Hacking Social Media: What are the Best Times to Share Your Content?

Social media are saturated. Facebook and Youtube exceed one billion users. Linkedin, Instagram, Twitter and Google Plus are all counting over 300 million active monthly users.

That also means a lot of spam, distraction and clutter. Not surprisingly, users are less receptive to regular content, and the engagement is much lower.

However, some brands, startups, and marketers are more successful on social media than ever before.

For example, one of the most popular YouTube vloggers has been reported to earn as much as $4 million a year. And some users now charge as much as $15,000 for Instagram endorsements.

The point is; times changed, opportunity stays. Not only that, it’s bigger. But different times require a different strategy. After all, only a fool keeps doing the same thing, expecting different results.

In a series of articles, we’re going to present you tips and strategies to step up your social media game. Let’s start with timing.

Best Time to Post on Facebook

The first thing to understand about Facebook is that most of your posts won’t reach that many fans. As Facebook got saturated, it started to show some of the content selectively.

This makes sense, because, over the years, most users accumulated friends and subscribed to many groups and pages. In other words, if everything got to our feed, we would get overwhelmed and probably leave.

So to get to the point, according to social analytics startup SocialBakers, you can expect worst results with photo posts and the best results with organic video posts. As you can see in the chart above, the native video has about 2.5x higher reach, although the actual figure of 5.7% doesn’t make it too exciting.

What’s more important is that the engagement on video and link posts is on the rise according to Adobe’s social intelligence report. The study also reveals that Friday is the best time for video on Facebook.

For example, nearly one-quarter of all brand post video plays occur on Fridays when people are more relaxed about the upcoming weekend.

User engagement such as commenting, sharing and liking brand posts is also reaching it’s high on Friday. For brands, Fridays generate 17% of all comments, 16% of likes and 16% of shares.

Another study from Buddy Media reveals that 86% of all posts are published over the workweek with engagement peaking on Thursday and Friday. In correlation, the happiness index also peaks on Friday, by 10%.

With only 14% of posts shared on weekends, it makes a lot of sense to prioritize posting on weekends too. The surprising thing is that, according to TrackMaven a website analyzed over 1.5 million Facebook posts from 6000 brands 25% higher engagement than weekday posts overall.

Some research indicates that best time of day for brands to post on Facebook is 1 pm if you’re looking to get more shares, while posts scheduled for 3 pm typically get more clicks. However, this is something that may vary according to an industry you’re in.

Best Time to Tweet

It’s a little complicated with Twitter as many of its users check it on their mobile devices throughout the entire day. Some research has shown that weekdays provide more engagement and other shows completely contradicting data.

However, according to Argyle Social, for B2C brands the CTRs and engagement are highest on weekends and Wednesdays. Weekdays, on the other hand, seem to perform much better for B2B brands.

According to a survey of Twitter users, most of them are likely to be on Twitter when they commute to work. Students are also 119% more likely to use Twitter during school hours.

 

In terms of single bets time to share, well, that depends again. This study shows 5 pm is best for retweets while 12 and 6 pm give highest CTR.

How to post on linkedin

Best time to Post on Linkedin

Not surprisingly, LinkedIn is best for marketing to businesses and professionals. Thus, if you want to reach the largest number of users, it makes sense to post your content when they’re around.

According to LinkedIn, it’s best to post in their busiest times: morning and midday, Monday through Friday. Obviously, business hours, in general, have the largest maximum reach.

Speaking of reach, a single status update will only reach around 20% of your network. Much better than Facebook, but not too great either.

To get most out of it, social media scheduling platform Buffer recommends sharing 20 quality posts per month – once a day for four weeks leaving out the weekends.

In terms of best time to post, well that depends on the daily rhythm of your target audience. However, when AddThis analyzed data from 14 million users, they found  Mondays 10-11am to be the best time of the day for sharing.

When to Post on Google Plus

Google Plus appears to be another website that gives top engagement in the mornings. According to Hubspot, the usual time people are on G+ is between 9 am and 10 am.

Wednesdays, in particular, seem to yield the highest engagement. So if you’re looking for interaction, you’ll get most of it on those days. What’s interesting about Google Plus, according to Hubspot, is the rapidly growing demographic of people between the ages of 45 and 54 years old.

