A new study by Buddy Media takes a look at how marketers use Twitter, and the findings 
may be surprising. Buddy Media is a social media marketing firm who looked at 320 Twitter accounts from the world’s largest brands between December and February. The results show that most marketers are dropping the ball on their social media marketing efforts. Marketers are tweeting too much on the wrong days, not using hashtags enough and not using them properly, and never asking for users to retweet them.
The study found that Twitter engagement rates for brands are 17% higher on Saturday and Sunday compared to the weekdays. This would make sense since people are not working on the weekends, but only 19% of brands’ retweets are published on the weekend. Buddy Media says that about 29% of tweets should occur on the weekend if brands spaced their tweets out evenly throughout the week.
Twitter, Facebook, or Both?
Different industries require different levels of engagement on different days. For example, fashion brands see 30% higher engagement on the weekend. Publishers are seeing 29% higher engagement on Saturdays when consumers are most likely catching up on the news from the week, but only 7% of publishers’ tweets occur on a Saturday.
Buddy Media’s results show that brands are tweeting too much in the middle of the week and not nearly enough on the weekend. The study also showed that tweets published during “busy hours” performed best defined as between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. Tweets published during these times got 30% higher engagement rates than those that occurred after-hours. Buddy Media found that Twitter’s performance is the exact opposite of Facebook, where after hours Facebook posts get 17% higher engagement.
These findings show that Internet marketers have a great opportunity to utilize both Facebook and Twitter to communicate with consumers. Which social media mix is best for your brand?