It is important to determine the best time for you to post to your Social Media account. First make sure your posts are engaging, informative and include an image or video. For more information on why it is important to include an image or video, visit this post. Next it is important to determine what day of the week and time of the day is best for you to post to your social media.
Know who your target audience is. If your target audience is mothers of small children you will want to post your posts at a time of day they are most likely to be checking their social media. This will be easier to figure out for some businesses than others. You can look to see what time of the day you get the most shares or comments. Also, you may have to experiment with different days and times to narrow it down.
If you’ve been posting for at least a couple of months, your social media analytics will help you to understand which posts have performed the best. You can map this against the time of day and day of the week those posts appeared and start to build up a clearer picture of when your audience responds best.
Peak times for social media will differ greatly from platform to platform. You also need to consider what times of the day various devices (desktop, mobile and tablet) are most likely to be used for social media. LinkedIn, for example, is a professional network so it naturally has peaks and dips of activity which are largely based around working hours. Facebook is more social, so the busiest times don’t follow the working day.
With LinkedIn, you can expect traffic to start dipping on a Friday afternoon for the weekend. Facebook however may have peak times on the weekend or week nights but may dip on Friday and Saturday evenings when people are busy with family and friends. They may still go online during these times and post selfies, but they typically spend far less time online and browse less because they are engaged in a real life social activity. If you are looking for a user to complete an action, for example a purchase, this would not be the time to post.
Twitter has a mix of professional users and personal users, so may tend to be similar to LinkedIn during the week and more like Facebook at other times. Twitter also sees a drop off Friday from 4pm but the lowest usage day is typically Sunday. It is however important to remember that Twitter is probably the most real time reactive platform in terms of users responding to real life events, news and other mainstream broadcasts. So, it would be a good strategy to plan activity around major events or even TV programs you know are popular with your target audience.
There may not be a perfect time to post on any platform but these guidelines should help you get started while you figure out what works best for your own audience’s social media behavioral trends.