As we know, understanding the best time to post is an essential component of social media marketing. And this is the reason why a lot of research has been done on this topic. The findings of these studies vary, but we’ve summarized general guidelines to help you choose your optimal publishing time to maximize engagement with your target audience. Especially when we face such things as global pandemic which changes the rules of life for the whole world. Today, the battle for people’s attention has become more competitive than ever because even if you know what to post and your content is of top quality, it is only half the battle.

If you want your brand to stay on top of the game, be successful and competitive, it is important to know the best and worst times for posting in each social media platform your business is presented. There are more than 3.96 billion active social media users all over the world. Don’t underestimate the power of social networks as a tool to communicate with your target audience and making more customers, fans, and brand advocates.

We all know that the best times to post on social media are when your customers and followers are online. But each social media channel has a different time that works best for the audience. For example, the best time to post on Instagram is different than the best time to post on Facebook. Besides, when you start considering different time zones, it starts to get a bit complicated.

In this article, we will talk about the best time for posting on different social media platforms and share recommendations for social management tools. Using this data, you can improve your engagement rates, brand awareness, reach, generate more sales and traffic. It can be your starting point to find out which schedule works best for you and your company.

Contents

1. Common Rules
2. Time Zones Matter
3. Best time to post on Facebook
4. Best time to post on Instagram
5. Best time to post on LinkedIn
6. Best time to post on Twitter
7. Best time to post on Pinterest

The best time to post on social media needs to factor in the social platform you are using and the time zone most of your target audience are in. We will talk about average times, but you can check your statistics and check when your followers engage the most. The best way to find out your best posting time is to experiment with it. For example, you can use social media management tools to plan and schedule your posts at different times over several weeks or months to determine which times tend to work best with particularly your audience. With PromoRepublic you can easily create your social media calendar, create posts using our library, and schedule them with the help of AI.

Also, don’t forget to check your competitors. You can track their progress and see the exact time when their posts get the highest engagement rates. Similar tactics can probably work with your pages, so test them out too or post your content when they are generally quiet. Remember to check each platform separately for the best results because each of them lives by its own rules.

1. Common Rules

• Posting Consistency Is More Important Than Posting Frequency

Aim for consistency when posting on social media, create a plan and stick to it. For example, if you think that your social media post frequency should be two posts a day on Facebook, you know you need content to fill that schedule. And your followers will know that they can expect two fresh posts every 24 hours if they visit your page. If you want to attract new people, you need to have something valuable for them to digest.

• Content Quality Is More Important Than Content Quantity

Not posting anything at all is often way better than posting low-quality and not relevant content. Don’t try to post something just to fill a slot in your schedule. This is how brand loses their fans and followers. This works exceptionally well in times of coronacrisis, where you need to focus on making your content as useful or engaging as possible, providing facts or sweet distraction. If you want to create relevant social media content, you need to focus on the principles of helpfulness, authenticity, and quality so that the posts will make sense to people engaging with them. Pandemic influenced time when people go online, so brands need to consider if there are still lockdown measures in countries where their target audience is.

• You Can Only Understand if Your Posts Are Successful if You Have a Clear Objective for Social Media

That rule is pretty obvious. Especially if you’re an agency, you surely want to confirm your plan with your clients before publishing content on their behalf. Because if you don’t know why and what you are posting, you can’t understand if your goal is achieved, whether to get more brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or sell a particular amount of your product or service.

• Tailor Your Content to Suit Each Network

Don’t just copy and paste your Facebook or LinkedIn posts to Instagram or Twitter. That won’t work. Instead, think of which types of content are best suited to each social media network and start from there. For example, if videos get higher engagement on Facebook than images, then use it. Change up the copy, hashtags, and emojis for each post. Tailoring will take a little longer, but you want people to see only high-quality content.

• Engage With Your Audience

Posting content is a monolog, but social media is all about talking and being reactive. You will need to be available to join in the discussion when people respond to your posts. The quicker you can react to posts and comments, the more active and human your brand will seem, and the more your community will grow.

2. Time Zones Matter

Some brands and influencers send out the same message at different times to hit all the time zones they are working with. The thing is, the more popular your business is, the more time zones you’ll likely need to take into account. If you want to reach most of the time zones without overdoing it, it is a good idea to send no more than four same messages in one day with a different scheduled time. By doing this, you can reach as many countries as possible.

