What is the best time of day to post on social media?

For a business person like me who uses social media regularly and blogs daily, when is the best time of day to post a blog? What about a Facebook post or a Tweet? I conclude this is a simple question without a simple answer.

The published articles on this topic, including the graph below, suggest that it depends on the result you are trying to achieve. This makes sense but isn’t really useful in answering my question. Perhaps I don’t really know what specific result (pageviews, reads, engagement, comments, etc.) will help me the most. I want whatever works, I just don’t know what works.

I notice that the time-of-day web traffic reports generated by Google Analytics contradict those generated by WordPress and both seem to contradict stats generated by Sitemeter. Perhaps the problem is that data is too sparse to develop any meaningful consensus.

In the end, the only conclusion I can draw is that mornings between 7 and 11 AM works best and don’t expect much response on Sunday.

I most commonly violate this general conclusion by posting too early in the morning. I was using a paid service that helped with social media timing but abandoned it after a cost/benefit consideration. Posting in real time “as it occurs” seems to feel more genuine to me. I will consider postponing publishing of some of my future posts written before 6 AM (like this one) until later in the morning.