When I started posting my new series of Facebook data points, one of the most requested graphs was the days of the week (and times of day, which is coming soon) that are best to publish on to get lots of Facebook shares. What I found when I looked at days of the week is at first a little unexpected, but upon further thought fairly logical.
While I found less articles posted on the weekends (notice the gray bars at the bottom of the graph which indicate volume of URLs analyzed for each day), those stories that were published on the weekends tended to be shared on Facebook more, on average, than stories that were published during the week. The reasons for this probably include the fact that more than half of companies in the US block Facebook, so people can only use the social network at home, on the weekends. Additionally, the mainstream Facebook audience does not use Facebook for work.
The takeaway? If you want your article to be shared on Facebook by your readers, try posting it over the weekend.
For information on my methodology, start with this page. For this data point I’m using over 5000 stories and “average” is the interquartile mean which is less sensitive to outliers. The 0% line indicates the average number of “shares” stories from each site in my study get, when the line is above 0% it means that stories on that day are shared more than the average, and when it is below, they’re shared less. If you’re curious why it appears most of the stories in the data set are above average, this is because of the difference in the volume of published stories on various days.
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March 8th, 2010 at 2:27 am
[...] latest blog post was as fascinating as the finding he published The Science of Retweets. In today’s post, he states that articles published/shared on Facebook in the course of the weekend are shared A LOT [...]
March 8th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Interesting data, thanks Dan!It makes sense, apart from what you already stated, I think most people use Facebook on the weekends, since its not so used for marketing as much as twitter. I think Facebook is still used mainly for friends, playing games, etc. Stuff that gets done over the weekend, not during the workweek.
Just got my copy of your book from Amazon! Cheers from Cancun!
March 8th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
[...] Data Shows: Articles Published on the Weekend are Shared on Facebook More, danzarrella.com [...]
March 9th, 2010 at 9:42 pm
WoW, only 1 comment so far Dan! I'm sorry for that because the content you provide is VERY HIGHLY valuable to me. Facebook, by and large, is still just a playpen for millions of people to be social with their friends in a “lighthearted” manner.
Dah dummm, in comes a Facebook friend that does marketing and everyone runs for the hills…it's so funny.
I'd give is 36 months and every little po-dunk small business will have a Facebook Fan Page. Cheers Dan the Man!
March 10th, 2010 at 1:05 am
[...] details on my methodology start with this post, then read the bottom of this post. AKPC_IDS += [...]
March 10th, 2010 at 12:34 pm
[...] to a new report from Dan Zarrella, the weekend is the best time to post content on Facebook as articles posted then are shared the [...]
March 11th, 2010 at 11:18 am
[...] There’s no news to you if I say that having a lot of Facebook shares for your articles can bring you a lot of traffic; and also you should know that the time schedule for publishing articles it is an important factor to get a lot of hits. So, when is the best time to publish an article and get a lot of shares on Facebook? Weekends says this report. [...]
March 11th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
This is interesting and I'm super glad you've provided data to go along. I personally, and this is all anecdotal, have found my friends to be less engaged on the weekend and find less traffic on these days, but I may have a skewed audience (internet and social media professionals).
March 11th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Agree. Wow! This is a very valuable report, and for those of us who enjoy social media jobs i think we tend to forget others are blocked from the networks during the week. Since my boss found this first looks like i will be working on Saturdays now!
Nick Martini
@nick_martini
March 11th, 2010 at 9:22 pm
Do you this trend would apply for Twitter as well? Thanks. Great info!
March 12th, 2010 at 5:44 am
I do agree with your article that most people visit facebook on the weekends. So if you want your article to be shared on facebook, post it on the weekends.
Great information.
Cheers
March 12th, 2010 at 6:13 am
well, there are more concept for every all. every time flow this…
March 12th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
I had a feeling that this was true, but now I see the proof. Very interesting !
March 12th, 2010 at 3:32 pm
Great information…thanks for sharing! Home business builders who have limited time for FB posting during the week will appreciate this tip.
March 12th, 2010 at 10:41 pm
So what time of day is the most popular? What about for actual blogs?
March 13th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
[...] Original: Danzarella Tags: experto facebook, experto social media, facebook marketing, Social media, social media [...]
March 14th, 2010 at 3:48 am
Dawgurnit! It's hard to keep my inbox clean when I have so many of your great posts from your email RSS feed flagged as Keepers ~ !
Thanks for all the intriguing, well-written and useful stuff — and keep up the good works ~
Your fan,
@TheGirlPie
March 14th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
[...] to a new report from Dan Zarrella, the weekend is the best time to post content on Facebook as articles posted then are shared the [...]
March 15th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
[...] sharing by day of the week. Jump to Comments This graph by Dan Zarrella shows when most content is shared on Facebook and when it is viewed. Over the weekend period is when [...]
March 16th, 2010 at 3:17 pm
[...] estudio realizado por Dan Zarella nos dice que Twitter es más usado durante la semana, por el contrario de Facebook que aumenta su [...]
March 17th, 2010 at 4:49 pm
[...] a recent blog post, Dan Zarrella published results from an ongoing analysis of Facebook data points. One interesting statistic stood out: Facebook [...]
March 24th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
[...] They’re most interested in sharing stories when they read them on the weekend. [...]
March 26th, 2010 at 4:10 pm
[...] posts links or updates on Facebook, Dan Zarrella says you should wait to the weekend to post. His research indicates that users are “stories that were published on the weekends tended to be shared on [...]
March 29th, 2010 at 12:30 am
[...] estudio realizado por Dan Zarella nos dice que Twitter es más usado durante la semana, por el contrario de Facebook que aumenta su [...]
March 29th, 2010 at 11:21 am
[...] Zarella, a writer who calls himself the "social media and viral-marketing scientist", has a tasty little piece of research that could help time-strapped charities get more mileage from their Facebook posts. Zarella tested [...]
April 21st, 2010 at 12:41 am
This stands to reason. My wife can spend hours on Facebook on the weekend. And I find myself spending more time on Facebook on the weekends as well. It's like Sunday driving compared to rushing thru the work week.
Club Penguin Cheats
April 27th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
I approve this post
. Happy to see, Dan, that you're going a little lighter on linking correlation and causation. Kudos, my friend.
June 4th, 2010 at 5:18 am
[...] throughout the week about the growing importance of social media. Not a bad idea, apparently, as info from Dan Zarella recently showed that Facebook activity more than doubles over the [...]
June 10th, 2010 at 2:35 pm
[...] Share this on Facebook [...]
June 10th, 2010 at 2:37 pm
[...] my series of Facebook data points, this time I looked at the readability of titles and how that was related [...]
June 28th, 2010 at 9:02 am
[...] estudio realizado por Dan Zarella nos muestra que FaceBook tiene menos visitas a diario que Twitter, teniendo lugar su mayo apogeo [...]
July 9th, 2010 at 7:42 am
[...] esta conclusión llegó el reconocido Dan Zarrella tras su estudio de los hábitos en los ususuarios estadounidenses. Su teoría expone que la [...]
July 24th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
[...] to research from Dan Zarrella, your hotel will get a lot more interaction on Facebook updates made on the weekend (especially on [...]