For example, if your target audience is located in the United States and\or Canada, you need to aim at the EST time zone. It has the highest number of people, thanks to Toronto and New York. If your followers live in London, you want to post within the GMT time zone. Try to use analytic tools to find out where your customers are located. It can be built-in tools of the social media platforms themselves or external applications.

3. Best time to Post on Facebook

Facebook is the most used social media platform in the world, so its 24\7 engagement is not a surprise. There were only several completely “off” times for Facebook in the past year, and the most successful periods are early mornings, late nights, and weekends.

These were the times when the content got the most engagement, and brands had an opportunity to attract the most eyes to their posts. Keep in mind that a large part of any engagement statistics is based on US Central Time, so it shows engagement in traditional US workday. That’s why it reflects Facebook’s significant global audience, and that is the reason why Facebook is great for brands running an international or multi-location strategy.

It could be almost an overwhelming amount of content to plan, but keeping these peak times for when to post on Facebook in mind can help you make the most out of your content calendar.

4. Best time to Post on Instagram

Past year Instagram continued to create new things like Reels, new Stories features, and some Explore page updates. So it was a perfect platform to communicate with your audience during the lockdown measures and after it. Show some top-quality visuals, start a dialogue by asking people questions in posts or stories, or just educate followers writing about brand and industry in posts. The crucial part of getting maximum engagement was social listening, when you know exactly what people want to see because they are constantly talking about it on the platform.

Also, because of coronacrisis, midday engagement became a thing. People could stay at home and scroll through the feed almost anytime. Peaking times were about 11 AM and 2 PM. Evening and weekend also got higher and opened even more opportunities for brands to get engagement.

Instagram is an excellent platform for businesses to branch out with their content. You can improve your visual identity with high-quality photos or highlight your brand’s graphic mastery by showing what infographics and data reports you’ve created for content. All previous year people wanted to stay connected, so Instagram Live also became a more popular format of communication which was used a lot.

5. Best time to Post on LinkedIn

As a professional-focused social media platform, LinkedIn has become highly engaging. Content here gets more views, likes, shares, and comments during the working days more than on weekends when engagement drops more significantly compared to the other social networks. Taking into account how much LinkedIn content is centered around professional thought leadership and career growth, it makes sense that a vast majority of users are getting the most out of it during their working day.

As we know, LinkedIn continues to be more specialized in target for employee advocacy campaigns and recruiting. It is also becoming equally important for a wide range of content creation for B2B, and any brand can utilize LinkedIn marketing best practices and highlight wins as a company and culture. It’s an ideal fit for employee advocacy and empowering people to advance their personal brand or professional development as they post content to their profiles.

6. Best time to Post on Twitter

In 2020, this forge of news and memes was the first place where people were trying to get any COVID or US Presidential Elections info. Short content format is perfect for news, so Twitter is always focused on information accuracy and trending topics all around the world. Want to discover all the newest things going on? That’s the right platform.

Through all the pandemic times in 2020, this platform remained high in engagement rates all weekdays with even more activity in the evenings. The reason is news and updates about things that were going on and also viral Tweets and memes. Except up-to-the-minute news people can get here, they can easily reach brands through fast communication and mentions in posts or replies. So, if your business is ready to react fast, to start a dialogue at any time, and to deliver high-quality costumes service, this social media platform is a perfect place.

7. Best time to Post on Pinterest

If your brand’s target audience is mothers, then it’s the best place for your content. They form a big group of Pinterest users engaging with tons of content every day. That’s why the best time to post it is mostly later in the week and the evenings.

We hope that this post will help you get more engagement on your posts on listed social media platforms. Don’t forget that constant monitoring your accounts, analyzing statistics, and active social listening will help you improve communication between your brand and your target audience. We shared some common rules, but only you know how to do it best in your industry and with your followers. And even if you find your perfect schedule, remember that a growing audience can change their tastes, and media platforms can implement new algorithms. Stay on top of these changes and never stop your experiments. Try different schemes, use different tools, and post different content.

With PromoRepublic, you can create and schedule your posts in advance, test different communication schemes, and provide experiments to get more engagement. Don’t be afraid to change, and your brand will grow.