What is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?

Social media is all about reaching a wider audience. Do you know social media strategy also includes posting your content according to the calculated time? You need to know when your target audience would be online and when your content would have a maximum reach. Let’s understand what is the best time to post on social media.

Is There Really a Best Time to Post on Social Media? Fact or a Myth?

In today’s, world, everyone is following what’s trending. However, sometimes these trends are not effective enough to help you grow your digital presence. You must’ve heard many people suggesting you to post on a particular time on your Instagram or Facebook. Well, timings are indeed important for a better reach.

But how does timing work in a better reach?

• There are billions of social media users worldwide and their time zones differ. So you are technically dealing with a huge time zone difference. You need to analyse your audience’s activity time and then post accordingly. You need to do this to find a regular place in the user feeds.
• According  71% of consumers who receive a quick response from a brand are likely to recommend that brand to other customers. So the more you engage to your audience, the more they would recommend your brand to others. For this you have to study your audience’s active timing.
• The age group, gender, occupation among many other details play a key role in understanding the preferences of your audience. For instance, majority of your customers are office workers or people with different jobs, it’s likely they would not be active between 9-5 time slot. This would also give you a hint that you could engage with them more on weekends through some interactive posts and stories to increase your reach.

What is the best time?

Okay, before moving ahead, let’s clear this beforehand. Anytime can be your best time or worst time. Then how to find what’s the best time for your posting?

• This is a very simple yet effective trick – You can try posting randomly and then track your engagement and reach.

But do you have enough time to do that? Well, most of us don’t. In that case, you can try the following tips and tricks to find your best time on social media.

This may not work totally in your case, but why not try instead of posting randomly.

Best Time to Post on Different Social Media Platforms

Every social media platform works differently. LinkedIn is used for finding careers and posting about business. It’s very likely that LinkedIn is used during business hours. Whereas, Facebook and Instagram are more social and they can be used anytime, be it afternoons or late nights.

So how to know the peak time?

Best time to post on Facebook

With the growth of other social media platforms, Facebook has seen a little dip in the past few years. Organic growth on Facebook is not as easy as before, since everyone is trying to do something or the other on social media.

Yet, Facebook has over 2 billion users and that’s a huge amount of presence.

• Hootsuite analysed the timings. According to them, the best time for B2B posting is between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m. EST on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. And the best time for B2C is 12 p.m. EST on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.
• Neil Patel suggests that another good option can be to post on “off-peak hours”. Moreover, according to him, “the best time to post on the social network for getting more shares was found to be 1 pm, while 3 pm was the best time for getting the most clicks.”
• Off-peak hours could be a good idea since your competitors would not be posting at that time.

Best Time to Post on Twitter

Okay, let’s just accept this that there are more than 500 million tweets posted per day. How would you make sure your tweet is not getting lost in the ocean of million tweets.

• According to Hootsuite, for B2B “the best time to post on Twitter is between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST on Monday or Thursday, with emphasis on the 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. EST window.” For B2C “the best time to post on Twitter is at 12 p.m. or 1 p.m. EST from Monday to Wednesday.”
• HubSpot gives 12pm to 3pm (lunch breaks during work) from Monday to Friday the best time for Twitter use.
• If you are focussing on B2B, weekdays work better and for B2C, weekends.

Best Time to Post on LinkedIn

You cannot afford to leave LinkedIn if you are reading this blog for a business purpose. LinkedIn is a business hub and optimal use of LinkedIn is essential for your business’ growth.

LinkedIn is all about business related content so there is a lot of competition already.

• According to TrackMaven, the best time to post on LinkedIn for both B2B and B2C business owners to be Wednesday at 9 am. Sproutsocial also agrees to Wednesday at 9 pm.
• Posting on Sundays is usually said to be avoided.
• Whereas, Neil Patel says “Posting on weekdays (Monday to Friday), during normal office hours (10 am to 6 pm) makes the most sense if LinkedIn’s users comprise your target audience.”

Best Time to Post on Instagram

Instagram has seen a sudden rise in past few years and this is the reason why brands are using Instagram to increase their reach. Just like Twitter, Instagram also focuses on recent posts only and it has nothing to with chronology.

Instagram is all about fresh content. Technically you’ve less time to make yourself visible on the platform otherwise your post would lost among millions of other posts.

Instead of using days and time, we would suggest you to analyse your instagram highlights.

• Check your followers’ active timing and according to them analyse what could be the best time to post.
• Off work hours work better on Instagram.
• You can post often to maximize your reach.
• A study by Mavrck on 1.3 million Instagram posts found that brands can get higher engagement between 6 am to 12 pm.

Conclusion:

As mentioned above, timing on social media is an essential thing. However, in the beginning you can try and experiment to understand your preferred time. You can also check your rival brand’s timing and engagement since it could be helpful for you in understanding the customer better.

Moreover, you can also consider social media management tools if you are new to social media marketing. We at Social Grow platform already have this feature which helps you not only schedule and plan your all social media posts at one place but also helps you in getting the best insights. Through these effective insights, you can analyse and post accordingly with the ease at all platforms in one go.