With plenty of sites and software available to schedule and automate your social media activity, it’s easier than ever to post at exactly the right time to garner the most attention.
Just like with most things, finding the best times to post for your audience will take a bit of experimenting and testing, but here are a few best practices for the most popular social media sites based on data from Quicksprout.
- Weekdays are the best time to post with Thursday and Friday displaying peak engagement rates
- Monday-Wednesday show the lowest engagement rates at 3.5% below the average
- Engagement spikes towards the end of week when people are less interested in working
- Lunchtime garners the most attention, specifically between 1PM-3PM (adjust your time zone to the majority of your audience!)
- Users are most active during their commute after work and work/school hours
- B2B activity is higher during the week, whereas B2C activity is higher over the weekend
- 5 PM (average time of home commute) shows a spike in retweets
- Post between 12PM-6PM for the highest click-through-rates, presumably during lunch breaks and after work commute time
- A majority B2B site, the best times to post are during the week, specifically Tuesday through Thursday
- Activity is especially low on the weekends
- Business hours are the best times to post, especially 7AM-8AM and 5PM-6PM
- Mondays and Fridays are the worst days to post
- According to this site the most user engagement is seen on Tuesdays between 10AM-11AM
- Saturday is the most popular day to post
- Best times to post are 8PM-11PM and 2AM-4AM
- For B2C posts, the best times are after 3 PM on Friday when most users are focused on weekend plans ahead
- Instagram activity is the most consistent versus any other platform
- There is a slight activity spike on Monday and slight dip on Sunday
- Activity is very similar during work and after work hours with only a small advantage to after work hours
- The majority of Fortune 500 companies post during business hours and still receive high engagement rates
Google+
- Weekdays are most efficient at receiving engagement
- Best times to post are between 9 AM and 11 AM (late morning)
- Google offers a Timing+ tool to optimize posting for your specific audience
Social media certainly is not a one size, fits all game and you should definitely test out different posting times to discover what works best for your brand and audience.
Not sure which platforms to use for your business? Don’t have the time or energy to keep up with social media?
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