Social Media is a way of life. From newborn babies to beloved pets and from teachers to entrepreneurs, the chances are that every person that you interact with has a social media account on one or more platforms. It is a great communication tool that allows people from all walks of life to share their thoughts, ideas, and feelings with others.
Probably the release of Dopamine and Oxytocin by the brain when people are engaged in social media activities might be the reason for its widespread use. We spend an average of 2.5 hours a day surfing through different platforms for several reasons. Whether to gather intel on new jobs, shop from a small business online, or just for the latest updates and news from friends and family. We all spend time exploring the content of new and old accounts and occasionally viewing and liking that content.
The possibility of all these people interacting on social media platforms has created a unique market with a never-ending consumer base. This has resulted in the birth of ‘influencers’ or ‘content creators who rely on views and the engagement that their posts receive and have transformed them into careers. It is essential to know the best times to post on social media.
Just relying on your creativity and skills to create engaging content is not enough. Especially post the pandemic, where the palettes of your consumers have evolved and also the time and duration of their consumption of your content. Many such content creators are investing time and resources to grow a loyal following to turn social media into their full-time careers. But, very few of them are prioritizing the importance of posting their content, either blog, videos, or pictures at the right time. And hence, very few are succeeding.
Are you one such influencer or a content creator who is baffled by the lack of engagement that your posts are receiving? Are you wondering why they are lagging despite being creative and engaging? Well, the best times to post on social media might have something to do with that.
There are several algorithms in place which are indexing and pushing your content to get more views. And if you post at an inconvenient time, when the users are not online, your content might get drowned out by other new content posted at the best time to create engagement.
So let us understand what are the issues and problems you might face when you post at inconvenient and irregular times.
Why do you Need to Post at an Ideal time?
- The right strategy executed at the right time is extremely valuable for propelling your social media game ahead of your competitors. Without it, you are not promoting your brand, not providing your followers with engaging content, not pushing the visibility of your content, and missing out on establishing your authority and credibility among other creators.
- One of the main losses that you incur from not posting at an ideal time is missing out on valuable conversions. When your social media posts take full advantage of posting at an ideal time, you can reach a much wider audience. A wider audience gathers more views and results in high-quality conversions. Therefore, it is important to study the best times to post on social media.
- Better engagement on your posts in the form of comments and likes creates better search rankings to improve your visibility. And when you miss out on the right time, you are missing out on valuable traffic for your account.
- Posting at an ideal time helps in the overall reach and engagement of your posts. This prevents recent posts from other creators to drown out your engaging content. It also facilitates your ideal target audience to interact and gain clarity on what type of content they can expect from you. There is also a certain amount of brand value that comes with consistency and regularity in posting.
- Knowledge of subtle advantages like these will help you stand out from the rest. With so many creators on all these social media platforms, each bringing their unique perspective to the table, the only way to differentiate would be to be more recognizable and memorable.
- Having to post at specified times of the day allows the development of systematic practice. This facilitates the implementation of best practices concerning managing time, recording, editing, and publishing your social media content. This is a great scaffolding feature that creates discipline to succeed in this career.
- And finally, you can capitalize on the privilege that comes with having higher engagement on your social media accounts. Promotions, ads, endorsements, and even freebies are an added advantage that reflects your brand value. The best times to post on Social Media equates to high engagements which in turn results in better deals and offers from businesses looking for influencers to market their products.
Now that the ‘why’ of posting at an ideal time is clear, let us find out the best time to post on social media on each of the different social media platforms to create high engagement. Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn are the top social media platforms that we will be discussing today.
1. Your Golden and Zero Engagement Hours to Post on Facebook and How to Find it
There are 2.93 billion active users on Facebook every single month. This makes it one of the most popular social media platforms for businesses and creators to tap into the consumer base. It becomes very important to make your content memorable and omnipresent for both your followers and your ideal target audience.
A guaranteed way to ensure high engagement and better reach are to post at a time when most of your audience is already actively looking for content. That would serve as your ideal time or the best time.
There is no universal template that can help you out. Your ideal time is calculated with data collected from your profile’s engagement. Hence, there are two ways of approaching this. You can either borrow a generic time template that works for most accounts but its results are not predictable. Or you can analyze your data to finalize the best times to post on social media.
Several studies recommend posting between 1-4 pm on weekdays and between 12-1 pm on the weekends. This should work for those who are still new and may not have enough data to analyze yet.
Now, if you are already active on Facebook with relatable and trendy posts, but are yet to reach your success goal, then a customized schedule might be your best bet. Facebook Insights is a great place to collect and analyze all the data that you could need in determining the best times to post on social media and more.
Open your Facebook profile page, on the top section, you will be able to see a tab called ‘Insights’, click on that. This dashboard will contain all engagement data like views, actions, messages, promotions, likes, and so much more. Click on the ‘posts’ tab on your left. This should directly take you to a detailed report of the days and times when your followers are most active on Facebook.
By analyzing this graph, you can plan accordingly. But do keep in mind other variables that might need to be factored in while calculating your best time for posting. The chances are that your best time and many others will overlap. So ensure to either pre-post it or do it as soon as your highest engagement frame starts.
Now that you know how to find your ideal posting time, let us find out your worst time. Similar to the above-mentioned criteria, a generic schedule for never posting would be between 8 pm to 8 am. But, you can always analyze your data from Facebook Insights and avoid the worst time.
2. Your Golden and Zero Engagement Hours to Post on Instagram and How to Find it
Instagram is predominantly used by millennials and Gen-Z. It prioritizes aesthetic and visual feeds and the algorithm pushes content that is aesthetic, trending, and relatable.
Whether you are a content creator, an influencer, or a small business owner, you will need to understand the most ideal time for posting for your content to perform better. And there is no such fixed schedule that works for everyone due to several reasons like varying audiences, different styles of content, and completely different requirements.
In order to find the best times to post on social media, a custom analysis of the data collected from your account would help facilitate an ideal schedule for posting. Having said that, if you are still new and wish to begin with a generalized time recommendation, that would also work but, may not be as beneficial as the former.
Assuming that you already have a professional account on Instagram, on your main profile page, you will see a tab called ‘Insights’. Once you click on that, you can access information regarding the cities and countries your viewers are from, their age groups, their biological sex, and even the days they are most active on Instagram.
By clicking on the ‘Audience’ tab, you can view the days and the time of the day your followers and audiences are most active on Instagram. By analyzing that data for a duration of 4-8 weeks, a holistic schedule can be fixed and implemented.
If you are still new to the platform and have not uploaded enough content to make up the data to analyze, you can use a general framework for scheduling your posts. 6-9 am, 12-2 pm, and 5-6 pm during the weekdays are preferred by many creators as their best times to post on social media. Posting your Instagram content between 9 am – 2 pm on weekends is ideal.
But try avoiding weekend posts as much as possible, especially after 2 pm. And at all costs do not indulge in posting videos, pictures, or reels between 3 – 4 pm during the week as these days seem to be the least active.
3. Your Golden and Zero Engagement Hours to Post on YouTube and How to Find it
YouTubers can become some of the most influential people on the planet with millions of subscribers. The main reasons for their growth are consistency and views. Consistency can be developed over time with a disciplined and regular upload of quality content. However, views are not in your hands. Your videos, though engaging and superior in quality, if it does not reach your ideal viewers, you are losing out on valuable numbers and conversions.
So how do you prevent your videos from stagnation and push them for views? By uploading them at an ideal time. Ideal times are those when your viewers and subscribers are active on YouTube and in search of the type of content that you are creating.
If you have been creating quality videos for quite some time but are not able to get more views, then a customized upload schedule might be your best approach. By gathering insights and data on your videos, your ideal time can be calculated which will create engagement and result in successful subscriber conversions. YouTube Studio is a great tool to access all the data related to your account and its performance.
By accessing your main account on the tool, you will be able to see a section called ‘Analytics’. Once you click on that, select the tab called ‘Audience’ which will lead you to a purple bar graph with all data neatly organized. The days and hours with the most activity by your viewers are highlighted in the darkest shade of purple and the days with the least activity are colored the lightest.
By factoring in the fact that the YouTube algorithm takes 1-2 days to properly index your videos for viewing, you can come up with your customized upload schedule that will help get more views and grow your channel.
Now, if you are new, and do not have enough data, then you can either access the ‘real-time views’ tab from the analytics of your page or follow a general time template.
Uploading your video content between 2-4 pm during the week, and between 9-11 am on the weekends is an ideal approach if you are a beginner.
Similarly, avoid posting on the days your viewers are least active. So, do not upload content on the days colored the lightest shade of purple. It is also best to avoid weekend uploads at all costs, especially post-noon.
4. Your Golden and Zero Engagement Hours to Post on Twitter and How to Find it
Twitter can help you connect with like-minded people through short and brief statements or ‘tweets’. Twitter is normally used for updating either a trivial instance from your day or any commendable accomplishments. It has a very specific consumer base, primarily those coming from educated urban areas. It mostly consists of working professionals, students, businesses, politicians, academicians, performers, and other creators. Hence, it is a little bit more challenging to produce and publish tweets on Twitter.
But, the right tweet at the right time can go viral and trend worldwide which is great for your reach and online visibility. So let us explore how you can find your ideal time to tweet to engage your followers and also attract more conversions.
Twitter Analytics provides you with a complete report on all the engagement data of your account. It includes retweets, likes, comments, profile visits, and everything else that you can think of.
Access the ‘Analytics’ section on your Twitter account. Under that, click on the ‘Tweets’ tab to access all the engagement data. You can customize the time range of your data, and also view your top-performing tweets and their impressions over a selected duration of time.
By analyzing all these factors from the most high-performing tweets, a conclusive schedule can be fixed as your ideal time.
For a more general schedule, the fact that Twitter is often used during short breaks is an influential variable. Keeping this in mind, the time slots differ greatly compared to other social media platforms.
Tweeting at odd hours between 2-3 am, 6-7 am, and 9-10 pm during the week is great for getting high engagement through clicks, and impressions. Weekends are to be avoided as they do not seem to be days to attract any user activity. Also restraining from tweeting during working hours, ideally between 9 am and 5 pm is best.
5. Your Golden and Zero Engagement Hours to Post on Pinterest and How to Find it
Pinterest is a very visual-forward social media platform with over 430 million users. Unlike Instagram or Facebook where people can connect, Pinterest primarily serves as inspiration. So whenever creators or businesses pin posts to their profile, it gets views and engagement that drives better online visibility.
Oftentimes, the Pinterest algorithm picks up consistent and quality performers to add them into its Smart Feed to push their content even further. How can you get noticed on Pinterest? When you gain thousands of views by posting at an ideal time, preferably when your audience is already online in need of inspiration.
Your ideal time can be found by either manually analyzing or by using readily available tools. A manual analysis requires you to consistently post for weeks and track engagement, and then modify your strategy accordingly. This is time-consuming and labor-intensive but provides results that will help fix an ideal schedule for pinning.
An easier and much more efficient approach would be to use tools like Google Analytics and Tailwind Analytics to analyze your engagement data and produce a conclusive report. You will have to only analyze and understand the end report and develop a working schedule accordingly.
Now, if you are still new but wish to follow a framework to start on a good note, pinning at general time slots is your only approach. Ideally pinning between 2-4 am and pm, and between 1-3 pm during the week is favorable for engagement on your account. And pinning on Saturdays between 8 pm and 11 pm is great.
Refrain from posting during working hours, especially between 8 am -1 pm. And like the rest of the social media platforms, weekends are not favorable to help improve the engagement of your profile.
6. Your Golden and Zero Engagement Hours to Post on LinkedIn and How to Find it
LinkedIn is no longer just a job-searching platform. It has evolved into much more than that. It allows more than 830 million people to invest in their online presence, promote their brand, and also form meaningful connections with like-minded people.
Consistency is key, they say. But, it is not everything. If you are wondering why your quality posts are not receiving as much engagement as you expect, it is probably due to the time you are posting them.
Ideal posting time is an important factor that decides your reach and the engagement that your post will receive. You can find your ideal posting time by analyzing your profile data on the analytics section of your profile page.
Click on the ‘Analytics’ section next to the ‘Content’ section on your main account page. From the drop-down box, click on the ‘Updates’ tab. Update metrics, update highlights, and update engagement is the three further categories your profile data is arranged in.
By customizing the filters available and extracting only the required data from these three sections, an analysis can be conducted on a spreadsheet which will help find the best time to make a post on LinkedIn.
But, if you are just beginning, then posting between 10 and 11 am on Tuesdays, and between 7:30 – 8:30 am, 12 pm, and 5 pm – 6 pm is ideal for engagement creation.
Refrain from posting during the weekends as most working professionals tend to engage in other activities which limit their interaction on social media. This might result in your post getting lost in the rabbit hole and may never cross a few likes and comments.
Conclusion
Overall, based on the needs of your social media profile, custom or generic time slots can be followed to ensure your posts receive maximum engagement. The above-mentioned tactics will help you in narrowing down what works for you and then help you devise an effective post schedule. With millions of creators and consumers out there, the difference between you and your successful influencer career might be one right post at the right time away. So start analyzing your data and start posting at your best time.
