You don't need to be a marketing expert to know that content is king on social media. To get the most interactions and reach out of your social media strategy, you need to be posting content that your fan base responds to. However, what is the point of having this great content if you aren't posting it when your audience is active? In this Marketing Tip Monday, we answer the question of when to post on social media.
Timing is everything. This mantra rings especially true in your social media marketing efforts. Even though Facebook and Instagram have an algorithm in place that will show content based on a variety of factors, it is still very important to look at the times you post on social media.
According to this infographic from Surepayroll, the best time to post on Facebook is between 1 and 4 pm. Twitter is most active Monday-Thursday between 9 am and 3 pm. Late night/early morning posts perform much worse than posts during the middle of the day. The weekends are a fine time to post as long as you stick to posting in the middle of the day.
This information seems to be rather common sense. By following these best practices you can certainly get more mileage out of your posts. If you want to maximize your efforts though, you need to dive deeper into your analytics. Most social media platforms provide built in statistics showing when your content is being interacted with. Experiment a little bit and see what times your audience is responding. If you're marketing to mostly college-aged people you may be able to post a little later at night and get away with it. If you're marketing to professionals, you may want to only post early morning, during lunch times or towards the end of the work day. Knowing your audience and their behavior patterns is the key to having a deeper understanding of your posting strategy. It takes a little leg work, but it is totally worth it in the long run!
To summarize, there are definitely best practices to follow when it comes to when to post on social media. To get the most out of your campaigns though, you will have to do some research and analysis in order to really figure out when your audience is there to engage with your content.