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Here’s When: Key times to post on the Big 5

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So it’s about 6:30PM, you’ve had a long day meeting clients, answering phone calls, and sending e-mails but you know you haven’t touched your social media pages or had time to make any content. So what do you do? Pour yourself a drink and kick your feet up and do it in the morning? The last thing you want to look at right now is a computer screen and take on the painstaking task of creating original content for several different social platforms and ensure they all get out to your target audience. First off, those of you who continue to Google image search and copy and paste with some words under the image you just stole, STOP! You can face legal action if you happen to monetize from a stolen Google image or even create interest. Secondly, get a social calendar and schedule posts to alleviate one less thing you have to do at the end of the day. You have a calendar for your meetings, e-mails, and everything else so get one for your social content if you want to remain even searchable on the web.

Anyway, when is the best time to post content across the big 5? (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram)

The most optimal time to post on Facebook ¹ is 3:00 PM on Wednesday and other times include 12:00 – 1:00 PM on Saturday and Sunday, and 1:00 – 4:00 PM on Thursday and Friday. Engagement rates are much higher during these time periods because that is when most people are on Facebook. At the end of the week typically on Friday, engagement rates spike by almost 10% because people are in a much better mood on Friday. Who isn’t? Knowing this, create a humorous or upbeat post to match the mood of your audience for a higher CTR. If you are having trouble thinking of when to come up with original content, try to get into the habit of taking photos or writing things down throughout your day that can relate to what your audience would want to see. In other words, what do you want to see when you are thinking about getting lunch or dinner and how that would impact your decision to buy something. I always say, everything in the digital world is relative to what you are doing right in that moment. We search for news in the morning, Lunch during the day, and a good movie at night. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience and the rest will flow naturally.

The best time to post on Twitter ² is during the week between 12:00p and 5:00p. According to CoSchedule, ³ B2B posts have a 16% higher engagement rate during the week and B2C posts are 17% higher on weekends. This makes sense because if you think about it businesses operate during business hours duh!

Consumers operate and buy things on the weekend. So when coming up with content and scheduling posts with a scheduler think of what you would be doing on your day off or what you would be doing on your lunch break at work. This is the best place to start coming up with original content which people think is so hard when in reality it is actually very easy. Think about it, when you leave work to grab lunch and take a picture of your food you own that content it is yours and all you had to do was take a low-quality photo of your sandwich. The possibilities are endless !

The best time to create a post on LinkedIn ⁴ is on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. First thing in the morning, once at lunch, and once right before dinner time. You can begin to understand why these times are essential because LinkedIn is the professional network and people read LinkedIn as if they would a newspaper which would be in the morning and the evening to get their daily dose of news. Again, think back to where your audience is during these times and how your product or service would relate to them. But back to relevance, no one is shopping for shoes at 7AM when they wake up. Consumers want to get some information about what is happening in the world or market within your industry to educate themselves. Understanding LinkedIn as a newspaper can put everything into perspective. The highest CTR usually occurs on Tuesday because people are catching up from the weekend and getting their week started. Same goes for the end of the week, CTR is generally lower because people are wrapping up the week and in some cases leaving early for the weekend. Always put yourself in the shoes of the consumer.

The best time to post to Pinterest ⁵ is Monday through Sunday during the evenings. Saturday night between 8:00 PM and 11:00 PM is seeing the highest engagement rate. But you’re sitting there saying Saturday night between 8:00 PM and 11:00 PM I am out at a bar with my friends drinking. If you want results you have to leverage the network so you have to ask yourself what is more important, having some drinks or getting traffic to your site/blog so you can pay for those drinks? Look at it this way, you may as well take advantage of what you’re doing in order to create engagement knowing that this particular medium is heavily female oriented creating a post wherever you only requires a smartphone and you have one of those right? Ok great, take a picture of your drink create a catchy phrase directed toward a female demographic and you’re done. You did all of this during the best time to post and catering to the correct audience.

The best time to post to Instagram ⁶ is not during business hours. Instagram is the time waster if you will, of the social networks because it is all display based. When you log onto Instagram you only have the ability to look at photos, and yes some photos will display text. However, being only display based you want to have bright and vivid images for people to look at, share, and comment on. Posting videos no later than 10 PM gets 34% more interactions.⁷ Think about what you do when you are on Instagram. You’re not necessarily searching for something in particular right? You’re scrolling through your feed looking for a cool picture of something that someone took that you can relate to while sitting on the couch while binge watching Netflix. Think after hours with Instagram because that’s when you use it.

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