Tag Archives: dates

How to: analyse your Twitter or Facebook analytics for the best days or times to post

Twitter’s analytics service is a useful tool for journalists to understand which tweets are having the biggest impact. The dashboard at analytics.twitter.com provides a general overview under tabs like ‘tweets’ and ‘audiences’, and you can download raw data for any period then sort it in a spreadsheet to see which tweets performed best against a range of metrics.

However, if you want to perform any deeper analysis, such as finding out which days are best for tweeting or which times perform best — you’ll need to get stuck in. Here’s how to do it. Continue reading

How to: fix spreadsheet dates that are in both US and UK formats

640px-Date_format_by_country.svg

This map by Artem Karimov shows which countries use which data formats

It’s quite common when working with Google Sheets to have data set to US format (Month-Day-Year) without realising it. This is because Google will format your dates based on what ‘locale’ or language you have set – and the default is US English.

Instructions on how to change that are here – but what if it’s too late? What if you’ve already inputted or imported data which, when updated to a different format, will make it the wrong date? Continue reading