What is the best time to tweet a journal article? Quasi-randomized controlled trial

Introduction: Social media users are often advised to time their posts to increase readership and engagement. Our objective was to find out which is the best time to tweet a journal article. Methods: From January 2020 to October 2021, 112 articles from a medical journal were posted on Twitter three times each, once in each language: Portuguese, Spanish and English. Up to two articles were posted each week, with each of the week’s tweets being posted in a different hour of the day: 06, 09, 12, 15, 18 or 21:00. Tweet impressions and URL clicks were the two outcomes of the Bayesian multivariate multilevel negative binomial regression models. Results: No pair of times of the day achieved 95% posterior probability of including the best time to tweet a journal article, both for impressions and URL clicks. The expected outcomes, the ratio between standard deviations, and the explained variability (R²) all corroborated that the time of the day is of little consequence when tweeting journal articles. Conclusions: Contrary to popular advice and pre-algorithm research, journal staff need not bother with optimizing the time of the day when they disseminate their content on Twitter.