Once upon a time, social media was a novel thing for businesses. Nowadays, it’s an absolutely essential way to reach out to customers, gain valuable insights and get your brand out there for the world to see.
One of the main challenges businesses face when it comes to social media is knowing what to post, when to post and how often they should be posting. In this guide, we’ll be taking a look at the best times to post on each social media channel in order to gain maximum reach and engagement.
So you’ve dedicated hours, weeks or maybe even months conducting extensive research, coming up with ideas and creating your perfect social media posts and now it’s time to finally show the world what your brand is all about.
But wait. When should you post them? And should you be posting them across each channel at the same time?
The answer here lies with your audience. You should be aiming to post when the people you want to reach are active online and this can be different for each and every brand and social media platform.
Do some research into the times your audience is most active by looking at your insights.
Go to your Facebook Business Page. On the Manage Page toolbar on the left hand side, select ‘Insights’ and then ‘Posts’.
You should then be able to see the days and times when your fans are most active.
Go to your profile and select ‘Insights’ below your bio.
Click ‘Total Followers’ and scroll down to the bottom of the page to see which days and times your audience is most active.
Go to your profile and head to ‘Settings and Privacy’ by clicking the three lines in the top right hand corner of the screen.
Then go to ‘Creator Tools’ and ‘Analytics’. Then select ‘Followers’ from the top bar.
From here, scroll down to the bottom of the screen where you can view the times and days when your followers are most active.
Twitter doesn’t have an insights feature to see when your followers are most active, however there are some online tools which you can pay for such as Circleboom which tell you your audience behaviours.
LinkedIn is another platform that doesn’t offer audience insight tools, however, HubSpot recently pulled together data to find when LinkedIn users are most active.
According to their findings, the best days to post content on LinkedIn are between Tuesday and Thursday, either early in the morning, at lunchtime or in the early evening. They also found that 10am and 11am on Tuesday was an especially good time to post.
These times make a lot of sense, after all, LinkedIn typically engages industry professionals the most and these tend to be very busy people who set aside time during their lunchtimes and evenings to catch up on their feed.
If you haven’t yet got a large enough following to get accurate insights yet, it may be worth looking at the best times to post for your industry.
Some examples are as follows:
The best days and times to post on Facebook for restaurants are Monday at noon and Fridays between 1-2pm.
The worst day for posting is Sunday.
The best days and times to post on Instagram for restaurants are Mondays between 9am and 1pm.
The worst day for posting is Saturday.
The best days and times to post on Twitter for restaurants are Wednesdays between noon and 2pm and Thursdays between 8am and 2pm.
The worst day for posting is Saturday.
The best days and times to post on Facebook for travel and tourism are Tuesdays and Wednedays between 9am and 1pm and Fridays between 10am and noon.
The worst day for posting is Sunday.
The best days and times to post on Instagram for travel and tourism are Thursdays at 7am and Mondays between 11am-3pm.
The worst days for posting are Saturdays and Sundays.
The best days and times to post on Twitter for travel and tourism are Mondays between 10am - 2pm and Wednesdays between 8-9am.
The worst day for posting is Saturday.
The best days and times to post on Facebook for education are Wednesdays and Thursdays at 10am.
The worst day for posting is Sunday.
The best days and times to post on Instagram for education are Fridays between 4-5am and Thursdays at 2pm.
The worst day for posting is Sunday.
The best days and times to post on Twitter for education are Mondays between 6-9pm and Thursdays at 10am.
The worst day for posting is Sunday.
If you’re releasing a specific product for a certain group of people that is different to your usual audience, you should think about when they will be most active.
For example, if you’re a health and beauty shop looking to target new mums on Facebook to promote your new Mum & Baby range, you should aim to post around 6pm to 11pm, when their babies have gone to sleep and they have some downtime to browse their social media.
Whilst it might be easy to just schedule in your posts to go live across your social channels at the same time, it's worth taking the time to look at when your audiences are most active on each channel and using this data to schedule your posts individually.
A great feature of Meta's Business Suite is the ability to schedule your Instagram and Facebook posts at their individual optimal times.
Simply select 'Optimal Times' and choose from Meta's recommended dates and times to schedule your posts according to your audience.
Don’t be fooled into thinking you can schedule all of your posts the same way. The content itself can also affect the time you should be posting.
For example, on Monday to Friday between 11am and 1pm, most of your followers will be taking a lunch break and will be scrolling through their feeds to catch up on the latest from their friends, favourite brands and influencers.
During this time period, they want short and snappy posts that they can quickly engage with, such as polls and quizzes on stories and short-form, illustration focused posts.
After-work hours, between 6-11pm, is the peak time for text-heavy posts, livestreams and competitions that require multiple steps to enter as people are more likely to engage with long-form content when they have plenty of time to relax without becoming distracted.
Tools such as Facebook’s Post Types Insights can also help you to determine which types of posts do best, such as links, statuses, photos and videos.
In the example below, we can see that posts with links generate the most reach, whilst video posts get the most clicks. So if this company’s KPI was to generate more clicks, their best bet would be to post more video content.
If your social media pages aren’t as social as you would like and you’re struggling to dedicate the time and expertise to help them grow, count on our team of social strategists at Statuo to help.
We can develop a social media strategy for your business to help you meet your goals, such as more product purchases, increased website traffic, email sign-ups or app downloads. We can even take care of the content creation too, with a team of fantastic designers at hand to make your brand stand out on socials.
For more information about our services, please don’t hesitate to get in touch today and we will respond to your request shortly!
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