For Social Success, Post To Twitter & Facebook In Early Afternoons, Tumblr In Evenings

When’s the best time to post to social media platforms to ensure your content is most seen? URL shortening service Bitly has crunched some new numbers. Success on Twitter and Facebook means posting in the early afternoons, while Tumblr likes the night life.

Bitly looked at the amount of clicks that links posted through its service generated on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr (sorry, Google+, you got left out). It also looked at when these sites seemed to have the most activity overall.

Bitly even generated fancy looking plots of clicks and activity, like this:

I found it easier, however, to skip the charts and read the findings. Below, my summary of the best times.

Note that all times are in Eastern Time, which makes sense in terms of activity. From 1pm-3pm ET, for example, corresponds to 10am-Noon Pacific Time. During those hours, most of the entire United States is awake.

For those dealing with non-US audiences, I suspect adjusting these peak times to your own local “waking hours” might prove effective.

Twitter

• Post 9am-3pm ET, Monday through Thursday
• Especially post 1-3pm ET, Monday through Thursday
• Avoid posting after 8pm ET during the weekends
• Avoid posting after 3pm ET on Friday and at all on weekends

Facebook

• Post 1-4pm ET during the week
• Especially post midweek 1-3pm ET
• The very best time is Wednesday at 3pm ET
• Avoid posting between 8pm ET and 8am ET during the week
• Avoid posting on weekends

Tumblr

• Post from 4pm ET onward
• Especially post from 7pm-10pm ET onward, with Monday and Tuesdays being good
• Post on Friday evenings

Remember, ultimately it will be up to your own individual findings to know the optimal time to post content. For some, posting during the weekend might not drive a ton of initial clicks but could pick up some additional traffic, or “second chance” activity, as I’ve called it.

Related Articles

• Most Mobile Time Spent In Apps: Google Has Top Reach, Facebook Has Highest Engagement
• Dissecting “Hot On Google+,” A Look At How Posts Become Hot
• Why “Second Chance” Tweets Matter: After 3 Hours, Few Care About Socially Shared Links
• Why We Are On Tumblr

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Danny Sullivan

Danny Sullivan was a journalist and analyst who covered the digital and search marketing space from 1996 through 2017. He was also a cofounder of Third Door Media, which publishes Search Engine Land, MarTech, and produces the SMX: Search Marketing Expo and MarTech events. He retired from journalism and Third Door Media in June 2017. You can learn more about him on his personal site & blog He can also be found on Facebook and Twitter.