When working on posts to social media channels, you always ask “when to post?” You need to time your posts to catch your prospects online and ready to engage. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn et al., will warehouse your content forever. But recency drives the algorithm bus with these social behemoths. Freshness helps the software decide whether to present your social media content in your prospects’ feeds.

What time of day works best for posting to Social Media Channels?

So, when is the best time to post to social media? As usual: It depends!

Are you B2B, B2C, D2C or some other flavor of business?
When do your preferred prospects interact with content like yours?
Which social media channels do you prioritize, based on your market research?
—Plug in additional relevant prospect-specific questions here.

For example, if your benchmark data says that most of your followers engage with your content in the late morning or early afternoon, decision made! Or, do they interact with Twitter in the afternoon and Pinterest on Saturday morning? That becomes your schedule. This requires research by you or by your social media marketing agency. But, we have gathered some basic guidelines that can get you started with the larger social media networks.

When to Post Social Content on Facebook

When in doubt, start early. Facebook users are checking their profiles constantly during the day. Here is an example from our own Facebook Insights post data:

We find a steady online presence for our prospective customers, so we tend to post early, but move our regular posts around each week to catch people at different times.

Once you have built a following, and have a decent number of posts on your profile, you will gain the data you need to focus your posting schedule more productively.

When to Post Social Content to Instagram

Instagram users skew younger than Facebook users, and, for now, they are more likely to check their accounts at the start of their day, then late the morning through early afternoon, and finally right after work. Instagram users also seem less likely to check their accounts multiple times per day, unlike Facebook users. But everything depends on your target audience! For some clients of ours, the data indicates it would be most effective to post new Instagram content on weekday mornings to get the most views. But, a catering client pursuing wedding gigs, finds late afternoon a good time, and weekend mornings. This catches couples when they are off work and diving into wedding planning!

When to Post Social Content to Twitter

Twitter is tougher. It moves fast! Posting constantly is the best solution, but most small businesses cannot dedicate a person to sit on Twitter all day. So, align your tweets with the day parts where your desired targets seem most active. For professional service clients, we target early afternoon local time to catch people ending lunch and returning to work. Other tweets launch at the start of the business day. A third set would arrive in feeds late afternoon. For consumer-based clients we align more closely with Facebook rhythms to match times when folks do not have their minds on work.

Keep tracking activity to get the most out of social media posts

In the end, you need to support your strategic plan by sticking to your target audience, and rely on your own analytics to track their behavior. General advice will get you started, but will not ensure your ultimate success!

KO Websites and SEOPro have two decades of social media marketing experience. Put us to work!

Social media tools change rapidly. Think TikTok and Clubhouse as just two examples of new channels that businesses need to explore to see if their audience is hanging out there. But trying to make eight channels work all at once for a small business will spread your energy too thin. Focus on 3-4 channels where your audience most likely spends a lot of time, and pour your energy into them! Or let us pour our energy into them on your behalf!