Does Social Media Have You Stumped? Look at the Clock!

With much focus being directed at commercial social media marketing, your business, like many others, probably operates a profile on one or more of the major social networks—Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. But like all marketing fads, some users of a particular strategy are highly successful, and many are not. You may be on the not-so-successful side of the coin and wondering why your social media efforts have gone unnoticed by the masses. Your problem may be as simple as the clock.

Top Social Media Outlets and Their Time Zones

Just like states and nations, various social media outlets have peak time zones where a larger number of eyes are likely to see your information. If you’re tweeting, most of your fellow fowl take up their perches around the middle of the day, say from a little after noon to sometime before 4 pm. However, if you’re up before the sun, your cheeps are likely to fall on deaf ears as evenings and early mornings are the most silent times in the Twitter forest. Facebook’s time zone is pretty similar, with only a few minutes separating its peak times from those of Twitter.

LinkedIn holds a far earlier peak time zone, with times preceding and following the standard 8-5 schedule being the best time to post. Once again, you’ll be a lonely owl if you are posting on LinkedIn after dark. Google Plus, which has a smaller fan base, also has a peak time, but this time is shorter than all of the previously mentioned networks, and ends some time before noon. Basically, if you want to be heard on Google Plus, start posting a few minutes after LinkedIn warms up.

Lastly, we cover Pinterest, and as the most unusual of all the popular social media outlets, Pinterest is almost alone in its peak times. While a few pins towards the end of the work day would be good, some of the best times to be on Pinterest are past midnight. So if you can’t tweet late, you might as well pin

Who Uses These Social Media Outlets Anyways?

You might be wondering about the diversity of following in the social media world. And while it is true that certain social media venues attract a certain gender or age group more strongly, not one of these major networks is exclusive to one group. Facebook is the big cheese, with nearly a billion users. Of these, nearly three fifths are women, with individuals over 40 years old composing nearly half the user group.

Twitter and Pinterest also have a large percentage of women in their user group, although they both attract a younger following. Twitter’s fan base is largely in their twenties and thirties with some forties, while Pinterest is mostly thirties and younger. Google Plus is on the opposite gender spectrum of Twitter and Pinterest, with a following composed primarily of men in their twenties. Finally, LinkedIn displays an even gender balance, with a generally older, more career-oriented user group of those approaching their mid-forties and early fifties.

The Key to Effective Social Media Marketing

The facts listed above are not hard or set in stone. In fact, your followers on Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google Plus, or Facebook may buck all trends. The key to effective social media marketing is knowing your fan base. If you know the demographic composition of your social media target market and the time most of them are online, you will be more likely to get your message across, and your tweets, pins, and posts will draw the attention they deserve.