When it comes to social media, timing plays an important role. You only want to post an update when people are online and want to engage with them. A larger audience means more post engagement and gain of potential customers and followers.
The Best Time To Post On Twitter
Despite the fact that Twitter transfers to a quasi-chronological timeline, the normal time of a tweet isn’t that long. According to an examination by Wiselytics, it stays up for only 24 minutes and nearly four times shorter than the 90 minutes half-life of a Facebook post.
Wiselytics says that a Facebook post reaches 75 percent of its potential engagement in within five hours of the post. A median Tweet reaches this markup in less than three hours.
It is a minuscule window of opportunity. Hence it means that your Tweets need to get viewed by as many people as possible in less time – when the largest portion of your targeted audience is using Twitter.
To get you initiated, here are some data suggested analysis of over 40,000 tweets:
The best time when you should post on Twitter is at 3 pm from Monday to Friday. According to Hootsuite social media specialists, the best times to post a tweet are anywhere from 12 pm to 3 pm on the weekdays, as they get the highest amount of clicks and retweets at 3 pm.
But again, all this is different for different businesses, depending on content strategy, location, and audience. According to Huffington Post, for example, 12 pm, 5 pm, and 6 pm are the best times for tweeting, while 12 pm and 6 pm is also a good time for higher click rates. According to Kissmetrics, weekdays at 5 pm are the most efficient and Hubspot came to a similar conclusion that 12 pm to 3 pm Monday to Friday is the best time to post.
So the result is that you should use these times as a starting point, and test these different posting schedules and analyze the result.
The Best Time To Post To Facebook
Facebook is the king of social media, but since they have been revamping their newsfeed algorithm, getting your timing right on Facebook is not that easy.
But despite the non-chronological functionality of the newsfeed, we have discovered that publishing time for Facebook indeed yields a higher amount of comments, likes, click-through and shares.
The best time to post on Facebook is from 12 pm to 3 pm Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And for Saturday-Sunday, it is from 12 pm to 1 pm.
According to Hootsuite social media marketing team, Tuesdays are a bit off regarding Facebook engagement as compared to other days, but still, 12 pm to 3 pm works a little on that day as well.
The Best Time To Post On Instagram
Instagram is a whole different level of social media marketing. The posts on Instagram appear in feeds that are based on the likelihood of the audience will be interested in viewing that content. This means that videos and photos with lots of comments and likes have a greater chance of appearing near the top of your follower’s home stream.
But, however, the content doesn’t appear in a strict sequential order, you will want to post on Instagram when you have the right chance to hit a larger audience out of the gate.
To get this done right, think about your targeted audience and how their normal day looks like. Are they the type of person who would see Instagram as soon as they open their eyes? If so, then what would that time be? Where do they work and live? Also, consider this aspect that what they do while they are commuting or in their free time.
According to Hootsuite, the best time to post on Instagram is from 12 pm to 1 pm Monday to Friday.
The larger number of followers you have the more post engagement you get. There are many ways of getting more followers like you can run ad campaigns, start a contest and you can even buy Instagram likes and followers. The greater audience you have and the right strategy of posting your content the greater chances you have for a boost in engagement.
Other Things To Consider
When we are discussing the right time to post on social media, you need to understand the time zones. If you are targeting a global audience, then keeping the time zones in mind will have an impact on your results. You might be based in the PST time zone, but your followers might be in the GMT and EST time zone. In this case, you might discover that 8 am PST works well as both the other time zones hit their workdays depending if you have office space in LA. So when posting on different social media consider these points and always test them and analyze the results to find which one works best for you.
