If you have ever ran a business account on any type of social media, you will very likely agree that it is completely different from running a personal account. Personal accounts differ from business accounts. They allow for pictures of your new car and details of your drunken exploits, and they don’t usually require strict posting schedules. That is, unless you just know that 8pm on a Sunday is always a good time to drop a selfie.
Instead, running a business account can be a lot more difficult. The post that you have spent hours polishing, perfecting and preening falls flat, and receives a fraction of the interactions that you had anticipated. What now?
Lucky for you, us here at Artemeis Media have compiled a platform-specific list for all of the best posting times for social media. However, before we delve in, it is important to note that there is not a universally amazing time to post on social media. Many things factor in – for example, the platform you are using; the platform’s algorithm; the type of business you operate (B2C or B2B) and your audience’s unique habits. So, while this advice is generally effective, considering all of these factors too will reap the most benefits for yourself and your brand.
Now, where to begin?
It is a known fact that younger users using Facebook as their platform of choice is dwindling. Against some of the trendier platforms, such as Instagram or Twitter, you would assume that Facebook probably isn’t worth posting on, when your mission is to captivate your audience. Despite this, Facebook is still the largest platform in the world, with just over 2 billion users, and it can almost ensure that your brand shall still gain a ton of organic traffic. Sprout Social worked closely with their data science team and found consistent engagement from consumers around the clock. This is a great change from users’ behaviour prior to the 2020 pandemic, where there were times where most people were completely ‘offline’. However, judging from the data they released in their 2021 article, the best times to post on Facebook is Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, from 9 am to 1pm.
Hootsuite’s data (collected from 300 brands), however, noted that for B2B brands, the best time to post to Facebook is between 9am and 2pm, on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, while B2C brands should focus on posting between 8am to 12pm on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.
What we can collate from this data is that it is almost fool proof to say that the best days to post on Facebook are definitely on Tuesdays, Wednesdays or Thursdays. But what do the timeframes have to say about user behaviour? This can really just be determined with what type of business you operate as. If you are a B2B brand, and because you are aiming to captivate the attention of other businesses, it is most wise to post at a time where people are working, and perusing the timelines of their business accounts, so anytime between the first former half of your working hours should be effective. If you conduct your brand as a B2C, posting sometime between the window of a consumer’s commute to work or the fraction of time they have to themselves before starting their shift could be a good place to start.
If you use Instagram as a personal account or as a business account, you will likely know that there is some confusion with regards to how the Instagram algorithm works. Instagram no longer displays feeds chronologically – instead Instagram has noted that they “use a variety of algorithms, classifiers, and processes, each with its own purpose”. So what does this mean? Instagram has confirmed the four key factors that rank posts in our Instagram feeds: 1) information about the post (when it was posted; how many liked it; how long is the video, etc.); 2) information about the person who posted (how relevant is this user to you; how many times you have interacted with the user); 3) your activity (which shows what you’re interested in and signals how many posts you’ve liked); and 4) your history of interacting with someone (which gives a sense of how interested you are generally in seeing posts from the user). All of these factor in for Instagram to make educated guesses about who they should be displaying on your page.
You may be thinking – well, why would the time I post matter if everybody’s newsfeed will just be stacked with posts from their nearest and dearest? The key to this is engagement. Post rhetorical questions on your posts to encourage comments from users; run polls and interactive Instagram stories; post giveaways that require interaction, for example. Anything that you can do to stir engagement is great.
With regards to the best posting times on Instagram, Sprout Social analysed 25,000 of their users’ Instagram activity and collected data that reveals that Wednesday at 11am and Friday from 10-11am are the best times to post. These are good times for both B2B and B2C brands as those scrolling their timelines on behalf of B2B brands are likely already working, and those on B2C brands’ potential consumers are likely to be taking their first break at work.
It’s also important to note that you should be using Instagram’s free analytics tool, where you can peruse your page’s ‘Insights’. This shows the activity of your followers and charts the behaviour of them through Monday-Sunday, and it is tailored specifically to your brand.
Twitter’s algorithm functions in the same way that Instagram’s does, where the algorithm makes educated guesses on what posts they think users would like to see. Like much of the other platforms mentioned in this article, Sprout Social’s collected data underscored a significant increase in user activity since 2020, where people would and still do rely on Twitter as an immediate source of news. Since last year’s events, it is reported that there are now more than 500 million tweets posted per day. Not only does this highlight a prolific and widespread usage of Twitter amongst the masses, but it also illuminates the fact that your posts (however well you have timed them) are likely to get swarmed and pushed to the back of your feed.
So how do we combat this and retain engagement? Hootsuite found that the best time to post to Twitter was between 11am to 1pm, on Monday or Thursday for B2B, or 12pm and 1pm Monday to Wednesday for B2C. With the average half-life of around 18 minutes, Twitter posts have the shortest lifespan of all social media posts. For this reason, it may be best to be posting between these times, several times a day.
Again, like several of the other platforms, a LinkedIn post’s recency is less than a consideration than quality or relevancy. In fact, many people opt to not use LinkedIn at all, due to disadvantages such as premium account prices, the amount of time you need to commit to it, and inactivity in comparison to other networks. This should not deter you from using LinkedIn though – in fact, Statista recorded in 2021, that LinkedIn has 31.2 million users, with 48.5% being monthly active users, so LinkedIn is still worthy of consideration.
Of course, as LinkedIn is recognised as a more professional and business-oriented platform, it is most likely that you are going to garner more engagement during the working week than the weekend. As Sprout Social notes, LinkedIn’s engagement drops most significantly at the weekend in comparison to other forms of social media. So, whether you operate as a B2C or a B2B brand, weekdays are your best bet. They also note that the best times to post to LinkedIn are Tuesdays through to Thursday, from 9am to 12pm, to which Hootsuite mostly agrees, remarking that their best time is at 9am on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Unsure about the best time to post on behalf of your brand, or how to understand your audience’s unique behaviour? Contact us at Artemeis Media today, where we can ensure that no post goes unrecognised!
