Time to post – What Bit.ly says

We’ve written before about the best time to post on social media for the biggest engagement but URL shortener experts Bit.ly recently revealed their own findings which are also well worth studying.

The report is based on Eastern Standard Time, so skews any UK data but the premise of what time in day works best, looks a familiar pattern however, that certainly those just starting out would do well to follow. It seems the lunchtime, post lunchtime slot is the best time to catch the Twitter traffic with the highest click count occurring between 1 and 3pm Monday through to Thursday).  So not the full week. Friday it appears is a bit of a lacuna. In fact the weekend starts early as according to bit.ly if you are looking to use Twitter as a way to drive traffic to your content you are wasting your time posting after 3pm Friday until Monday morning.  Facebook is similar but with a bigger window of 1pm to 4pm in the afternoon Monday to Thursday. If you want peak action then Wednesday 3pm for a Facebook post is the ultimate for traffic click through – who’d have thought it?

It’s pretty scientific from Bit.ly – did you know your post has a half-life – but not so it is difficult to understand.

The most interesting revelation from the report is the impact of Tumblr on the world of social networking. Many are looking at it as an option to perhaps bridge the differences between Twitter and Facebook, but as a business tool it is certainly still in its infancy, yet it does appear to interact much differently from it’s two bigger siblings. According to bit.ly. Tumblr traffic hits its peaks between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday. There are similar traffic spikes on Sunday when other click through rates are tiny. Amazingly, against almost every result shown by Twitter and Facebook, Friday evening appears to be the optimal time to post on Tumblr, perhaps reflecting the younger demographic and types of posts (ie social events) make good posts on Tumblr.

Of course, as we have said before, each and every sector and each and every business is unique. What you actually want to be doing is tweeting and posting when your own followers are most likely to be watching, or better still when your would-be followers are most likely to be watching as you also want to be increasing your follow too.

When have you found works best for your business?