How To Get The Most Clicks When You Post To LinkedIn, Twitter, & Facebook

What time of day is best to Tweet?  What day is best to do a LinkedIn update?  Is there an ideal message length to increase clicks? (Yes!)  Can including a question mark or exclamation point impact the number of clicks you receive? (Yes!)  Should you use a hashtag in your Tweet if it is a Business To Consumer message? (maybe not).

The company Compendium did a study with more than 200 companies, to find out how companies can get the most effective Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter engagement when they post.    Their study looked at variables including number of words, punctuation marks, times of day, and days of the week to determine what worked best for business-to-business and business-to-consumer postings.
Some of the key findings were:

Best Days To Post:  Monday and Wednesday are best on Twitter if you are marketing to consumers, and LinkedIn is better on Monday. But if your company is targeting business-to-business services/products, post to LinkedIn on Sunday, and to Twitter on Wednesday.

Best Time Of Day:  The time of day you send out your social messages makes a huge difference in terms of getting maximum clicks. The best time to share on Twitter is between 10am-2pm.  Facebook content numbers spike in a more narrow window, between 11am-noon, and then again in late afternoon.  LinkedIn content is read (as you would expect)  in the morning and around lunch.

Ideal Length of Post:  There does seem to be an “ideal length” for messages in terms of engagement.  For B2B on LinkedIn ideal length is 16-25 words, and 11-25 on Twitter. For postings targeted to consumers on LinkedIn 21-25 words is ideal length, with 1-5 on Twitter.  So apparently getting that marketing Tweet down to five words is your next big task.

Using Question Marks:  Now here is a really surprising finding!  Messages on LinkedIn and Twitter can receive between 25 and 52% fewer clicks if they include a question mark.  This is odd because some research studies I’ve seen show that asking a question in your message increases engagement.  So, I guess the takeaway is ask the question but don’t put a questions mark on the end of the post!

Using Exclamation Points:  It’s a mixed bag of results for exclamation points (my personal favorite).  Using an exclamation mark can create about 25% more clicks on LinkedIn, but 8-15% fewer clicks on Twitter.

Using Hashtags:  Do you use hashtags on your Tweets?  We’ve all been told to do this to make it easier for people to search Tweets by keywords, right?  For business-to-business Tweets including # can cause 193% more clicks.  Wow!  However, if your message is to consumers it can cause 82% fewer clicks.  I’d love to know why consumers are so turned off by a hashtag.

Using Numbers:  Usually we use a number instead of spelling out the word for sake of brevity in postings.  Interestingly, using a number doesn’t change much in terms of clicks with one exception.  Business-to-business Tweets with numbers get 50% more clicks.

You can find all of the study’s findings below in this infographic: