If good content is posted on social media and there’s no one around to see it, will it make an impact?
Knowing the best times to reach your audience is one of the trickiest aspects of maintaining your brand’s social media strategy.
To build an engaging social media presence, you must of course have a very engaged audience and to create this engagement, you must reach your audience at a time they are most likely to use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and whatever other social channel you have a presence in.
Every social network experiences a “peak” time, which is the busiest time of day for the network, during which the most number of people are actively using the site. Timing your social media posts and publishing your content during this peak time is going to make it visible to a larger audience.
Unfortunately, there is no one size fits all answer to this. The nature of social media marketing is such that it is entirely dependent on human behaviour. So while there may be theories on what works and guidelines on best practices for timing your social media posts; ultimately it all comes down to knowing and understanding your own audience.
The greater use of Mobile devices like tablets, has shaken things up a little these days. 37% of consumers on mobiles and tablets now check their social media presence first thing in the morning and 42% do so just before they go to bed. Also, mobile traffic is known to peak after 5pm and as well as on the weekend therefore marketers need to consider how this impacts timing of content distribution to maximise effectiveness.
Of course, times are not concrete – and each may vary depending on your target market, and the Industry in which they operate. In fact, I haven’t seen 2 infographics that are similar, hence why It’s so important to customise your timing for your audience. Variables such as International time-zones, context and goals can result in complete misfire. Most stats are based on Internet users as a whole, not on your specific target audience – but they can provide a starting point for anyone looking to gain more traction with their social media posts, once some market research is done.
I was going to attach an example of a ‘Best Post Times’ Infographic here, but the importance of tailoring your marketing, and the range of misinformation, is so great, that I decided against it. Stephan Hovnanian sums it up beautifully in his article: “The sad truth about ‘Best Time to Post’ Infographics” here: https://www.websighthangouts.com/best-time-to-post-on-social-media-infographic-mistakes/
You know your audience better than anyone else so a time slot that works for someone else might not work for you at all. Your best bet is to experiment with a few different time slots and monitor the activity on your posts to see which time performs the best.
Peak interaction times will vary depending on your industry and your most active social network, and you’ll learn by trial and error. A study by Buddy Media in late 2012, found that most companies are posting content at the wrong time so by paying attention to the timing of your posts, you can already be a step ahead.
