When Is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?

When Is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?

If you are a marketer and want to have a huge response, it is common sense to post your content marketing materials at a time when most people are online and looking for something to read. The question is, what sites will you be posting to and what is the optimal time for those particular sites?

Posting Your Content on Social Networks

Social media platforms are great places to promote your business, but each social media site has a different time in which people are active. This is a guide to when you should post your content on various social media sites as well as your blog.

• There have been research studies on not only peak times for social media use, but peak times when people click through to blogs and other social networks. This is important because you want to keep your material fresh and you do not want to miss those peak times with your fresh material.
• The worst time to put your materials on social media seems to be in the morning, coinciding with the end of rush hour and the beginning of the work day. 
• The time zone in which you live will be relevant when deciding on the time you will post at. In addition, the people who follow you, like you or pin your material play a role. In what time zones do the majority of your followers live?
• Sometimes experimenting outside the boundaries of the research studies can reap you unexpected rewards. If you have a global following, it may not matter when you post. 
• Weekend posting on Twitter does not result in a large number of click-throughs. However, weekend posting on Facebook seems to result in the highest possible interaction. The worst day to post on Facebook is Wednesday—while peak traffic on Facebook is at midday Wednesday, the click-through rate is much lower at that time.
• Facebook’s peak times for posting links are from 1pm to 4pm ET and before 8am and after 8pm ET. 
• Twitter’s peak time for clicking through links is from 1pm to 3pm ET Mondays through Thursdays. 
• LinkedIn click-throughs peak before work (7am–9am ET) and the hour after work hours (5pm–6pm ET). At all other times, traffic is very low.
• Tumblr peaks at night for people who are willing to click through. People seem to be on Tumblr late at night and during times when other social networks are quiet.
• Pinterest is a social network often used by those who work from home. The peak click-through times are in the afternoon and very late at night. Dinner time seems to be off limits.
• Google+ posting is best right after people reach their jobs, from 9am–11am ET, and worst when people are on their way home from their jobs.

Although these guidelines are generalities, they represent the result of research from various analytics programs. You can also place your own analytics programs on your website to understand your site’s unique click-through characteristics. With a good analytics program you can easily see at what time of the day or night you have most visits and where the traffic comes from. That way, you can customize when and what you post to your potential customers. When posting content on your blog, you can easily schedule the exact time when your posts will be published. You can even schedule your posts weeks in advance, if the content you are publishing is not related to daily events or time-sensitive news.