Every once in a while, I like to share one of these controversial-ish kinds of infographics.

I say controversial, because there really is no “one size fits all” formula for social media. You can’t just say “the best time to post to Facebook is at 1 pm on Thursday” and have that be true across the board, no matter what your business is, or where you live.

Generally, there’s some research involved–you have to mine your data and look at your analytics to see when the best time to post is.

I found this infographic kinda interesting, though, because it’s not so much about “when’s the best time to post” generally, but rather “when’s the best time to post for click-throughs.” Now, to me, that’s interesting. It’s more specific. Additionally, the data from this particular infographic comes from Bit.ly, who handles probably millions of links each day, so they certainly have a huge swath of data to analyze.

So. Here you go: for the highest amount of click-throughs on Facebook and Twitter, schedule your posts for around 1 pm on weekdays.

The idea behind this is, that probably the majority of people who “like” your page are in your same time zone. And those people probably have jobs. And those jobs have a lunch break between noon and 1 pm. So, when they come back to work around 1, they are gearing up for their afternoon of work, but they want to ease into it, and part of that includes–you guessed it–checking in on Facebook.

Twitter is a little trickier, as it has a more international audience, and there’s less of a chance that your followers will be in your own time zone. There’s a bit more leeway with this one–tweets posted between 1 and 4 pm on weekdays tend to have a higher click-through rate.

And forget about Friday nights. Trust me, I’ve tested this one personally.  Virtual tumbleweeds are blowing by.

Now that you know what time to schedule your tweets and FB updates, here’s something to consider: I love tweet scheduling programs like Hootsuite and Buffer, but they are less successful when scheduling to Facebook. You’re better off to use Facebook’s built-in scheduling tool. It’s my hypothesis that Facebook knows you’re using a third party app to schedule posts, and they punish you with the algorithm when you do.

Let’s get scheduling!

The Best Times to Post to Facebook & Twitter:

Infographic courtesy of Rakacreative.com.