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Some strategies can either make or break your social media success and the one amongst those is, ‘Post frequency’.
If you post too rarely, your audience will forget that you exist and you will quickly fade into the deep dark halts of their minds.
However, if you are posting too often, you will become a complete irritation and they will terror seeing your posts overcrowding their feed.
So, the best times to post on social media are when the people you want to see your content are on the network.
Timing is everything on social media. You only want to send messages when people are around to see them. And a larger audience means more opportunities to boost engagement, drive traffic, and gain potential new followers and customers.
This case study proves that posting at the best times will help you get more traffic, more engagement, and more followers. It helps you gain more engagement with your followers over social media.
1- Facebook
Facebook is among social media marketers’ leading choices. With around 1.94 billion monthly active users, Facebook is the most widely accessed social network amongst all.
With Facebook’s confusing and ever-changing algorithms, it’s hard to get your posts higher up the feed, through organic ways, hence timing strategies can be highly rewarding here.
Even though Facebook users are active throughout the day, there are some specific days and times when they are the most active and your posts are likely to lure the most response.
Thursday is the ideal day whereas Monday is the worst day to post content as engagement rates fall 3.5% below average for posts uploaded on Monday.
Studies show that weekend posts get 32% more engagement on Facebook. However, there is some discussion over the best time to post. Some say 1 pm while others say 3 pm, but the effect is that posts in the early afternoon receive more engagement.
- The best time to post on Facebook is between 12.00 p.m. and 3.00 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
- And on Saturday and Sunday between 12.00 p.m. and 1.00 p.m.
Example-
#Taco Bell
Number of Likes: 10.6 million
Taco Bell has been able to successfully connect social platforms by sharing images of products. Almost every post has a picture of a Taco Bell menu item, which maximizes awareness and tempts people to eat there.
It empowers its social media presence through the frequency of the post at the best time. If you visit their Facebook page during the 24-hour period, you would get greeted with their company logo. This approach to promotion proves to be extremely successful because social media is buzzing for days.
Taco Bell’s ability to include humor into their social presence has surely helped in their success. Their posts grab a fan’s attention and engage them, and if they showed up in your news feed you’d probably click on them. Taco Bell sets you up for a memorable and enjoyable social experience.
Facebook Analytics: Track When Your Audience Is On Facebook
Right on your brand’s page on Facebook, go to Insights and click on Posts to see the data of when your viewers are online.
2- Twitter
A social network widely used by professionals as well as celebrities, Twitter is a very useful platform to spread and socialize any message.
The timing of your content on Twitter is quite critical. With a perfect timing strategy, you can optimize the maximum potential out of your audience.
- The best times to post on Twitter are weekdays from 12:00–3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.
- Monday through Thursday are the strongest days to post content, with noon on Thursday being the optimal time.
- Early morning and late nights are the least recommended time to publish content on Twitter.
Some businesses have also had success with 2:00–3:00 a.m., 6:00–7:00 a.m., and 9:00–10:00 p.m. post timings. Experiment with these times and others to see if they work with your audience.
Example-
#PlayStation
The video game titan has nearly 14.3 million followers on Twitter and continues to crush it!
They post a wide variety of posts (links, videos, and texts) at the right time. It also engages their fans, and retweets them!
Play station succeeded in posting frequency though with the number of posts per week at the appropriate time. They do experimenting with the time to see their engagement with the audience.
How well do you know your friends? Find out in That’s You, a party game you play with your phone! Free for PS Plus: https://t.co/rKCpCtCbIt pic.twitter.com/HvJzksdcmK
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) July 6, 2017
Twitter Analytics: Monitor Best Time to Tweet
Twitter Analytics provides an easy way for you to understand the best days to tweet according to your own audience’s engagement with your content. Just drive to your Twitter Analytics dashboard and hit Tweets.
3- Instagram
Instagram has appeared as a powerful and effective platform for marketing. It is intended for use on mobile devices, and users tend to use the network all the time, anytime; though many users engage with content more during off-work hours than during the workday.
Instagram marketing has currently become an integral part of mainstream social media marketing tactics. Studies show that Instagram users are consistently active on Instagram because of its flexibility.
Even though Instagram’s accepting algorithms confirm that your followers never miss a post, you can optimize timing approaches to maximize engagement and yield likes, views and comments.
- The times that return the highest response and engagement on Instagram are 1.00 p.m., 2.00 a.m., 8.00 a.m. and 5.00 p.m.
- The best times to post on Instagram are Mondays and Thursdays at any time except between 3:00–4:00 p.m.
Example-
#Sephora
Sephora is a cosmetic and beauty supply store with locations throughout the country.
Sephora is close to hitting 11.9 million followers and that’s due in part to their frequent and consistent posting schedule. You can see several quality posts from the brand.
It’s Instagram features a clever use of white space to really emphasize color so the eyes of its followers are drawn to the products. They use a creative way to engage followers.
Iconosquare- Measure Best Times to Post on Instagram
Iconosquare is an Instagram analytics tool that has a feature to help you understand when to post to Instagram to reach more of your own followers. It has a feature to help you find your own best times to post on Instagram.
The bigger the circle, the more engagement! Use that to understand when you should share to reach your followers.
5- Pinterest
Pinterest is another emerging social networking platform. It also drives more referral traffic than LinkedIn, Google+, and Youtube combined! The average Pinterest visit is over 16 minutes, which is far longer than any other social media platform.
Identifying and using the best times to post content on Pinterest is likely to benefit you. In this case, Saturday is the ideal day to publish content with Friday and Sunday as highly recommended days too.
- The best time to post to Pinterest is 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Saturday nights.
- Sunday is the least optimal day to post content on Pinterest.
- Other optimal times include every day from 2:00–4:00 a.m. and 2:00–4:00 p.m., and Fridays at 3:00 p.m.
Example-
#Mashable
Mashable is the largest independent news source dedicated to covering digital culture, social media, and technology.
Mashable’s Pinterest account showcases the gadgets and Infographic the news source is well known for reporting on, taking its immense amount of data and information and making it more visual and shareable.
They also have an amazing board where they’ve posted all the photos at best times & exemplifying a great use for Pinterest — leveraging and featuring user-generated content.
Pinterest Analytics- Measure Engagement Your Pinterest Followers
Pinterest Analytics is a powerful tool that shows you the dates when you’ve gotten the most viewers and engagement for your Pins. Use that information to analyze the days of the week when you typically get the best results.
6- LinkedIn
LinkedIn is used by professionals, and they tend to use it during the workweek, working hours on weekdays are the optimal times to publish content.
It is a great platform to communicate your message and engage with the ‘right’ people. Brands can utilize LinkedIn to reach key audiences and interact with related professionals. However, the timing of content is extremely important.
- The best time to post on LinkedIn is midweek from 5:00–6:00 p.m.
- Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays are the ideal days.
- Mondays & Friday see lower engagement rates than the rest of the workweek.
- Other optimal times include Tuesdays from 10:00–11:00 a.m., and Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 7:30–8:30 a.m., at 12:00 p.m., and from 5:00–6:00 p.m.
- The worst time to post on LinkedIn is during the night, between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m.
Example-
#L’Oréal
L’oréal engages and share relevant content with each of their specific target audiences at a specific time for better audience engagement.
They also drive engagement by posting exciting rich media in updates that link back to blog posts from their own blog, as well as other blogs whose content echoes with their target audience.
LinkedIn Analytics– Help You Post on LinkedIn on the Best Day
LinkedIn Analytics can help you understand which specific dates you’ve received the most reach and engagement for the content you’ve shared. Use this to understand the best days of the week to share content on LinkedIn.
Key Takeaways
The content you post to each of these social networks depends heavily on your audience. To successfully engage with your audience, you’ll have to really get to know and understand your target audience by creating detailed buyer personas.
When it comes to the best times to post on any social network, you also need to think about time zones. If your target audience spans many, that will impact your results. So use these timings as a starting point, but keep on testing and measuring results to find what works best for you.
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