what\'s the right time?

Once again, ReadWriteWeb provides a few new nuggets of insight for social media practitioners. Marshall Kirkpatrick provides information about the best and worst times to submit news stories or blog posts to social news and social bookmarking sites.  Read his article to get a better understanding of Jake Luciani’s study (or, for that matter, read Jake’s own post about the study.)

In short:

  • Thursdays are the best days, Tuesdays aren’t far off (in my opinion)
  • Saturday, Sunday, Monday are the worst days
  • Wednesday and Friday are somewhere in the middle

In terms of time of day (all times in GMT):

  • Midnight to 2 AM and 4 PM to 10 PM are the best times to submit to social media
  • Between 10 PM and midnight is the worst time slot for submitting to social media; 8 AM to 2 PM look fairly weak as well
  • Every other time is average

This information might be useful to anyone who wants to become a Top Digger (I’m still at 711 in the top 1000 list) or other social media maven - every little bit helps.  However, as with any of these studies, the information should be used as just another piece of data in your social media strategy and you shouldn’t rely too heavily on timing.

I know that in my own experience, I used to submit Digg stories early in the morning (my time) and I seemed to have better success when I submitted stories at different times of day.

Marshall’s article also made me wonder about the timing of blog posting. Are some days better than others?  Are some times better than other times?  In the RSS world it shouldn’t really make any difference because the posts are always there in your reader, waiting for you, right?  Or does timing matter?  I tend to check more than once per day, although I reserve noon hour my time to review a certain collection of social media blogs.

And so, on this Monday, the beginning of my week (possibly yours as well), I’d like to hear what you think.  Do you read blogs on some days or than others?  Certain times of day more than others?

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