All Social Media is Not Equal: A Quick Lesson From Buffer

Because I tend to find, read, and share stuff in fits and spurts, I use Buffer in order to space out the things I want to share. 

Because it’s not really a business decision for me (I just don’t want to overwhelm everyone on social media), my usage of Buffer is pretty organic.  I had the same schedules on both Facebook and Twitter, and most of the posts were things that I read elsewhere and then shared.

But today, while tweaking my accounts, I saw that Buffer has a feature to let them to try to optimize your schedule.  So I took a look.

Facebook

Twitter

Yes, I realize those “engagement” numbers aren’t huge, that’s not the point. Notice how hugely different the shapes of the graphs are.

The people who follow (and interact) with me on Twitter start around eight and check about once an hour or so.  Facebook gets the most traction very clearly before work, at lunch, and then in the late evening.

This data is really interesting because there was no real attempt to seed, A/B test, or otherwise manipulate the variables.  It’s just me going about my day the same way on two different social media networks…

…but getting very, very different results.

And that is fascinating.