For many mar­keters, Twit­ter is iden­ti­fi­able as one of the most impor­tant social media plat­forms on which brands can build con­nec­tions with con­sumers. With the num­ber of brand fol­low­ers grow­ing 43 per­cent in 2013, the plat­form has proved itself as a viable chan­nel for brands to build aware­ness, dri­ve engage­ment, and man­age feed­back and rep­u­ta­tion amongst con­sumers.

It pays to know about how con­sumers are behav­ing on Twit­ter. Now with 271 mil­lion active month­ly users, mak­ing 500 mil­lion tweets per day, and 72 per­cent of users say­ing they were more like­ly to make future pur­chas­es from brands they fol­low or engage with on Twit­ter, brands should be look­ing to lever­age avail­able data to super­charge their social media mar­ket­ing.

A new report from Exact­Tar­get has ana­lyzed data from 3.6 mil­lion Twit­ter mes­sages pub­lished via the Exact­Tar­get Mar­ket­ing Cloud plat­form in 2013. They report includes a num­ber of invalu­able charts that “depict Twit­ter engage­ment rates by day of week, month, time of day, and indus­try, com­bin­ing both paid and organ­ic tweets”.

Top 12 Twitter Takeaways

1) Twit­ter engage­ment grows steadi­ly month-on-month, peak­ing in Octo­ber and Novem­ber as shop­pers pre­pare to do their hol­i­day shop­ping.

2) Twit­ter engage­ment is con­sid­er­ably high­er dur­ing week­days, although users are less active on Mon­days as they recov­er from the post-week­end blues.

3) Twit­ter engage­ment is high­est between 3 to 6 pm (CST), when most of the U.S. (and some of Europe) is active.

4) Media and Enter­tain­ment chan­nels expe­ri­ence the high­est lev­el of engage­ment, with the busiest months between March and August (with a spike in Octo­ber).

5) Finan­cial Ser­vices see a spike in Tweet­ing activ­i­ty in Decem­ber, although this isn’t shared in the num­ber of replies or retweets.

6) Retail and E‑Commerce sees a huge spike in Tweet­ing activ­i­ty in Decem­ber, and these mes­sages are replied and retweet­ed to much more too.

7) Con­sumers are most like­ly to reply and retweet Retail and Ecom­merce mes­sages on a Thurs­day, between 3–6pm (CST).

8) The most pop­u­lar month for tweet­ing about Tech­nol­o­gy and Man­u­fac­tur­ing is Octo­ber — around three times more tweets are sent than in the January/February months.

9) Tweets about Trav­el and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty start to pick up in May, and remain high for the rest of the year, with par­tic­u­lar­ly high activ­i­ty in July and Decem­ber.

10) The great­est num­ber of tweets and retweets about Trav­el and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty take place between 12–4am (CST).

11) The opti­mum days to tweet about Tech­nol­o­gy and Man­u­fac­tur­ing are on Wednes­days and Thurs­days, and the opti­mum times are between 3 p.m. and 9 p.m. (CST).

12) Pho­tos in tweets mas­sive­ly increase engage­ment rates!

Looking Closely At The Data

An over­rid­ing take­away that mar­keters can get from this data is that con­sumer behav­ior on Twit­ter varies across indus­tries, and strate­gies should vary accord­ing­ly. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all tac­tic brands can adopt on Twit­ter, and par­tic­u­lar ver­ti­cals such as Media and Enter­tain­ment, and Trav­el may be much stronger at draw­ing replies, whilst Retail and Ecom­merce tweets may gain lots of retweets as con­sumers share the best deals.

Brands should look close­ly at avail­able data to refine and opti­mize their Twit­ter strate­gies, focus­ing on the way con­sumers are con­sum­ing and engag­ing with their mes­sag­ing on the plat­form.

You can down­load Exact­Tar­get’s full ‘Social Engage­ment Bench­mark­ing Report for Twit­ter’ here.