Best Time To Post On Social Media For Business
Do you feel like you’re getting lesser engagement from your social media posts? Knowing your target audience and creating mind-blowing content is just half the battle. To make sure that the online world appreciates your efforts, you need to know when is the perfect time to activate your posts.
When is the best time to post on social media?
The truth is, there’s no golden rule to follow when determining the best time to post on social media. This is because every business has its own unique audience and content to post. The best time highly depends on your business industry and your audience.
As a B2B business, you’ll be primarily targeting other businesses. A safe bet would be to post during general work hours when the employees of those companies manage their business accounts.
If you’re a B2C business, your focus would be geared towards individual consumers. These people are estimated to be on social media at a few particular hours of the day. For example, before work, at lunchtime, and after work when relaxing at home.
Quick tip: The best times to post on social media are when your target consumers are online.
Of course, every social media platform will have a different time that works best for your audience. This makes sense since the type of user on each social network varies depending on its utility. For example, LinkedIn offers professional networking opportunities which are more business-oriented. On the other hand, TikTok is more of an entertainment space whereby users go online during their leisure time. As such, the best time to post on LinkedIn might not be the same as the best time to post on TikTok.
Let’s take a closer look at each of the best times to post on various social media platforms.
Best time to post on Facebook
Facebook is still easily the world’s largest social media platform, boasting over 2.8 billion active users. The latest Facebook statistics show that users spend an average of 19.5 hours on the social media app each month. This gives you plenty of windows of opportunity to gain organic traffic.
According to Hootsuite, the most significant volume of followers arrive on Facebook around 3 pm every weekday.
More specifically, the best time for B2B brands to post on Facebook is between 9 am and 2 pm on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. B2C brands see better performances at 12 pm on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday.
Best time to post on Instagram
According to data from Sensor Tower, Instagram was among the top five most downloaded apps in both the App Store and via Google Play last year. It ranks as the second-largest social media platform with over 1 billion global users.
Instagram is known for displaying posts based on an algorithm that shows the most recent posts. However, posts are not necessarily shown on user’s feeds in chronological order. This is because the platform prioritizes content that is most relevant to the user’s interest. Thus, your best shot for optimal engagement is to post during peak hours — when the majority of users are active and utilize posts that will generate audience interaction.
Later compiled data from over 12 million Instagram posts and found that the best time to post is generally between 9 and 11 am.
SproutSocial analyzed over 25,000 of its customer’s Instagram activity and found that overall, the best day to post is on Wednesdays. Wednesday at 11 am, and Friday at 10–11 am are the best times to post. It is important to note that the most consistent engagement happens between Tuesday and Thursday from 10 am–3 pm.
If you have an Instagram business account, you can track the peak hours for when your followers are most active with Instagram Insights.
Best time to post on Twitter
There are over 330 million monthly active users and 145 million daily users on Twitter. More than 500 million tweets are tweeted each day — that’s approximately 6,000 tweets every second!
With this massive amount of tweets, how can you make sure your tweet stays afloat?
Well, similar to Instagram, Twitter uses an algorithm to rank posts it thinks people will want to see instead of displaying tweets in chronological order based on recency.
Looking at SproutSocial’s study, the best times to post are Wednesday and Friday at 9 am. Twitter sees the highest engagement to be Monday through Friday, from 8 am – 4 pm. So anytime within this period is a safe bet, but note that engagement drops every day between 10 pm and 4 am.
Best time to post on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a professional business hub that connects over 740 million active users across the world. While the platform’s intended purpose is to build a network amongst colleagues, companies are now using LinkedIn business pages to promote their brand.
SproutSocial recommends the best times to post on Linkedin are: Wednesday 8 -10 am and noon, Thursday at 9 am and 1 - 2 pm, and Friday at 9 am.
You should avoid posting on Sundays due to much lower engagement compared to weekdays. In addition, the engagement rate tends to drop outside of working hours, i.e. every day between 8 pm and 4 am.
