Best Time to Post
Finding the time your audience is online will impact your post’s performance on social media. There are generic best times to post per platform and here they are:
Facebook: 6:15 am, 12 pm
Instagram: 8 am - 12 pm & 4 pm - 5pm
Pinterest: 8 pm - 12 am
Youtube: 2 pm - 4pm (weekdays) & 9 am -11 am (weekends)
LinkedIn: 8 am - 11 am
Twitter: 6 am - 9am
If you are just starting out on social media, schedule your content 15-30 minutes before the peak times mentioned above. This will allow your post to gain some traction to reach the most people. Once you have practiced this for a few weeks, take a look at your insights to make sure these times are still optimized for your audience.
You can find these insights on:
Facebook:
You will find the information you need when you go to your business page. There will be a Page Insights tab, from there click on the Post option. There you will find a graph of “When Your Fans Are Online,” such as the one pictured here.
Instagram:
Go to insights (will be available for business accounts), under Audience there will be a “Most Active Times” section at the bottom. Not only will you be able to see what time of each day is the best to post but also which days of the week are the best as well.
Pinterest, Youtube, LinkedIn, and Twitter
These four platforms do not provide audience analytics the same way other social media platforms do. The suggestion here would be to create a spreadsheet including the date and times of your posts and analyze when your posts perform the best. This won’t provide you with a clear direction but after a few months, you may start to notice a pattern with your content.
Now, if you have been paying attention to your insights, you may notice that your analytic peak times don’t always correspond with the generic. Track your analytics to find the peak times for YOUR audience using an excel sheet as seen above.
You may also notice that your audience is almost nonexistent at a certain time or day of the week. Take note of these and avoid, if you can, posting on these days/times. The recommendation at Social Mirror Media is to review your peak days/times every 3-4 months to check for any changes that may have occurred with your audience.
By narrowing down your window to post, you will boost your social media goals, and take away the guessing game of when to post. This will help plan campaigns, events, and other material you may need to promote on social media. There is a lot of research, time, and effort that goes into creating photos, graphics, writing the perfect caption and optimizing hashtags, so let’s get that effort noticed by more people by reviewing the Best Time to Post.