What is the best time and day to post your content on social media?

With all the brands and businesses competing for eyes on social media, it can be difficult figuring out the right frequency and times to post content to get optimal engagement.

Good engagement generally equates to more likes, shares, comments and can overall boost visibility for a business on the networks, experts say.

Blog2Social, a social media management and automation tool, which evaluated posts from its more than 60,000 customers worldwide, has released an infographic highlighting the best times and days as well as frequency to post content on major social media networks.

While it offers some good guidelines, experts say, businesses should experiment with their own audience to see what drives engagement.

"Blog2Social's Best Times are a guide that represents global average values," says Monika Zehmisch, spokeswoman for Blog2Social.

Businesses can use the recommended times and days for guidance, she says, adding, there’s a "Social Media Week" template in the infographic that businesses can use for the first month.

But when doing so, they should evaluate their posts on a weekly basis, she says.

Most social media platforms, she says, give you insights and analytics, which allow you to view the engagement for each post in detail.

Based on what you find, you then can adapt the best times to your personal target group, Zehmisch says.

Among suggested times and frequencies, according to the infographic: businesses should post twice daily on Facebook, mainly on Tuesday, and Thursday through Sunday; for Twitter, post three times daily Monday through Friday; and for LinkedIn, post once a day, Tuesday through Thursday.

Still, Beth Granger, a Port-Washington-based LinkedIn and social media trainer, consultant and speaker, says you really have to gauge your own audience to see what gets the most engagement. For example, she’s had success posting on LinkedIn on weekends.

A few years ago, she posted on LinkedIn she would be holding LinkedIn Local events --- live virtual events discussing topics such as time management — and asked followers' input on what days and times they preferred. She said the post drew a lot of comments and likes.

That's why, ""All of this can only be guidelines because everyone’s network and communities are different," Granger says.

Godson Michel, a digital marketing specialist at Blue Surge Marketing Agency, a Lindenhurst-based digital marketing firm, agrees. "It’s always good to go off best practices, but I think where you find the real value is trying to see what works with your own audience."

Sometimes you don’t want to be posting when everyone else is," he says. "If you post at the same time everyone else is posting you’ll effectively hide your own posts just based on volume."

Ultimately, he says, it’s more about the content that drives engagement.

"It’s really about providing something funny, something engaging or something users find value from." For instance, he says, he got a lot of engagement from a question he posted recently in a Facebook group asking, ‘how do you motivate yourself on the days you just want to stay in bed?.’ "

That was a simple question that engaged his audience.

Keep in mind you don’t want to just barrage your audience with a slew of random posts or overload their feed.

An "excessively high posting frequency could be classified as spam by social media platforms and result in a decrease in visibility," Zehmisch says.

Look to provide value rather than trying to meet a quota.

"If it’s good content more people will engage with it," says Jason Sidana, director of business development at Farmingdale-based Maxburst, a digital marketing and web development agency.

That will translate into more likes, comments and shares, which will increase the company's visibility and reach on the platforms.

He says there are social media management tools that can help schedule posts, but also provide analytics to help you track and benchmark top posts.

Hilary Topper, president of HJMT Public Relations in Long Beach and author of "Branding in a Digital World," uses one such tool, Hootsuite, to "push out some of her blog content," but for the most part she just posts when she has something relevant to share.

She’s a social media influencer helping promote products for smaller brands and finds contests and giveaways boosts engagement among followers.

You have to determine what drives your audience on each platform.

Since Instagram is visual, she says she’ll post interesting visuals to promote engagement. She recently posted a shoe of the day from her shoe collection on Instagram for a week and got over 2,000 views and likes within 24 hours after posting.

"You really have to tailor it to your business and audience," Topper says.