The Best and Worst Times to Post on Social Media

Have you ever experienced the following situation? Your company, or company you represent, has an event, product launch or some big news to share; you plan everything down to the last detail; you craft the most amazing, catching Facebook posts and tweets; you send everything out…and no one comments, retweets or likes anything!

You’re not alone. The key to getting your content read is timing its release with the audience. If you aren’t posting when your audience is active, then all the time you spent on that message goes out the window. You need to look at who your audience is and find out when they are using each social media site.

Media Bistro and Social Caffeine have put together this infographic showing generally the best and worst times to post on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach, but it’s a general guideline to help you start zeroing in on your target audiences’ social media behaviors.

With Facebook, traffic starts building after 9 am, and the best time to post is between 1 and 4 pm. I suspect this is when people take an afternoon break at work or when kids go down for naps and people have a free moment to login to Facebook. The worst times to post are at night after 8 pm or on the weekends.

Twitter’s behavior is similar to Facebook’s. Traffic builds after 11 am and peaks between 1 and 3 pm. Do not post on Twitter in the evenings or on Friday afternoons.

LinkedIn is just the opposite. It makes sense that business people check their business-oriented social media profiles before (7-9 am) and after (5-6 pm) work. Traffic is quiet during the work day and on weekends, and avoid posting on a Monday or Friday all together – people are too focused thinking about the weekend they just had or the weekend they are about to have.

Pinterest breaks all those rules. Traffic doesn’t even get going until noon, and it’s hustling and bustling in the afternoon from 2-4 pm and late into the evening from 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. Pinterest is the afternoon escape social media site and a godsend for us insomniacs. However, avoid posting to Pinterest during the 5-7 pm dinner time.

Put these theories to the test and let us know if you’ve found these times to be accurate.