You would be surprised how much research & planning goes into when a business posts on social media. Every social media platform has a different peak time; quite a few even give you the tools to discover the best time to post on a per-audience basis. Let’s go over these tools and some common industry standard posting times to help make the most out of your content.
If you’re using Facebook on a traditional computer, these tools are available to you from the get-go. Head over to your Facebook Page and select Insights. Then, make your way over to the ‘Posts’ tab. From here you will have a week-long graph of when your followers are on Facebook. Try to post your best content an hour or so before your peak times for maximum exposure.
For Instagram, make sure you’re on mobile and head over to your profile. From here you’ll select Insights, then Total Followers. Scroll all the way down and you’ll see a very similar graph to the one on Facebook.
YouTube doesn’t have this same graph, but to get a general idea of your audience’s social media habits, go to the analytics tab in YouTube Studio and look to the right side, here you’ll see total views for the past 48 hours segmented hour by hour. With some deciphering and repeat visits, you can quickly figure out the hours that result in the most views.
Now, all of these tools are incredibly helpful if you have an existing audience to study, but if you’re starting from scratch you’re most likely wondering what the peak times are for these social media platforms as a whole. Here are a few statistics that might help if you’re developing a post schedule from scratch.
Let’s start with YouTube. According to Pew Research Center, videos posted midday in your local timezone on the first three days of the week (that’s Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) get the most user engagement since it gives the platform time to index the videos and send them to subscriber newsfeeds by the time they are coming from work or school. However, if you’re posting weekend content an early morning posting time is ideal, as most viewers will have the day off and will be looking for content throughout the morning and early afternoon.
How about Facebook? According to studies conducted by Buffer.com, Posts that go public from noon to 4pm tend to have a higher engagement. During the weekdays, try to post closer to 4pm, as user activity tends to peak around 6pm in the United States. You want your posts ready to go right before your users start checking their newsfeed.
Now, Instagram and Snapchat get interesting with Later.com, and several other sources, noting that these younger users tend to be nocturnal, with activity peaking from 7 to 9pm. Some popular brands even swear by posting after midnight. For Instagram, it should be worth noting that an alternative spike occurs around lunch break, which is roughly defined as the time between noon and 2pm.
Itching for more social media statistics to help you while you handcraft a picture-perfect social media strategy. Remember to like this video and subscribe to our YouTube channel. But we can help even further. If you’re interested in spending more time on your business, and less time on social media, visit Thumbstopper.com to learn more about how we can do the heavy lifting for you. That’s Thumbstopper.com.