I’m often asked which times are better to tweet and communicate with one’s audience on social media, in a crisis.
With tons of studies out there revealing the “best days and times” to tweet and share online, I can see how people get confused and wonder such things for their own crisis communications.
I’m here to tell you to disregard all of the studies, surveys and articles that you’ve read and to ignore all future ones that may come your way.
Why is that, you ask?
Because, as they’re a good starting point for your marketing departments, when it comes to your crisis communications, they simply don’t make any sense.
Every organization’s audience is different, yours included. The only way to have a good, albeit never perfect, understanding of the best times to tweet and share in a crisis, is by testing your audience prior to being in a crisis situation.
By testing I don’t mean to publicly test your crisis communications plan. No! Doing so would only be asking for trouble. I mean to test and monitor your daily shares and online interactions, in order to adapt these tried and tested “best practices for YOUR organization” into your online crisis communications plan.
Related: 6 Rules for Social Media Use Before and During a Crisis
This includes:
- Tweet and share your typical social media communications on a daily basis, mixing up the times, systematically
- Document and analyze the days and times with the highest engagement, retweets, mentions, shares, comments and traffic to your designated landing pages
- Trial and error, getting creative and being consistent will get you the best results
- Take your findings and include them as a guideline within your online crisis communications plan
- As your online audience increases and trends change, continue to test, analyze, document and update your crisis communications plan as needed
In a crisis, you need to be sure that the right people will be on the other end, receiving your communications and sharing your brand’s message, as much as possible. Understanding YOUR audience, how they interact with your brand and what, when and how you get the most engagement from them, is something that can only be determined with targeted testing and experimenting, over time.
That said, be sure to start testing your social sharing today!
Melissa Agnes, President and co-founder of Agnes + Day Inc., has developed an international reputation for crisis management, planning and training by helping large global brands prevent and manage a wide range of corporate issues and crises. Her client list includes Fortune 500 companies, as well as public, private and not-for-profit organizations.
Fluent in English and French, Melissa is an international and sought-after speaker and guest-lecturer. She has spoken to organizations and audiences including NATO, Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Ministries of Foreign Defense, Ohio Oil and Gas Association (OOGA) and a wide range of private and public companies, universities and non-profit organizations. She has been honored to share the stage with members of the Ukraine government and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Melissa is a regular guest on Montreal’s leading morning radio talk show, CJAD, where she is referred to as “the official crisis manager of the Tommy Schnurmacher show”. She has been interviewed and published about in publications including VIBE Magazine, USA Today, Tech News World and more.
Melissa is the editor of the highly acclaimed Crisis Intelligence Blog, and the host of the internationally recognized Crisis Intelligence Podcast. Published regularly and followed by dozens of Fortune companies, the blog and podcast provide insights to help organizations manage issues and crises in today’s connected and real-time world.
Melissa was named by CyberAlert as one of “the 30 top most influential bloggers in public relations”; and her blog was ranked sixth of the “60 of the best Public Relations blogs in the world”by Inkybee.
Melissa has published numerous articles and white papers in trade journals including The Non-Profit Digest and Communications World, and is the author of two self-published ebooks:
- “The Corporate Guide to Leveraging and Managing Twitter in a Crisis”
- “The Social Media Crisis Management Toolkit”
When she isn’t managing crises or speaking in front of an audience, Melissa enjoys adventuring around the world (often on a sailboat), snowboarding, yoga and champagne sipping in good company.