The Art of Posting: Bit.ly Blog Reveals Best and Worst Times to Share on Social Media [Video]
For businesses of all sizes, engaging potential and existing customers through social media has become a business of its own these days. According to research from the URL shortening service, bit.ly, there are ideal and not-so-ideal times to post content on the various social media networks. Focusing in on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr, bit.ly tracked a range of data including the type of content being shared, the locations of the people sharing and viewing the content and the popularity of each network to determine time slots that offered the best traction along with those to avoid. Looking to understand what makes content go viral led to other tidbits of interesting information like the fact that the half-life of a link on Twitter is 2.8 hours.
According to bit.ly, in order to achieve the highest click count you want to be posting on Twitter between 1 and 3 pm, EST, Monday through Thursday. Fridays should be avoided after 3pm as well as posting after 8pm throughout the week. The study also found that when it comes to driving traffic to your content, Twitter and weekends just don’t quite click.
Bit.ly found that for Facebook, links posted between 1 and 4 pm yield the highest click through rates and peak on Wednesdays at 3 pm. As with Twitter, posting after 8 pm and on the weekends rarely amounts to desirable action, nor does posting before 8 am. They did mention, however, that while traffic on Facebook does pick up around 9 am, it’s usually better to wait until 11 am to post links and content. Also, though traffic usually fades after 4 pm, posting at 7 pm generates more clicks on average than posting at 8 pm.
Ideal posting times on Tumblr drastically differ from its two counterparts. The action on Tumblr picks up after 4 pm and posting after 7 pm, on average, generates more clicks over a 24-hour period than content posted mid-day throughout the week. Also, while Friday nights can be characteristically sullen for both Twitter and Facebook, such is not the case on Tumblr. According to bit.ly, this is the optimal time to post.
By K. Cameron Lau
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