Everyone knows that posting to social media is a great way to engage with your target audience and market your brand and product. But when exactly is the best time to post?
A lot of time has been spent crunching numbers and analysing data to find out when the best times are to post to social media, and here’s what the experts have found:
The bulk of the research about Facebook engagement has found that posting between the hours of 12 noon and 4 pm will bring you the highest amount of views, clicks and comments. This is interesting, largely because these hours coincide with the peak of the workday, but let’s not judge those on Facebook during work and instead post content to try and connect with them.
The second-best time to post is 9 am. Presumably this is because people are just getting into work and will log into social media as a way to reset their brains and start the day.
But remember: not all days are equal. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are by far the best days to post, with Friday the best of the three. People are ready for the weekend and feeling good, and this leads to much higher engagement.
Although it seems a bit strange, the best time to post to Instagram is actually 2 am. You might not think that a lot of people are on Instagram at this type of night, but that’s not really the point. Because so many people post during the day, sending out content in the wee hours gives your stuff a better chance at standing out. You may get your post in front of fewer eyes, but you have a higher chance of getting a response out of people at this time.
And if you do this well, by the time morning rolls around, your post will be performing, and this will put it at the top of people’s feeds, meaning even more exposure and engagement.
Wednesday seems to be the best day of the week, but engagement levels are high for nearly every day except the weekends and Tuesday.
To maximise the use of Twitter, the best time to post is 12 noon. Because Twitter is so good for giving out bite-sized pieces of content, it’s a great way for people to take a break from their fast-paced days. The second-best time to post is between 5-6 pm, which makes sense for the same reason. People are getting off of work and are looking to disconnect.
However, because of this very same reason, you should try to avoid posting on Fridays. Every other day of the week outperforms Friday, largely because people have other ways of getting their minds off work.
The best time for LinkedIn engagement is right when people get out of work. Usually people get notifications to update their profile, or to congratulate someone on their new job, during the day, and then they take time after work to respond. Engagement is also pretty high during lunch time.
So, there you have it. Of course, things will change a bit depending on the time zone you’re in and also on the lifestyle habits of your target audience. But if you keep to this schedule, you should be able to improve engagement on social media and make more use of these valuable marketing tools.