Is There A Best Time To Post On Social Media?

I have been asked this question many times, and I thought of bringing this up today and document through our DigitalDNA video series.

First and foremost, my personal belief is that -there are other more important attributes than time to post, which social media practitioners and content marketers should address.

Let’s discuss those attributes and metrics in one of our upcoming shows.

So, there are various studies already available on this subject, but the fact of the matter is that one size, or in this case one time will not suit all.

Different industries and their consumers will be active at different time bands, so there is no single generic answer to this and I am not going to provide that as well.

So, before we advance ahead, let’s understand by what we mean by the best time to post:

We essentially mean that the best time to post is the time :

When the most number of people are online
When there is the least competition
When there is most engagement possibility

Again, personally, I don’t believe in points 1 & 2, for one because they are contradictory and second that they are not in our control.

Let’s understand how:

Facebook insight gives you a great way to find out the time band when most of your fans are online

However,

1.this does not imply that all of them will see our content and

2. this implies that most of the competition would also be active around this time band, and competition does not only include our direct competition but also all those brands which target this audience.

So, the real test of what time is best to post, is to check engagement level by time band.

As you can see, the engagement is low at 11AM (which is the peak time for Reach), while engagement is maximised at a non real peak time, which is at 1PM.

Facebook Post Engagement By Hour