Social media marketing has turned out as a blessing for businesses. The exposure and traffic hike companies are receiving through different social media platforms are truly immense. Every second company has established an online presence these days through social media. However, just being regularly present on social media and checking up is not enough. Social media marketing is full of tricks you can use to get better recognition and increase your sales. Companies can influence users through different techniques like paid promotions, effective advertisements, proper responses to users, and so on. Amidst all this, something as small as the time of a post can change your sales and engagement statistics. All the top social media influencers are well familiar with these small marketing devices of social media. If you want to be amongst the best, you will need to pay attention to the minute aspects of social media marketing.

Does time of posting matter in social media?

Yes, and we can’t stress this enough. Time of posting is often overlooked by inspiring social media influencers and businesses. But, it can be a significant catalyst in your social media success. The algorithms of different social platforms decide what kind of timing strategy you should adapt. The sorting order of newsfeed in these platforms is the crucial factor for the right time of posting.

One more important thing is the time of the day when your target audience is most active. Timing matters because if you post during that hour of the day, there will be a natural and organic increase in the number of views. The engagements will rise, and so will the sales.

Knowing the right time to post on social media platforms is also essential to reserve the best content for a suitable moment. Posting at any time of the day can leave your effective content secluded. No matter how good the content is, it will never reach out to the target. So, determine the time when most users are active and roll out the reserved, top quality, creamy content at that time. It is like a double hit factor which is sure to bring more traffic to your page.

Is there a typical best time for all social media platforms?

There are many social media websites in the world. But the four leading social media platforms that take up the top spots for businesses are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. YouTube is also a major contender, but it is more of a video sharing platform. So, can we get a standard posting time for the above four platforms? No, it is not possible. In fact, you can’t even get a generic posting time within a single platform. The reason is that every group of the target audience have their traits and surfing habits. Some may scroll more, so posting time does not matter much. Some target audiences constitute busy people who come online once a day and look at a few posts and leave. In this way, there is immense diversity in a single platform. So, it makes it pretty useless to search for generic time of posting for different platforms together. You need to find out the best time according to the platform you are on, the genre of your post and the active intervals of your target audiences. Let us look at some excellent posting time estimated for each platform.

Facebook

Facebook is among the largest social media platforms and an apple of the eye for social media marketers. It has recently come up as a powerful advertising platform, and social media influencers are going crazy about it for a long time. Facebook gives impressive results to marketing activities owing to over 2.38 billion users of the platform. These results can be optimised and elevated to new heights when the timing of posts is curated. Due to the giant size of Facebook, there is no accurately defined time for posting. However, some well-accepted and general statistics are:

• The best days for Facebook posts are late weekdays from Wednesday to Saturday. Thursdays are considered the highest-grossing days, according to Hubspot.
• For industrial and business posts, right time of the day is 9 am. It is the time when employees and managers come online for the first time of the day.
• Posting before 7 am and after 5 pm is considered very inefficient as users are often busy sleeping or spend time with their families. Posting between 10 pm to 4 am is the worst time to post as your updates will primarily go unnoticed.
• For news and industry pages, it is good to post at a time around lunch — the main idea being catching the users during their free time.
• Sunday is the least favourable day for making facebook posts about any topic, as most people are enjoying their weekend.

Instagram

Instagram is the next favourite platform of social media influencers all around the world. The sheer creativity of the platform and the modern touch to the interface attracts millennials a lot. Among youth, Instagram has even defeated Facebook in terms of popularity. Knowing the ins and outs of Instagram marketing has become very important to thrive in the social media marketing world. Some post scheduling tips for Instagram are:

• The morning hours retake the great part as posting between 10-11 am on Instagram brings a lot of engagement.
• Wednesday is a safe day to launch your best updates on this platform as many people move slightly into their leisure mode waiting for the weekend.
• Evening time from 4-5 pm and night time of 7 to 9 pm is also considered safe and sound for updating your Instagram profile with some creative posts.
• Nighttime is again a big no-no as the posts between 11 pm to 3 am get the least engagement statistics.
• While some researchers consider Thursday the best day for Instagram influencers, others show that Friday can be even better with people excited for the upcoming weekend holiday.
• The genre of your post will change the ideal time to post on Instagram. For instance, the best choice for media post is late morning hours on Wednesdays, and interesting tech posts can thrive even on Saturday mornings.

Twitter

Twitter is the social media platform of intellectuals. At least that is what the notion is. However, you will find all the range and types of audiences using twitter. Twitter is gaining new users and advancing its algorithms every day. These algorithms can accurately depict the perfect timings for tweeting for promoting your business. With an average of 500 million tweets on the platform every day, you should know some periods when your tweets will gain proper attention and shine bright.

• Both mornings and evenings are an excellent time to publish a fresh and exciting tweet. Save your precious witty publications for 8 to 10 am or 6 to 9 pm.
• The best day for your marketing campaigns on twitter is Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
• For B2C companies, weekends are great to reach out to regular customers on twitter. B2B companies do great during weekdays when other industries are looking out for business partners.
• Aiming for more tweets during noon and evening will increase the retweet count. The reason relates to the psychology of people after finishing their jobs.
• Avoid tweeting when your target audience is sleeping, i.e. between 11 pm to 5 am.

LinkedIn

Among the four social media platforms, LinkedIn is something most unique and different. It is a focused social media option for business leaders and corporate workers. It combines into a social website and a job-seeking platform. As a recruiter or your business promoter, you will need to stay active and energetic on LinkedIn. The non-diverse audience of LinkedIn does not reduce its marketing potential. To unleash the full capabilities of LinkedIn in your social media strategy, follow these scheduling tips:

• Post on LinkedIn for maximum engagement between 10 am to 12 pm. The main aim should be to drop regular updates in the morning and show professionalism.
• LinkedIn does not deliver traffic throughout the day, so posting during evenings will not bring much response. People generally check in on this social media platform for a short time during the mornings.
• The best day to post on LinkedIn is Wednesday when the workload of corporate users reduces, and they wander to on this platform for career opportunities.
• The night time is the least favourable hours for business posting.
• Posting during weekdays will help as weekends on LinkedIn are often dry. Sundays are lowest on the engagement graphs of LinkedIn.

Conclusion

Social media platforms are such competitive places these days that every slight detail about your target audience is crucial for marketing campaigns. While the statistics depicted in this article are well researched, you should do some more analysis of your audience. It will provide you with better insight into the user patterns, and you can decide the optimum time yourself. In the end, it all comes down to understanding your audience better. It will help you to create better content and launch it at the right moment.