Time management is one of the most challenging issues facing multimedia journalists. So, knowing the most critical times to post to social media can help journalists plan and prioritize.
Bitly, a popular URL shortener, used its own data to find the the optimal days and times for posting links to social media.
On the Poynter website, Jeff Sonderman summarized the results.
- On Twitter, the best window is 1 to 3 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays.
- Facebook was hot at 1 to 4 p.m.
- Tumblr is a night owl, with posts doing best after 7 p.m.
He also created charts to visualize the data, like the one below for Twitter.
A quick note on how to read these charts: Links posted during the darker blue periods received more average clicks over their following 24-hour lifespan. So this is showing when it’s best to post a link, not necessarily when the clicks will occur.
This kind of research is invaluable for journalists. The more we can understand the social media audience, the better we can serve it.
