Social Media Marketing: When and how for the best results
By Jo Linsdell
The growth of the internet and in specific the increase in the number of social media sites, means that the potential for online marketing possibilities is unlimited. Best yet most are completely free.
Given the large number of social media sites available and the number of users each of them has, it’s important to have a marketing plan in order to get the best results,
You’ll obviously want to consider your short and long term goals, your target audience and the type of content you’d like to post.
Something else you should keep in mind is which days and times have the most action on each site.
In a recent study Facebook showed that it’s 500M+ users are most active on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET. Twitter users are 3 times more active than average social media users according to another study and another shows Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, whilst 10-11 pm is the most active hour.
Another study showed that a video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.
Although you’ll want to have posts going out throughout the other days too, by being active on these busy periods you increase your chances of being seen by a larger audience.
As for Social news and bookmarking sites, Reddit.com is the most active.

Other ways to get noticed include using hashtags with keywords and tagging people or pages on your posts. A popular use of a hashtag on twitter is #followfriday or #FF.
The use of applications to enhance your profiles and posts can also help capture readers.
The most important thing to being successful in social media marketing though is to keep it social. If you just promote the whole time people will stop listening. Visit other peoples profiles and leave comments, ‘like’ and ‘retweet’ others posts, ask questions and answer others questions where you can.