Best Time To Tweet During Ramadan In The Middle East

Social media use in the Middle East is expected to grow by about 30 percent during Ramadan, according to an extensive analysis of online activity in 2012.

The report by The Online Project (TOP), a leading social media agency in the Middle East, also shows social media users change the time of day they are active on sites such as Facebook and Twitter during Ramadan. In most of the Middle East, online activity peaks during the night or early hours of the morning.

In the UAE and Qatar, for example, social media users during Ramadan last year were most active leading up to sunset, while in Saudi Arabia Facebook was most popular around 10pm and Twitter was busy between 4-6am, during Suhoor.

“Having discovered that social media consumption and user habits significantly change during the Holy month, we set out to study the outlying variable of this change to isolate the driving forces,” TOP CEO Zafer Younis said. “Instead of looking at their social media platforms first thing in the morning when they wake up or get into work, our results show that during Ramadan, people are most active on Twitter early evening at approximately 7pm, just before they break their fast.”

Following analysis of the figures, TOP has put together their top five recommendations for making the most of communicating with consumers during Ramadan:

1. Recognize that Ramadan is a unique time in the Arab world both online and off and as a result, lessons you have learnt about your communities during the year may not apply during the holy month so adapt your campaign to recommended timings to make the most of the advertising Dollars you have spent.

3. Optimize your content mix as user interests’ shift during the Holy month. Adapt your content accordingly to stay relevant and build stronger relationships with your audience.

4. Increase your advertising support budgets during Ramadan. The Holy month enjoys higher organic engagement rates so your budget can push your content further in Ramadan.

5. Implement integrated marketing campaigns by interlacing social media usage increase in-line with TV, radio, and print consumption to deliver higher multiplier effects in Ramadan.