People love sharing political content on Facebook. They want politicians thrown in jail. Lock him up, lock her up. I’m with her, I’m with him. People feel the need to tell their friends about their new pink hat or Donald Trump bumper sticker, or why Obama ruined their pancakes. Oh my.
I myself fell into this trap once and then I realized none if it matters. People aren’t necessarily angry, either. There are lots of different reasons people share particular links on Facebook which I’m not even going to pretend to understand.
But it sure looks like they’re angry.
WHEN are the angriest?
So you want to know the best time to share that video of Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton to be sure all your Trump supporting friends see it. Or maybe you want your liberal mother in law to know that you’re going to help build a new wall along the border.
Or maybe you’re a political blogger and you want to maximize the number of shares you’re getting.
Here’s what I came up with.
Here are some stats from a site that produces political oriented content. I can’t mention the name of the site. That might be a buzzkill for you. If so, sorry, move on. This website’s content gets a lot of Facebook shares. A fraction of the people sharing the articles even click through to read the articles (imagine that). The actual share numbers are much higher – this is web traffic for 6 months broken down by day of week and hour of day. And yes, the numbers are correct, millions of people come through to the site via FB alone every month.
For the lazy – the most popular times are:
- 1PM
- 12PM
- 2PM
- 11AM
- 9AM
- 3PM
- 8AM
- 10AM
- 7AM
- 5PM
- 6PM
- 4PM
- 6AM
- 7PM
- 5AM
- etc
Times are CST:
As we can see, angry Facebook users are pretty angry most of the day but stuff peaks around lunch or after.
Incidentally, 15+ years ago I used to sell electronics on eBay and this was the peak time there as well. I figured that stay at home parents are up and moving around, kids are still at school or napping, and people are work are slacking off in the afternoon hours.
And by day:
Yep.. Angry users are angry. People in the United States are always the angriest on Monday. They’re stressed out, even decades after retirement. Monday is my favorite day of the week to sleep in, make a big breakfast, and then go hang out at the gym for a couple of hours. I worker harder than most people, I just refuse to be caught up in the angry Monday drama. Rest assured I did it for decades- I just happen to have that benefit at the moment.
Recap:
These numbers are by no means scientific, and I can’t share the name of the site with you, or the time of day at which the articles are released. From this you may throw your arms up and call the data worthless, or you could make a broad generalization like I like to do.
I believe it is reasonable to conclude that Facebook users are most likely to share political content on Mondays and after lunch, but there really is not a “bad” time.
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