I have noticed, between my personal social media accounts and the social that I manage at Blueprint that the time of the day that I post affects how much traction the post receives. Yes, there are other factors, such as the quality of the post that affect this, but the timing does have a noticeable effect. I have come across a good bit of content about this online and compared it with my own observations and they line up quite nicely.
Here is my outline of best times to post on each social site:
Blog Post/ Tumbler –
Blog posts have always been best received mid day during the workweek. I’ve concluded this is because people will read a blog or 2 on their lunch break. It’s common around this time to see people eating lunch and reading at their desk or reading off their smart phone somewhere outside the office. So by posting around this time you can catch the attention of someone on break from work or school who is looking for something to read as they eat.
Facebook –
Afternoon is the best time for posting on Facebook; I get most of my daily activity for clients’ Facebook pages right after lunch. It could be because a large amount of frequent Facebook users are older women. Stay at home moms will normally see more free time for the Internet in the afternoon when work is done and kids are out. Also, weekends seem to see more use than weekdays, most likely because bored people with free time will be online.
Twitter –
Most of the twitter traction I see is in the afternoon and late evenings on weekdays. Twitter has a younger demographic known for being active mostly in the afternoon and evening.
Note: I would avoid posting on twitter early in the morning, there is much less activity
Instagram –
I see the most posting on Instagram at 2 different times. The first is weekdays during the day (mid afternoon). This is due to bored high school and college kids using the site. Normally posting whatever the days themed hashtag is, such as #wcw on Wednesday or #tbt on Thursday. The other key time is on the weekends at night. This is because people are out and it is common to post pictures of the nights events live on the site.
Google+ –
I see the most from Google plus right around 9am. I think this is because businesses are most of the population on Google plus. Most businesses operate on a 9 to 5 schedule so when the people who do social media professionally post for these businesses they do it when they get in to the office in the morning at 9am.
LinkedIn –
Since this site is populated by business people and is not the most fun site to play around on, most of the action is before or after normal business hours. People looking to change jobs or people updating their profiles about their current job normally do this on the site after or before work.
Note: People spend the least amount of time looking around on here, so if your post is not up at the top of the news feed it will most likely not be seen.
Properly timing your post to catch people when they are on the site is as important as the content that you are posting. The content will not be effective if no one reads it. So being aware of these times can help you get the most out of what you have to say.
Here’s a chart I found on entrepreneur.com with times that they think are good and bad for posting on social media.
