Although there are lots of articles floating around the Internet about optimal posting times on social media, it can often get confusing when people have such differing takes on posting times and user habits. There is definitely an art to social media, and for your business, you want to find artists – masters of the digital craft. The masterpiece will be optimized social media engagement.
Of course, it’s important to think about your target audience and what their habits are. You might change your posting times depending on your audience’s age, job, or some other set of needs they may have. Also, note how the general posting times are different for each social media platform. That’s because people use each site a little differently, and it’s important to think about these differences when trying to figure out when to post.
Therefore, you must look at your business’s web analytics to analyze your strategy and better understand when your fans are engaging with your social media pages. Lucky for you, most of the social media sites actually have their own web analytics built into the site. For example, Facebook has Page Insights, Twitter has Analytics, Pinterest has Web Analytics, LinkedIn has Company Page Analytics, and Google+ has Platform Insights.
These analytics are absolutely essential to keeping your social media platforms healthy and growing. They will help you determine which posts are successful at what time and to whom, and regularly monitoring your social media analytics not only tells you when you should post your business updates but will also help you improve your social media strategy overall.
After looking at web analytics, you should then consider the following: When are people rushing to get ready and aren’t even looking at their phones? When are people bored at work and need a small LinkedIn break? When are people going to lunch and scrolling through their Twitter feed? When are people stuck on a boring bus ride during rush hour traffic and looking at their Facebook feed to pass the time? When are people having trouble sleeping and going on Pinterest instead?
Remember that your goal is to increase engagement for your business, whether that means increasing page likes, post comments, or simply just post reach, so having an answer to these questions will help you determine the best times to post your updates.
However, after extensive research done on the topic, this chart can give you a general idea of the best posting times for optimal results.
