By Walter Elly
Senior Director of Internet Marketing

So you’ve read our post, Three Best Practices to Optimize Blog Posts for Facebook and Twitter, and now you’re ready to share the link to your post on Twitter and Facebook. But did you know that not all days are created equal when it comes to getting the most clicks on links? If you have some content that you want to get extra attention for, or are just producing a few blog posts a week, then this is important to know! Here’s the data on when to share links in order to maximize click-through for Twitter and Facebook:

Let’s start with Facebook. A recent report published by Virtue SRM indicates that Monday through Wednesday are the optimum days to post to maximize your click-through rate (CTR) on Facebook. Thursday through Saturday were significantly lower, though interestingly Sunday stood out with a relatively high CTR.

So, as a starting point, if you have a blog post or link that you want to share and you want to ensure it gets the highest CTR then be sure to share it on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. But you should treat this only as a starting point and track your own CTR and see what days are most effective for your own Facebook presence. Ours actually has highest CTR Wednesdays through Friday with Monday and Tuesday being the low points, atleast for now. As the makeup of our Facebook network changes, so could the CTR rate change – so we will continue to test- as should you.

Now with regards to Twitter, we don’t have any Twitter-wide specific data on click-through rate but, thanks to great people like Dan Zarrella, we do have data on ReTweet rate (ReTweeting is when someone shares your Tweet with their followers). This data does provide some useful guidance towards when you should Tweet to maximize click-through rate based on two factors: the data shows what day of the week Twitter is being used most and also shows when ReTweets happen the most. From this we can infer when your Tweet is most likely to be seen by the most people and also when it has the best chance of being shared with the most people.

Based on Dan Zarella’s data it appears that Twitter is almost the opposite of Facebook: Wednesday through Fridays are top ReTweet days. Based on that a good starting point to ensure maximum CTR would be to share your links later in the week on Twitter. As before, use this data as a starting point and keep track of your own CTR information – our own data also indicates that Thursdays and Fridays have the highest CTR for us, but every network is different and will change over time. So keep testing and refining to maximize your sweet spot.

As to what time of the day is optimal, data indicates that daytime sharing on both networks, rather than early morning or sharing at night, will maximize ReTweet and click-through rates. As a starting point you might try sharing during lunch time, which some have dubbed “the new primetime” – atleast for video consumption, but it’s a useful indicator as a starting point. This is something again to test with your own network but good to keep in mind.

In sum, the best practices for when to share blog posts and links on Facebook and Twitter are: Start by sharing during lunchtime for both. Start by sharing on Facebook early in the work week. Start by sharing on Twitter later in the work week. Lastly, you should be testing your own CTR over time and adjust accordingly. Need help testing CTR or just want to ensure maximum success with your overall social media marketing efforts? Give us a call today, we’d be happy to help!