 

Best Time to Post on Instagram

Latergramme, Instagram management and scheduling tool, analysed over 61,000 posts find out when is the best time to get the most “likes” and comments.

On average, it turned out that 2 am and 5 pm are the best times to post. Your followers are most likely to pay attention to you at that times. On the other hand, the worst times are 9 am and 6 pm.

 

 

One theory why 2 am and 5 pm are great times to post is that, in general, there’s less activity in terms of sharing, so people are most engaged. Likewise, they’re probably procrastinating at 5 pm, waiting for the workday to end.

Wednesday turned out to be the best day of the week to post, although the margin is very thin compared to other days.

The Latergramme study also breaks down the best times for each day of the week. On Monday, for example, 5 pm the engagement is highest at 7 pm and 10 pm. On Friday, 1 am and 8 pm performed the best.

An earlier study by TrackMaven confirms the sentiment is more or less consistent throughout the week. In other words, it doesn’t matter which day you share.

However, an analysis of Instagram data of Fortune 500 brands found out that the top engagement happens during the business hours. The posts shared at 3 pm and 4 pm got the most interaction of all. Video posts, on the other hand, performed the best during the non-work hours.

Best Time to Upload a YouTube Video

Frederator Networks compiled the data from across their network of over 1,300 channels and 120,000,000 monthly views. It turns out the answer is not that simple as the best upload times differ throughout the week. Here’s the data:

In terms of ideal days in the week, the viewership across Federator network increases on Thursdays, peaks on Saturday and starts to decline on Sunday afternoon. The worst days are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday

 

Pinning on Pinterest 

Using Pinterest effectively can deliver some great results in terms of ROI. While Pinterest recently changed the way pins are showing on a pinner’s smart feed, pinning content while your followers are active, you can boost repins by 36%, according to Piquora.

Another interesting fact about Pinterest is that each category of posts receives the most engagement on each day of the week.

Monday: The week starts with good intentions in fitness

Tuesday: Next up, gadgets are all the rage in technology

Wednesday: Need a little something to get through the week — inspirational quotes

Thursday: Threads lead Thursday with fashion

Friday: GIFs bring some comic relief to the end of the week with humor

Saturday: Summer vacations are top of mind with travel

Sunday: The week closes with food and craft ideas

In terms of ideal times to share, Pinerly a Pinterest management tool and dashboard, analyzed their user data and found these times are best to post to Pinterest:

The best time to pin during the day is 2 to 4 pm

The best time to pin at night is 8 pm to 1 am

In general you want to share when your followers are online as that gives you the highest likelihood of reaching them.

 

How to Find Your Best Time to Post on Social Media

You can rely on general stats and analyses but the best way to ensure you’re posting your content at the right time is to make your own analysis. Professional marketers use several tools to find out.

Fanpage Karma for Facebook: This online social media analytics tool allows you to not only measure your own performance but also get data on your competitors. You can analyze your page and those of your competitors, check out key performance indicators and create real-time alerts and notifications.

 

FollowerWonk for Twitter: FollowerWonk allows you to dig deeper into your Twitter analytics and find out who exactly are your followers, where are they located and when do they tweet. This great tool also allows you to find and connect with existing and new influencers in your niche.

 

Timing+ helps you find out when it is the best time to post on Google Plus. It analyzes your historical post data, so you can learn when you have had the most impact with your posts.

 

Posting on Social Media – Final Tips

• Best time to post on Facebook is Friday, but Thursday and Weekend are also good.
• 1 pm is best to get shares, while 3 pm is ideal to get more clicks on Facebook.
• On Twitter, you want to share your posts later in the day.
• B2C brands do best on weekends and Wednesdays, B2B brands perform better on weekdays.
• Business hours over weekdays rule on LinkedIn, Mondays 10-11am are the best time of the day for sharing.
• Google Plus appears to have top engagement in the mornings, typically between 9 am and 10 am.
• On Instagram, photos are doing best over the business hours, while videos get most engagement after.
• The day of the week doesn’t really matter on Instagram, although Wednesday seems to be slightly
  better than others.
• The best day to post a video on YouTube is Thursday or Friday between 12-3 pm.
• The best time to pin during the day is 2 to 4 pm. Pinning at night is best at 8 pm to 1 am.
• Different category of pins gets most engagement on different day of the week.
• Use tools like Fanpage Karma, FollowerWonk and Timing+ to analyze your top posting times.