Many articles have been written about the optimal times to post on social media, most with varying opinions, but on this we can all agree: Timing is everything.

A recent infographic published by SurePayroll summarizes the best and worst times for posting, pinning and tweeting. According to the infographic:

• On Facebook, updates posted between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. result in the highest average click-throughs. The worst times are weekends before 8 a.m. or after 8:00 p.m.
• The best time to post on Twitter is Monday through Thursday between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m.
• For LinkedIn, posting Tuesday through Thursday will increase your chances for engagement.

If you’re trying to reach a business audience, these times make sense and correlate with our own observations and experiences with the social media activities we manage for our clients.

Just as important as knowing when to post is knowing what to post. Unless you work for a large company with a dedicated social media manager, ensuring your social media channels are updated with a regular schedule of posts can be challenging. To help meet this challenge, consider developing a social media editorial calendar.

With an editorial calendar you can map out your posts for the upcoming week and beyond. Your editorial calendar can be as granular as including the actual copy/text for an upcoming post for a specific day. Or, you can use the editorial calendar to assign a theme for a particular day, such as on Mondays you’ll publish posts that revolve around industry research or data, on Wednesdays you’ll highlight one of your products, etc.

While you want to be nimble enough to react to trending topics and breaking news, laying out your publishing schedule in advance with an eye toward the best times to post on a particular social media platform, can maximize your time and effort.

For more information and facts you can use to optimize your social media activities, check out the full infographic below.