The Latest "Best Time" To Tweet And Post

Sometimes getting solid data about anything online is such a moving target. There's a lot of different studies and none of them may correlate. A new study by the URL shortening service Bit.ly has some new info on the best time to tweet in order to gain more responses, and the best time to post on Facebook in order to get more Likes. Here's what they found:

Twitter

• The most clickthroughs come between 1 to 3PM EST Monday through Thursday.

• Not much happens after 8PM weeknights, or 3PM on Friday.

• The lifetime of a typical tweet is 2.8 hours.

• Peak traffic time is from 9AM to 3PM EST Monday through Thursday. That doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get more responses, since there's already a lot more competition for attention.

Facebook

• The highest clickthroughs come at 3PM EST on Wednesday, with links posted from 1 to 4PM getting the highest average clickthroughs.

• Links after 8PM and before 8AM struggle for attention.

• Facebook traffic starts at about 9AM, but Bit.ly suggests waiting until 11AM to post.

• Facebook traffic begins to fade after 4PM.

Now just to show you how some of these studies differ, previous studies by Dan Zarrella and Vitrue have found that the best time for Facebook posts were 8AM, 11AM and 4PM EST, while the best time for tweets is 11AM, 3PM and 8PM EST.


Just to go a bit further, Buddy Media did a study a month earlier and discovered the following about Facebook:

• Brands that posted outside of business hours had 20% higher engagement than between 10AM and 4PM.

• Thursday and Friday got the best engagement, while Monday and Saturday had the worst.

• Posts with questions have a 15% higher engagement rate. A question starting with the word "would" gets the most engagement, followed by "where," "when," and "should." "Why" gets the least engagement.

So like with much of the stats that we see online, you have to take these things with a grain of salt and see what works best for every specific application. The only thing that they all have in common is that posting or tweeting at the top of the hour (i.e. 8AM), is a lot more effective than anything else. At least that's something solid.

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