Best Times to Post to Facebook and Twitter

Are you looking to get the most out of the time you spend posting updates to Facebook and Twitter? Unless your social media efforts are already fine-tuned and producing results for you, then you may want to read on. In this article we are going to give you some quick, simple advice on how to maximize efforts on the top two social media networks – Facebook and Twitter.

A Little Data Support

With social media being so new it is important to look at all advice and take it with a grain of salt. That said, every now and then a legitimate source will share some of their data that proves to be extremely useful due to a significant data sample size.

Bitly, our favorite URL shortening service, recently released some very interesting data on social media posting. If you’re not familiar with Bitly, then you may be wondering why they should be considered as a reliable, legitimate resource for providing social media data so allow us to explain. Bitly, a fantastic service that we would encourage you to check out, is one of, if not, then most popular and widely used web services to shorten URLs.

Shortening services, like Bitly, became popular with the advent of Twitter and their 140 character limit on each tweet. Users, looking to maximize their limited character count, didn’t like long URLs using up the majority of their tweets. In came Bitly, and many other services, to easily shorten URLs and provide valuable tracking on URLs shortened with their service.

Why are we boring you with all of this background information? Well, because recently Bitly kindly released some very interesting and useful information, collected from their aggregated data across their user base, that helps social media marketers to better pinpoint the most optimal times and days to post updates to Facebook and Twitter. The results, which we can most definitely confirm as being accurate, are below.

When to Post to Facebook

Whether you use your personal profile or a professional Facebook Page (recommended) to post updates about your business the following findings may be able to help you get more out of each update.

• If you want more click throughs, on average, post your updates (with links) from 1pm to 4pm EST Monday through Thursday
• The best day / time of the week to post, on average, is on Wednesday at 3pm EST
• Avoid posting on weekdays between 8pm EST and 8am EST
• Avoid posting on weekends

When to Post to Twitter

If Twitter is part of your social media promotion process, then you may want to consider following the advice derived from the data provided here.

• For the most clicks, stick to tweeting earlier in the week (Monday through Thursday) and from 1pm to 3pm EST
• Peak traffic times on Twitter are 9am to 3pm EST (Monday through Thursday) so try to keep your posts right before this time to avoid competing with increased noise
• Avoid posting on weekdays after 8pm EST and don’t even bother posting after 3pm EST on Fridays
• Avoid posting on weekends

Putting this Data to Work

We recommend that you try some of these suggestions from Bitly on your social media accounts for at least 15-30 days to make sure they apply to your business and content. The best piece of advice we can give is to simply track everything you do, especially when you make significant changes. This data may not apply to your business and the only way to find out is to try and track them.

We would love to hear your opinions, experiences and questions on Bitly’s findings. If you feel like sharing, then please drop your comment or question below to keep the discussion going.

If you’re looking for a little extra help or advice on social media marketing, then we would be happy to provide further assistance as well.