What’s the best time to post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and other social media apps? Here are tips on when to post — so you can get more views.
Social media is one of the most important and convenient forms of advertising. You can pay to promote the content you share, or simply rely on organic reach to let your followers share your posts for you. The trick with organic reach is to make sure that as many people see your posts as possible so that they can share them. To maximize your reach, you need to post at the right time.
Know your audience to get more views
To an extent, the best time to post is when your followers are online. That can differ for various niches. When posting information-dense B2B content, you’re unlikely to reach people who are looking for that on a Sunday afternoon for example, because people will be on their personal accounts instead of their work accounts, and they won’t be seeking out heavy content.
As another example, you’re unlikely to reach young kids in the middle of the night, while for college students, it makes more sense to look for ‘peak times’ rather than posting when they’re most likely to be in classes. Know your audience and cater to them.
It’s also worth looking at time zones when you’re trying to figure out the best times to post on social media to get more views. If you sell internationally, try to reach users from each time zone.
When to post to Facebook or Instagram
With Facebook and Instagram, the best times to reach people are during lunchtimes and evenings. With Instagram in particular, you will find that people are usually browsing on mobile devices, and don’t browse during working hours. People are also more likely to put their phones down and spend their time with friends and family on Sundays, so keep your posts to weekdays for best results.
The way Instagram’s algorithm works favors fresh posts, so you’ll get less engagement if you post at the wrong time. Using the right hashtags help to ensure that you reach people who are good prospects. Pick a mixture of very busy and popular hashtags, and related ones that are slightly less busy so that your posts are more likely to stay near the top of those tags for a while.
Facebook posts have a half-life of about 90 minutes, so you have a bit of leniency with when you post them. Facebook’s algorithm for pages means that you will only have your post show organically to about 10% of your followers to start with. You need to get those initial likes, comments and shares to ensure that the post has as much reach as possible.
The best time to post to Twitter
Twitter moves quickly, which means that it’s hard to get your post seen. The main difference, however, is that with Twitter posts you can repeat yourself without as much of a penalty. The best time to post to Twitter is during lunchtime. You can schedule a post just before lunch for maximum effect. Weekdays are better than weekends for reaching people. Give your post a few hours, then repeat it for the next time zone.
Remember to engage with other users, liking and commenting or retweeting so that you are showing engagement yourself rather than looking like a spammer. Engagement is a must on social media.
When to post on LinkedIn and Pinterest
If you are looking to reach people on other niche platforms then you should consider how those platforms are used. LinkedIn is the biggest of the more specialist sites in terms of opportunity to do some real promotional work. The best time to post to LinkedIn is typically between 10 and 11AM on a weekday, because that’s when people are settling in to work and are looking at work-related networks.
Because LinkedIn is used a lot by recruiters and salespeople, you will not see much activity from those people on evenings and weekends. If you do want engagement during those times, then it will most likely be from job hunters or students.
Pinterest is another popular platform, and one that is frequently used by women, and in particular mothers. Posting between 8PM and 11PM is a good idea, since that’s when the kids have gone to bed and mums can have some much needed “me time”. You’re unlikely to see much engagement during work hours, especially for aspirational content. The demographic that you want to reach there is busy working during the day, then ‘shopping’ at night. So catch them when they are ‘shopping’ after a hard day at work!
Every platform differs, and there are some exceptions. You may notice that certain hashtags are busier at particular times of day, for example. It is worth experimenting with different times of day based on your personal knowledge of your market. Whatever you choose to do, be consistent and patient, and try not to spam.
