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.