WHEN SHOULD FIRMS post information on
their social media accounts to draw the
most attention from consumers? New
research suggests that if they capitalize
on the sleep-wake cycles of their
customers, firms could increase social
media traffic to their websites and boost
digital ad profits by at least 8 percent.
Research also shows that consumers’
engagement with content varies by
time of day and content characteristics,
say Vamsi Kanuri, assistant professor
of marketing at the University of Notre
Dame’s Mendoza College of Business in
Indiana; Yixing Chen, a doctoral student
in marketing at Texas A&M’s Mays
Business School in College Station; and
Shrihari Sridhar, an assistant professor
of marketing at the Mays School.
More specifically, Kanuri says, in the
morning consumers are more likely to
engage with posts that spark high-arousal
negative reactions such as anger,
stress, anxiety, or fear. In the afternoon,
he says, they are more likely to engage
with “boosted” posts—that is, paid content—
as well as posts that require higher
cognitive processing, such as op-eds
or scientific material.
Kanuri explains that these
differences occur because people’s
working memory capacity is
highest when they wake, lowest
in mid-afternoon, and moderate
in the evening.
“Higher working memory
makes us feel alert and curious,
meaning consumers are more likely
to devour content in the morning,” he
says in an article on Mendoza’s website.
“When working memory is resource-deprived,
the brain prioritizes information
to remain efficient and will better respond
to boosted content, which legally
must look different to consumers. The
different look signals to the brain the
information is important, thus, boosted
content is most effective in the afternoon
as working memory lowers.”
When the team interviewed social
media managers from several major
content platforms, as well as examined a
year’s worth of Facebook posting and
boosting data from a West Coast
newspaper, they found that managers
relied on gut feelings when
deciding what to post, but gave little
thought to how readers’ emotions
might come into play. “The fact that
firms can increase their engagement
without spending an additional dime
is jaw-dropping for most managers we
interviewed,” Kanuri says.
Kanuri, Chen, and Sridhar developed
an algorithm to help social media managers
know when to post content and
which posts to boost, so they don’t need
to rely on “general rules-of-thumb posted
on various blogs all over the internet.”
“Scheduling Content on Social Media:
Theory, Evidence and Application” is
forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing.