Maximize the engagement of your posts by learning when to post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Your business, just like any other business engaging with its prospective and loyal customers on social media sites, have unique audiences from various time zones and varied scrolling behaviors. So, whether you’re looking to improve your fan base, or engage with your current follower’s base, it’s crucial to find your own personalized best time to post on social media sites. Luckily, all social media sites from Facebook to Instagram and more, offer basic insight tools for free. Using these insights, you can determine when is the best time for you to schedule your posts so you can get maximum results and engagement. In this article, we’ll take a deeper look at how to find these insights and make use of them, as well as, some global standard times for each of these social media sites – as various businesses like Hootsuite, Buffer, and CoSchedule have conducted researches to find out what are the best times to post on these sites.
So, let’s look at Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest one by one to understand what route may work out best for you.
As Instagram is a mobile-first app, most Instagrammers tend to scroll in their free time – meaning it’s best to avoid posting on weekdays during work hours.
– Studies show that the best time to post is during lunch hours on weekdays from 11 am to 1 pm, and after work hours between 7 pm to 9 pm.
– The best days to post are Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Saturday works really well for some businesses and sectors such as Fashion and Entertainment.
But if yours is a business that has customers based across different time zones, it’s best to find your own personalized times to post. It’s good to note that Instagram prioritizes new and quality content on feeds, so it’s best to post your content when you know your audience is most likely to be online and actively scrolling the app.
Start by reviewing Instagram Insights to find your top time zones and see when your followers are online and scrolling. Then experiment with different posting times to measure what works best for you.
From your Instagram Business Profile, Instagram Insights will tell you where your followers are located, their gender, their age, and, most importantly, when they’re most active on Instagram.
Every time a person logs onto Facebook, depending on their number of friends and pages they like, they’re likely to have over 1500 and more stories that could appear on their feed. So, if you want your business to stand out and your posts to gain the exposure it deserves, the best time to post on Facebook is between 1 pm to 4 pm. Most Facebook users browse the social networking site on their desktops / laptops and check it during their downtime.
– Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday are good days to post on Facebook
– Weekends get the highest level of engagement on Facebook for almost all sectors
Bonus: Here’s a simple infographic to get a glimpse into best timings for Facebook posts for various sectors:
But of course, an even better way to decide when to post on Facebook is by using what the data tells you. Facebook is known to have one of the best and most dynamic analytics tools that any user with a business page/profile on Facebook can take advantage of.
Facebook insights record everything from reach to engagement for every post you make, moreover it gives you a comprehensive understanding of your audiences and what time they’re online, what’s posts they engage with most, etc.
Twitter is one of the select platforms that highlights posts in chronological order. This means, if you want your tweets to be seen and engaged with, timeliness is all-important. Posting at the right time will not just increase your social media standing, but also enhance your visibility for people who may not follow you but have others in their network who engage with your brand.
– Try scheduling your tweets for Tuesday and/or Wednesday at 9 am and Friday at 9 am
– The safest times to post are Monday through Friday from 8 am – 4 pm
– Avoid posting between 10 pm – 4 am
Twitter as a social networking site does really well earlier in the day compared to Facebook and Instagram. However, as the week goes on, you see a drop-off in general engagement and weekend don’t do very well on Twitter.
Bonus: Here’s a simple infographic to get a glimpse into best timings of posting on Twitter
Note: Twitter analytics are a good way to gain some insights into the best timings for your tweets too. Whilst it won’t give you the best times to post, it’ll help you track your best-performing tweets, what times they were posted, the number of retweets, etc, this, in turn, can help you gauge what could possibly be the best time for your future tweets.
Pinterest’s algorithm is based on a Smart Feed to deliver user’s content. Unlike other social media sites, Pinterest operates more like a search bar and delivers content based on user’s interests and likes. As such your content could be weeks old’ but will still stand a chance of showing on people’s feed if the quality of your content is good. Which means quality over time. However, even to serve your pin to your audience base, the content has to already be performing well and be popular – so the time of posting does factor in.
– 8 pm to 11 pm and does well for pins. Or you can pin your content between 2 pm and 4 pm.
– The network seems to do well when people are enjoying some downtime, so evenings work really well for Pinterest.
– The best day to Pin, in general, seems to be Saturday or late evenings on weekdays.
Or, use Pinterest Analytics to measure the interests of your audience. With Pinterest Analytics you can measure your follower growth, traffic, and thus understand your audience better, create stronger content, and decide what times work best for your boards/pins.
Timing on your social media network is everything. That said, there’s no one generic ‘best’ time for any of the social network sites that will result in maximum engagement, your social media team has to constantly test and learn as the algorithm with almost all new and old social networks are constantly changing and improving to meet today’s users’ online behaviors. But it’s always best to keep researching the times and regularly check your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Insights. From there, work out the times that’s best for your business, based on your audience’s demographic and stay consistent. However, if you’d like a quick tip that we’ll say the best time to post on
Instagram: is anytime weekdays during non-work hours
Facebook: is during work hours, especially between 12 pm to 4 pm
Twitter: is during commute hours and mornings, and
Pinterest: is late evenings, night, or weekends
