Are you paying attention to what your social analytics is telling you?  Most of us are at least half smart.  If we wanted to go snorkeling, we wouldn’t head for the desert.  If we wanted pizza, we wouldn’t look for the nearest Chinese restaurant.  The path to satisfaction is in knowing where what you’re looking for is most likely to be.

And yet, brands seem to still be executing their social posting strategy based on what works best for them, and not the customer.  If engagement with your content is what you seek, (and that should be what you’re seeking), it makes a lot of good sense to go to the time and effort to find out when your target audience is most likely to want to hear from you.  Once you know that, you’re able to hit them when they are most receptive to your message and have the time to spend with you.

But that’s not what’s going on.

An analysis of retail brands from Yesmail showed that while Facebook users are most likely to interact with brands between 10pm and midnight, brands are typically launching their social campaigns between 11am and noon.  Those customers and potential customers have a lot of nerve not operating on brands’ prime business hours don’t they?

To brands, launching a key message on social at 11:00 at night seems just…odd.  It doesn’t feel like “prime time.”  But in a 24/7 social world, prime time is different from what our own workday perspective might lead us to believe.  Armed with this info, brands have to decide whether or not they care what the truth is, whether or not they’re willing to act on the data, and whether they want to place internal corporate convenience over maximum relevance to the customer.

It doesn’t stop there.  YouTube users are most likely to watch videos posted by brands on a Monday.  Guess which day brands post videos on the least.  That’s right…Monday!  Facebook campaigns get engaged with the most by users on Tuesdays.  Guess where Tuesday falls in terms of which day brands deploy their campaigns.  Fourth!  Most brands launch Twitter efforts on Friday.  Guess which day is the least engaging day for brands with Twitter users.  Friday!  Brands seem really unified in these mis-targeted efforts.  Over 84% of Twitter campaigns get pushed out during regular work hours.  The highest level of customer engagement happens when?  5-8am EST.

The interesting thing about this is the perceived insatiable thirst brands say they have for more and better data, metrics and analytics.  And they should be thirsty for it.  Deep dive analytics can truly inform a brand and illuminate the best path to maximum engagement.  These particular stats from Yesmail concern retail brands.  Maybe you’re in a different vertical and your brand’s audience has different days and times in which they are most ripe for receiving and interacting with your content.  Either way, these analytics are readily available.  But what’s the point if brands are going to keep caring more about what they want to do than about what their fans and followers want?