when everyone gets home from work.

When should you send out a Tweet

Dan’s research shows that twitter traffic is pretty flat all day with a steady increase throughout the day. The really interesting statistic is when people re-tweet. There is a significant trough in the morning and a pretty dramatic peak starting about 3:00 PM and lasting till about 8:00 PM. If you think that a lot of twitter traffic is often automated the steady volume makes sense. But people are the ones who often re-tweet and this graph shows people are active in the late afternoon and early evening. If you are tweeting and you want people to see your tweet and if you want them to retweet it, make sure you send out your tweet in the afternoon. Dan also found out that if you write “please retweet” the tweet is more likely to be tweeted. Who knew?

What Day of the Week is Best?

Blog views are higher on Mondays but are fairly steady all week and drop off dramatically on the weekend. This makes sense, everybody needs a day off. But when you look at when people tweet and retweet Friday is the high point of the week. When you look at Facebook Sharing then Saturday is the top day. Again, people have time to tweet and visit their Facebook pages when they are not at work.

Conclusions

From Dan Zarrella’s research it seems that we are busy online all week long but there are a few takeaways when you think of your strategies for posting blogs and promoting them on Facebook and Twitter.

• Post your blogs early in the morning
• Post your blogs during the weekdays, especially on Monday
• Tweet about your blogs later in the day
• Tweet about you blogs later in the week
• Post to your Facebook page later in the day
• Post to your Facebook page on Saturday

I am very interested in Dan’s research and use it when I work with my clients on their social media marketing campaigns. If you would like to know about our approach to social media marketing please contact us.

Graphs credit: Dan Zarrella