Google returns over 943 million results when you search for “What is the best time to post”. Over 943 MILLION! WHEEEEEE-EW. That’s a lot of people, writing a lot of opinions on when the best time to post your content is on social media. Every article uses a different methodology for measuring their results. Every writer has a particular bias. Most of these articles about timing your posts are written from the perspective of global companies, not small, local businesses. So here it is–the definitive answer on the ever-popular question “When is the best time to post?”
When is the best time to post?
When you get the best engagement. Seriously. It’s that simple. And that difficult, too.
To figure out when the best time for YOU to post, you need to look at your own insights and analytics and figure it out. I can point you to several articles from a variety of companies sharing what they found to be their best time to post, but that doesn’t mean it will work for you!
Your Facebook Page analytics has a section that tells what day and time your fans are most online. That will give you some idea for the best time to post on Facebook.
You can also use anecdotal evidence from your other accounts, such as when you seem to get the most interaction on Twitter, to determine the best times for those networks.
Tools to Determine the Best Time to Post
There are a couple of tools I’m aware of that will help you determine the best times to post for your own accounts.
Audiense (formerly Social Bro) is a robust social media tool with features to help you grow your Twitter following, but it is also known for the Best Time to Tweet report.
Hootsuite‘s Autoschedule function won’t tell you the best times to schedule your posts, but it will schedule them at optimal times (and then you can look and see when those times are). And apparently Co-Schedule does something similar to this as well.
If this isn’t quite definitive enough for you, here’s a great roundup from Co-Schedule on 16 studies and a variety of tools to help you figure it all out. One caveat I have on this article. It states specific best times to post and they differ quite a bit from my own personal experience. Go ahead and try out their suggested best times, but don’t be afraid to say it’s not working and try something different. For Instagram specifically, this research on Best Times to Post on Instagram from BrandMentions is great.
