Social Media Posts Shared in the Morning Perform Better than Those Shared Later in the Day

Wadhwa, V., Latimer, E., Chatterjee, K., McCarty, J., & Fitzgerald, R.T. (2017). Maximizing the tweet engagement rate in academia: Analysis of the AJNR twitter feed. American Journal of Neuroradiology, 33(10), 1866-1868, doi: https://doi.org/10.3174/ajnr.A5283

In this article, the authors conducted a study to investigate the tweet characteristics that were likely to generate higher engagement rates for radiology journals. According to the researchers, the content of a tweet does not have a significant influence on user engagement. This aspect explains why some tweets may be more engaging than others, regardless of their message. Therefore, the authors suggest that the principal focus of communication on Twitter is how to frame a message. They discovered that tweets that included images or hashtags were associated with a higher user engagement rate. Moreover, posts published in the morning were more likely to have a higher engagement rate than those tweeted during other times of the day. The data from this research may assist social media leaders in maximizing the potential impact of their online efforts. Nonetheless, this source did not mention whether a significant increase in user engagement leads to a meaningful interaction with the post.  

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