When is the best time to share? It depends.

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If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? -Philosophical thought experiment 

For the first five years of my consulting business, I gathered data and case studies on how professionals could get the most out of their social media use. This included telling them when and what to share, and how to leverage their network to build their reputation. Then just over two years ago, my team launched ClearView Social. Now, after observing data from tens of thousands of professional shares and comparing it to the industry research of millions of shares, we’ve learned that many professionals are sharing at the wrong times.

Here are some of the most surprising findings:

1. LinkedIn is nearly a dead zone from 10:30am until things pick up again at 7pm and then hit a peak around 9pm. What do I mean by dead zone? The average share between 10:30 and 7pm gets less than 1.5 clicks per share. Sharing at the best times, the averages go up by over 150%. Click averages at the best times or at PeakTime(TM) as we are now calling it at ClearView Social,  will as high as 4.5 clicks per share. What do we learn from this? Nobody wants to read content or surf LinkedIn between 11am and the end of the work day. It should come as no surprise that there is a huge drop-off in clicks over the weekend.
2. Twitter performs very well between 2pm and 3pm local time, then picks up again at 5pm and again at 7pm. Why will people click articles on Twitter at 2pm but not on LinkedIn at that same time? We don’t know for sure, but our best guess is that Twitter is accessed when users are actively looking for content to read. Either as a distraction from work or in search of content relevant to work. Twitter stays hot through the weekend as well. People leave LinkedIn at their office for the most part, but bring Twitter and Facebook home with them.
3. Facebook isn’t just for personal sharing anymore. PeakTime for sharing professional content to Facebook is at 7:30am (when people are waking up in the morning) and then again at 5:15 until 6:15 pm local time.

If this is helpful to you, feel free to adjust your scheduled sharing times accordingly, and for users of ClearView Social, our PeakTime launch will automatically slot in your shares to the best times for each platform.

For our customers, here is our company’s help page explaining how PeakTime will work: PeakTime Explained