Does timing really matter on Twitter?

July 21, 2009
Category: Hong Kong & Social media

It has been a popular topic on how people can engage with the most followers by tweeting at the right period of time. But does it really matter?

What’s your purpose:

People engage on Twitter for different reasons; some people use it as a broadcast medium, some use it to connect with friends, some are just on it for no specific reason. Although I strongly believe that content is what put strangers together on the Internet, I think timing of publishing content does matter for broadcasting if you want to reach more audience.
Before deciding how to improve your online social networking skills, you should from time to time think about what your purposes are on social media.

Daily Cycle of Online Activities in Hong kong


Since I’m currently in Hong Kong, I decided to put together a graph to show how Hong Kong people use Internet. Daily cycle of internet use can give you more information than you think. In this graph for Hong Kong, the Peak hour is at 10pm, so Twitting around that time period might get you more responses and RTs.
Source: HK Internet Project 2008

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A Little Something About Tim:

Tim Ho

I'm a Regional Digital Strategist at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence APAC. I love web designing, data visualization, latin music, cooking, painting, inventing new drinks, and monkeys. Here is my main blog where I share social media news, ideas and insights. I also have a more personal blog called Tim Ho's Monkey!

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  • There seem to be a lot of potential variables in timing for maximum impact. I'm sure, for instance, that the curves for Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan are all different, despite being in the same timezone.

    Also, should you tweet at the top of the curve, or before it so that your tweet is already there when most people are tweeting?

    I personally try to post at 9pm China Standard Time, which gives pretty decent coverage of east Asia (though a little late for Japan), Europe, and the United States (though a bit early for the West Coast).
  • Yeh, and it would be nice to combine 3 timelines together in one graph to compare them. (HK, Taiwan, mainland china).
  • Tweets sent in peak hours might disappear very quickly in everyone's timeline, as there are just some many tweets show up at that period.
  • It's somewhat true, but that's another matter, if you constantly share relevant and interesting links for to your followers, you become the "eye-magnet".
    But you are right, timing is not everything, if you don't engage all the time, people would just ignore your tweets no matter when you do it :)
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