Best time to tweet for clicks, retweets and engagement

Still tweeting at 11am in the morning and at around lunch time, to try and hit people when they’re checking Twitter on their breaks? You may need to think again.

There’s been some new research released by Buffer into Twitter best practice around length and frequency and timing. Buffer’s data team analysed over 4.8 million tweets across 10,000 profiles, pulling the stats on how clicks and engagement and timing occur throughout the day and in different time zones.

There’s loads of fantastic charts and stats over on the Buffer blog, but here’s a summary of what they found:

The best time to tweet: 4.8 million-tweet research study

• Early mornings are the best time to tweet in order to get clicks.
• Evenings and late at night are the best time, on average, for total engagement with your tweets
• In some cases, the most popular times to post are opposite of the best times to post.
• Popular times and best times to tweet differ across time zones.

Most popular time to tweet: Noon to 1:00 p.m.

• Noon to 1:00 p.m. local time, on average for each time zone, is the most popular time to tweet
• The highest volume of tweets occurs between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., peaking between noon and 1:00 p.m.
• The fewest tweets are sent between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.

Here’s a list of each most popular hour for the 10 major time zones.

• Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. (Pacific Time): 9:00 a.m.
• Denver (Mountain Time): noon
• Chicago (Central Time): noon
• New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, etc. (Eastern Time): noon
• Madrid, Rome, Paris, etc. (Central European): 4:00 p.m.
• Cape Town, Cairo, Helsinki, etc. (Eastern European): 8:00 p.m.
• Sydney (Australian Eastern): 10:00 p.m.
• Hong Kong (Hong Kong Time): 8:00 a.m.
• Tokyo (Japan Time): 2:00 a.m.
• Shanghai, Taipei, etc. (China Time): noon

Takeaways & thoughts:

• The most popular time to post could be due to a number of factors: This is when most people have access to Twitter (perhaps at a work computer), this is when online audiences are most likely to be connected (see Burrito Principle), etc.
• Should you post during the most popular times? That’s one possibility. Also, you may find success posting at non-peak times, when the volume of tweets is lower.
• If you have a large international audience on Twitter, you may wish to locate the particular part of the world where they’re from, and adjust your schedule accordingly. You can find the times when your audience may be online with tools like Followerwonk and Crowdfire.

The best times to tweet to get more clicks

• Tweets sent between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. earn the most clicks on average
• The highest number of clicks per tweet occurs between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m., peaking between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.
• The fewest clicks per tweet happen in the morning (when tweet volume is particularly high), between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m..

The best time to tweet for clicks in each of the major time zones:

• Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc. (Pacific Time): 2:00 a.m.
• Denver (Mountain Time): 7:00 p.m.
• Chicago (Central Time): 2:00 a.m.
• New York, Boston, Atlanta, Miami, etc. (Eastern Time): 11:00 p.m.
• Madrid, Rome, Paris, Berlin, etc. (Central European): 2:00 a.m.
• Cape Town, Cairo, Istanbul, etc. (Eastern European): 8:00 p.m.
• Sydney (Australian Eastern): 2:00 a.m.
• Hong Kong (Hong Kong Time): 5:00 a.m.
• Shanghai, Taipei, etc. (China Time): noon
• Tokyo (Japan Time): 8:00 a.m.

Takeaways & thoughts:

• Clicks was far and away the largest engagement metric that we tracked in this study (compared to retweets, replies, and favorites).
• Some of the recommended best times for individual time zones show that non-peak hours are the top time to tweet for clicks. This data may reflect some particularly high-achieving posts—some outliers—that bring up the average when the volume of tweets is lowest. Still, it’d be a great one to test for your profile to see what results you get.
• One neat thing to keep in mind is that a non-peak hour in, say, Los Angeles may correspond to a peak hour in London or Paris. The worldwide audience is definitely one to consider when finding the best time to tweet.

The best times for overall engagement with your tweet

• Tweets sent between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. earn the most total engagement on average
• The highest amount of engagement per tweet occurs between 11:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m., peaking between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.
• The smallest amount of engagement happens during traditional work hours, between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m.

Takeaways & thoughts:

• The best times to tweet for engagement are quite the inverse of the most popular times to tweet. (The late-night infomercial effect—tweet when fewer people are tweeting—seems to be the case here.)

The best times for retweets and favorites on your tweets

• Tweets sent at the 9:00 p.m. hour in the U.S. earn the most retweets and favourites on average
• The highest number of retweets and favorites occurs between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., peaking between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m.
• The lowest retweet-favourite engagement happens at 3:00 a.m.

We love Buffer and this comprehensive and up to date research of the best time to tweet makes us love them even more!

Read the full research now >>