Posting at the right time on social media can significantly boost your content’s reach and engagement. But what is the best social media time to post?
Well, the answer to this question is not as easy as you might think.
And that is why in this blog post I am going to share with you how it really is and how to find out the best social media time to post.
So, are you ready to begin? If so, let’s dive in…
There Is No Definite Answer
This is something that I have to get straight off the plate. I don’t care what social media platform you are on, if you just went and saw a post or an article that says “XYZ is the best time to post“, then I suggest you kick it to the curb.
Why? First of all – time zones. If you live on the East Coast, your 3PM is not the same as 3PM in the UK.
That is just the way it is. Second, a big reason why nobody can give you a definite answer is that it’s going to clearly depend on nobody else but YOUR AUDIENCE.
Not the audience of the “guru” who shared the stats, and not the average of 5,000 audiences, but YOURS.
That is simply even though they might analyze a million audiences, your audience is going to consist of different people.
They have different demographics, psychographics, etc. and there is not one audience on the social media platform that you are on that is exactly the same.
Therefore, nobody can tell you what is the best social media time to post.
Your best social media time to post is going to be different than the time of others. So, how are you actually going to figure it out?
Method #1: Look At What You Already Shared
To do that you are going to need a tool like Sprout Social, or you will simply have to do everything manually which will be a lot of painful work.
This method is pretty simple. You are going to list all of the posts that you shared for a certain time period (I don’t recommend going over 2-3 months), and you are going to write down all of the stats.
Write down the reach, engagement, and conversion of every post that you shared in that time frame, plus don’t forget to write down the time when was it posted.
When you have that, then you need to create a column for each of the times and write down the overall engagement and reach of all the posts that you shared.
Once you have that, then based on the reach and engagement you are going to decide on which time is the best.
Before you pick, you need to turn all of the engagement you summed up together (likes, comments, saves, shares, etc.) and divide it by the number of posts you shared in that time period. Do it for reach as well.
Here are the formulas:
- Summed up engagement/number of posts for the time you shared them
- Summed up reach/number of posts for the time you shared them
When you do that, you are going to get two numbers. The first is going to be an average overall engagement and the second one is going to be an average overall reach.
And obviously, the time that has the highest overall engagement and reach wins.
If there is one time that has higher reach, and one time that has higher engagement, pick the time based on reach as engagement is more volatile to the type of post you share.
When you have that, then you have a great foundation for the second method to figure out the best social media time to post (if you want to do it)…
Method #2: Test The Times
Now when you know the best social media time to post based on the times when you already shared some posts, then I bet that there is a ton of times when you haven’t shared anything.
Usually, these are the night times in your area and also some times during the day.
Now, the thing is that if you have an international audience, night times can easily become the best social media times to post.
However, any time that you haven’t tried can be the best, even if you have only a local audience.
And of course, that is why you need to test them.
The way you are going to do that is by following this simple system to find out the best social media times to post through testing.
Prepare 5 Posts For Every Hour
Now, if you haven’t shared anything before or you just refuse to do method #1, then you will need to prepare 5 posts for every hour in a day. That means you’ll need 120 posts.
However, if you did method #1 then you just need to prepare 5 posts for every hour in a day when you haven’t posted, yet.
That means the number can be as low as 5 posts.
When you have the posts ready you will move on to the next step of this method to find out the best social media times to post…
Share The Posts And Track All Of The Results
Now is the time to share all of the content. But of course, don’t do it at once. Do it in a way that fits your content strategy and your normal posting schedule.
In other words, don’t share all 20, 40, 10, or 120 posts in a day. Do it following your normal routine. That means you share 2 posts a day, 1 post a day, and on.
And once you share all of the posts, then you move on to the third step of this method to find out the best social media times to post…
Collect Results And Decide
Once you shared all of the posts, then again, you are going to make columns for every hour when you shared them, sum up the engagement and reach and divide it by the number of posts you shared (5), and then based on the time with highest reach and engagement you will decide what is the best social media time to post.
This is the only way you can actually find out what is the best time to post on social media that is correct.
However, in the end, it is not as much about when you post as about WHAT you post.
Your content is going to determine whether you are going to get results or not. Crap content posted at 8PM will still be crap when posted at 4AM.
If your content is bad you won’t get results. So play with things like finding out the best social media times to post once your content is great.
If you know there is even a tiny change that you can make to get better, then don’t care about the time when you post it and fix the content first.
it is the key to success with your social media marketing and growing a massive audience.
Filip Konecny 