The Best and Worst times to Post on Social Media
When to post on a specific social network?
Not all social networks are created equal. In this day and age content is created, shared, categorized distributed at an exponentially growing pace through differentiated channels. It’s tough to always reach your target audience and generate engagement when posting on social media accounts like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, Linkedin or Snapchat.
Test out these general social network post timing guidelines and see how much your engagement increases. Audiences are different in many ways so always test, test and test some more, always analyzing all of the variables to understand where your web traffic comes from and why.
(Best 1PM-4PM) (Worst 8PM-8AM): By the far the largest and most recognizable social network. 1.28 Billion users who share photos, videos, links and communite via Facebook messenger. Most likely social network that contains the largest number of your connections/friends. Facebook has many of the features of it’s competitors in one centralized place. Everyone you know has a Facebook which makes it “feel cheap” at times. Many advertiers post shocking images and stories with no real relevance. This is known as Click-bait.
(Best 1PM-3PM) (Worst 8PM-9AM): 271 million active users who post text, links and images in 140 characters or less. Twitter is the perfect micro blogging tool and acts as an instant news source for every single topic globally. Twitter is like a river, constantly in motion. There is a ton of content being shared in real time and many abusers spam the twitterverse with scams and low quality content.
(Best 2PM-4PM, 8PM-1AM) (Worst 5PM-7PM): With over 70 million active users, 80% being women, Pinterest is an online collaging network used to share inspiration and bookmark stunning links. Sites in the DIY, food and inspiration niches can generate large amounts of traffic through Pinterest. The con of Pinterest is that there is little social interaction within the community, making it tough to engage with parties.
(Dips on Sunday, Spikes Monday) Primarily a mobile application with over 200 million active users, Instagram is the most popular image and short video sharing hub. Instagram is simple to use and makes it easy for users to create eye catching photography and share with their select acquaintances or the whole world. Wile the best images go viral on Instagram, many of the successful Instagram marketers have hundreds of thousands of followers which could take a long time to build. There is less one to one engagement on Instagram which makes it tricky to truly master.
(Best 9AM-11AM) (Worst 6PM-8AM) Created to compete with Facebook, Google+ has 300+ million users but a good portion are inactive. Google Plus has unique features that make it a valuable tool such as circles, communities and video hangouts. The users who do use Google+ tend to be very responsive and dedicated to discussions. Overall this is a very quiet network but can become very valuable if you find the right audience to engage with.
(Best: 7AM to 9AM, 5PM-6PM) (Worst: 10PM-6AM) The worlds most premium and well known network for professionals. Over 300 million users are registered with the intent of networking, finding a job, recruiting for a position as well as creating and consuming primarily business and technology content. You can find companies and individuals on Linkedin. There are many active communities and overall tends to be less spam as you can only have one account linked to your business identity. If your content is not related to business or technology, you may not receive much traffic from Linkedin.
(Anytime!)Mobile App used to share pictures, videos, text and stories with your friends as well as brands. Snapchat is simple, secure, and wildly popular with the younger generation. Snaps are sent with a self destruct feature that deletes the content after a few seconds of viewing. You can also create stories to share moments and events with your friends. There are still many privacy concerns and the functionality could change in the future. Snapchat is still a very young company.
Agree or disagree? Let us know what are the best and worst times to post on social media in the comments!