Best time to post on TikTok
Don’t let the newest social platform fool you. Despite its late introduction to the field, the channel is estimated to have over 1.1 billion monthly active users. The best part is TikTok has the highest social media engagement rates per post. This means you can virtually post at any time throughout the week and still see substantial results.
However, according to Influencer Marketing Hub, the best times to post on TikTok is early morning between 6 am and 10 am, and in the evening, after work hours between 7 pm to 11 pm.
After gathering results from over 100,000 posts, the best engagement rates are Tuesday at 9 am, Thursday at midnight, and Friday at 5 am.
Best time to post on Pinterest
The platform that spurs inspiration and photo-sharing now has 459 million monthly active users. Just in the last year, it gained more than 100 million active monthly users, which is the largest increase the channel has ever seen.
The best times to post on Pinterest, as advised by Socialbakers, are between 8 pm and 11 pm and between 2 am, and 4 am. Apparently, most of the platform’s users are night owls! The worst time to post on Pinterest would be during work hours from 9 am to 5 pm.
Best time to post on Snapchat
Snapchat currently has 265 million daily active users worldwide. Like Pinterest, Snapchat is considered a nocturnal app whereby most users are active during the night. So keep in mind that your content is most likely viewed by bedtime browsers.
The best time to post on Snapchat would be between 10 pm, and 1 am. This is not too big of a surprise, considering the demographic of the majority of Snapchat users are younger people.
There isn’t a “best day” to post on Snapchat as users actively use the app on all days of the week, but you would want to keep your post frequency up to around 2 to 3 posts per night.
How to find your best time to post on social media
You might have already realized that social media is becoming increasingly personalized. Rather than broadcasting your message to the general public, there is greater efficiency with a targeted experience. As such, you really need to hone your best time to post on social media.
To find your own best time to post on social media, follow these simple steps.
1. Begin with an informed guess
Think about who your audience might be online and when they would have the time to interact with your social media posts. For example, before and after work? During their lunch break? Or during the weekends?
As we’ve shared earlier in this blog, there are several best times to post on each social channel in general. Use these timings as a rough guide to possibly identify your best timings.
2. Schedule your posts
After you’ve decided on a handful of timings, it’s time to test them! Just like every other experiment, the best way to maintain accuracy is by testing them multiple times.
You could schedule the particular set of timings for a few weeks, we’d recommend about three to four weeks of posting. This should give you sufficient data to analyze.
3. Keep track of your metrics
Once you’ve collected enough data, you can start to analyze your results. This step is essential in finding out which timings actually work best for you.
There are several tools that you can access from the social media platform to keep track of your metrics. For example, Instagram Insights and Facebook Analytics.
4. More testing!
By now, you should have an idea of what’s working and what’s not. Using your newfound analysis, go back to scheduling new posts for the next few weeks again. Of course, you’ll want to use the best performing times and repeat the cycle.
It is crucial to remember that your best time to post could change over time, or it might not change at all. As such, you should regularly experiment and track your metrics to find the most relevant best time.
FAQs
How often should I post on social media?
This is fairly dependent on your audience, type of platform, and line of business. We recommend posting at least three times a week. This ensures that your content does not come off too spammy, but at the same time, appears a healthy amount of times on your follower’s feed.
Which social media platform should I use to promote my business?
It is natural for businesses to jump on the platform with the highest number of active users like Facebook and Instagram. However, your efforts might be counterproductive if your target audience/potential clients are not on that platform. As such, you should conduct some research on your client pool beforehand. An excellent way to do this is by checking out your competitor’s tactics, timings, and content.
What’s the best time to post on social media?
As this blog highlights, the best time to post on social media depends on several elements. The main factors to consider are your choice of platform, your business industry, and your audience activity. With the recommended timings from this blog, you should be off to a good start and get valuable insights on your best time to post after careful experimentation.
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