When is the best time to post on social media? This is a question many people think they can intuitively answer but working out exactly when to post is a great deal more complicated than that. From Facebook to Twitter and Instagram, it is important for companies – both ecommerce and physical – to make the best use of these platforms and build a following on each one. This is the great advantage that social media offers; once a user is following your company, you have direct access to them each time you post.
However, even if someone is following your company on social media, it does not necessarily mean that they are going to see everything you post. The metaphor about the drop of rain in the ocean certainly applies here. Any given social media follower will also be following a truly vast number of different pages, companies, and people and so, in short, you need to stand out.
Standing Out by Posting at the Right Time
There are many ways to do this, but one of the easiest to begin with is to learn when to post on social media. It can vary across different platforms. Engaged Media, specialists in social media content and strategies, advise that the best strategy is to draw on expert data.
If you know the right time to post, then you can far more easily do so. It might seem like keeping in mind a single time to post for each individual platform would complicate matters, but this is where post scheduling comes in. This is a feature of almost all social media platforms – all you need to do is find out the right time to post. After that, all that’s left is to keep the content coming! Consistency is key.
The Best Time to Post
So, when is the best time to post? Drawing on expert data, here follows the best times to post on different social media platforms and why. For each platform, there is more than one optimal time to post and even certain days which are preferable to others.
Instagram is a platform with over two billion monthly users as of 2022. Accordingly, any social media strategy needs to incorporate Instagram posting. Instagram tends to lean more towards a youthful and chic customer base. And of course, it is a highly visual medium. The best times to post on this platform are between 6 PM and 9 PM, with the six hours previous to this also being quite good times. The best day to post is Saturday.
Facebook is the biggest social media platform. Posting on Facebook then is a must. Facebook is friendlier to text posts and has a more demographically varied membership. Between the times of 3 PM to 6 PM and 9 AM to 12 PM are great times to post, but the best time to post has been identified as 6 PM to 9 PM – the after-work shift. Again, Saturday is the best day to post.
Of course, Twitter favors brevity in posts; the well-known character limit will be a barrier to longer posts here (which typically need to be posted as images or long threads). However, Twitter is also friendly to links, images, and offsite content. Overwhelmingly, the best time to post is 6 PM to 9 PM. Unlike Facebook and Instagram, the best day to post is Friday.
So, as you can tell from this data, social media posting is generally best done in the evening and around the weekend. Nevertheless, to truly optimize your social media marketing, it’s worth getting a bit more exact and posting at the optimal time for each platforms.
