May 16th, 2011

When to Tweet

14blocks

If you are a data freak and on Twitter, you will love 14 Blocks. The Twitter tool operates on the premises that there are two primary blocks of time during each day for optimal community engagement. Specifically, 14 Blocks analyzes your entire following’s behavior to determine when most of them are online.

14 Blocks seems to work. Using link posts during specified times, it was clear that more traffic came through than at other times, although retweets were not so easily given. Of course, this may have to do with the post and lack of personal engagement during those time periods.

One of the most interesting things 14 Blocks reveals is how few people are actually on Twitter at any given point. Even during the highest peek periods, at best 2% of the 12,000 person geoffliving Twitter account following is online. Most of the time it is less than 1%.

The lack of participation would certainly corroborate recent studies and analysis that Twitter is overrated. And of course it means that Twitter is not a broadcast tool. Really, with so few followers online at any given time how could it be? With such low percentages online, Twitter truly is a community engagement tool (with a lot of dead accounts).

Regardless of deep interpretations and data analysis, 14 Blocks is an ideal tool for those folks who can’t be on Twitter all the time and want to pick their spots. Check it out.

P.S. Thank you Adele McAlear for passing on the good word about 14 Blocks!

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  • http://www.christuttle.com Chris Tuttle

     Very interesting tool, and information about Twitter.  I wonder if these more recent revelations about Twitter will encourage more people to use it because there is less noise, or less folks, as there are less people to engage with.

    Also wonder what it’ll take to make a real dent in Facebook’s strangle hold on website visits, time spent on a site and online networking.  If any site was primed to do so, it was Twitter.

  • http://twitter.com/JGoldsborough JGoldsborough

    Good stuff, Geoff. Thanks for sharing. I have a theory about Twitter. Let’s see if you agree. My theory is that while very few people actually use Twitter  — meaning do more than sign up for an account — the people who do use it are the most vocal. Furthermore, they are a group of people whose followers look to them for advice and thought leadership on trends and the next big thing.

    I shouldn’t generalize. Of course, this does not apply to all Twitter users, especially the ones who tweet about how they just made popcorn. But overall, I think Twitter may be the long tail of social media in action — a few passionate people who then use Twitter and other channels to share the trends and information they are learning on and outside of the platform.

    Thoughts?

    • http://twitter.com/geoffliving Geoff Livingston

      I think a lot less people pay attention to Twitter than we think.  It’s really a few communities. Urban, PR/Marketing, Silicon Valley, celebs, and new and old media producers.  Then there are eddies and lagoons of people hanging out. So I see it as a very limited social tools with specific uses for very specific communities.

      • http://pop-pr.blogspot.com Jeremy Pepper

         I agree to a point Geoff. I think Twitter is one of those services that doesn’t fit neatly into the social media ladder that was part of the Groundswell or other pyramids that have been hypothesized.

        What I’ve noticed – and I think Ad.ly would confirm – is that there are more readers than publishers on the service, but they are active when it comes to certain activities (especially from celebrities).

        • http://diyblogger.net/about Dino Dogan

          All of these services (timely, 14blocks, whatvs…) suffer from the same ailment. The are guessing at when people are online. But I dont care about that…

          The thing that we want to know most (and this could be just me) is when are people clicking. So if J, Geoff and Jeremy tweet my post, what I really want to know is how many actual click throughs did that bring to my blog. As far as I know, no service out there does this. Am I wrong? 

          • Anonymous

            Tweeb does, it’s an iPhone app in the app store..

  • Jim Matorin

    Thank you for sharing your insight Geoff as I am still in a learning mode as it relates to Twitter.  A great tool for the restaurant industry on the operator side of the business, but non-existent on the manufacturers (B2B) side.  Therefore I find Twitter a great tool to follow some information aggregators and learn vs. outbound.  Therefore I have to agree with J’s comment.  

  • http://www.brickmarketing.com/ Nick Stamoulis

    Timing is everything when it comes to social media engagement.  It’s important to understand your audience and their online behavior.  While in some industries it may make sense to try and catch people on their lunch break M-F, in others it makes more sense to tweet at night or on the weekend.  Tools such as this one are helpful.  

  • Mariana_Evica

     This has been on my mind, so I’m coming back to add my two cents. I think what is becoming apparent is that more so than any current social platform, Twitter is a broadcast medium that has increasing *real time* impact, not unlike television and radio *used* to. The engagement and conversation components lift Twitter out of the old tech rut and into a new category. It’s not what we thought it was going to be, but that’s ok, that’s the organic web and we know to value how things change and evolve.

    Facebook seems less dependent on this real time component. I never think about when people will be “on” facebook — and it seems like they’re always “on” to me anyway!  But I’m making an assumption there. I’d like to see these kinds of metrics applied across all social media platforms to see what emerges.

    • Anonymous

      Oh, I don’t think I would call it a broadcast medium. I think it fails for 99% of people when they use it that way.

      GL

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