If engaged in a business using Social Media to help market your business, products or services its important to know the best times to make posts on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and other social media sites. The best times would be the times when most people are likely to see your posts. Other marketers break it down to declare that the best times are the times when most Interactions take place. Interactions (On Facebook, for instance) would be Likes, Comments or Shares. It’s good to have interactions with your Friends, Likes, Followers, Fans, Subscribers, etc. But a lot of them are Social Media voyeurs. They choose not to interact, or don’t know how to do so.

We own and operate Total Broadcasting Service; which is an audio and video production company that provides content for Social Media Marketing. In studying the Facebook and YouTube channels we manage we’ve determined the following:

Worst Days of the Week to Post on Facebook- 

It’s not even close. Monday and Tuesday have the least number of fans and followers on Facebook, with Monday slightly worst. Interestingly, Tuesdays are not so bad on YouTube.

In rating the worst day for Monday proved worst for 50% of our customers business profile pages. Tuesday was worst for 46% of them. And in nearly every case if Monday was their worst day Tuesday was second worst, and vice versa.

Sunday was the third worst day.

Best Days of the Week to Post on Facebook-

This was not nearly as definitive as determining the worst days. But Wednesday appeared best for more customers than any other day. 32% of Total Broadcasting customers were best on Wednesday. Friday was also good with a percentage of 25%. Thursday and Saturdays were the strongest days for 14% of our customers.

In advising our clients we will be telling them to keep an eye on their Facebook Insights data for changing information, but for now plan your best and most important posts for Wednesday first, and Thursday thru Saturday in equal emphasis.

Worst Time of any Day to Post on Facebook-

We would not have needed data to guess this information correctly. You probably wouldn’t either. In each customer’s case the fewest number of online Friends occurred in the middle of the night from 9pm-6am Pacific. Not hard to figure out why.

Yet, strangely a lot of national brands have not caught on to this fact and have programmed their auto-posts to appear on your Walls early in the A-M hours. Presumably their hoping to greet you when you wake with their ads. We would not advise our clients to do likewise.

Best Time of Day to Post on Facebook-

There are two ways to look at answering this. Either one could work for you.

First, post in the morning between 7am-9am. While this is the time frame in which fewest people are on-line (other than over-night) the benefit is that your post will be on the Walls of your fans all throughout the day. So, therefore, even evening Facebook surfers will scroll through their Wall and eventually come across your post.

Still, we recommend posting onto Facebook when the most people are on-line. Among our clients the late afternoon between 2pm-6pm and 6pm-9pm are equally busy online. As such posting at any time from 2pm-6pm would be best. Late afternoon versus early evening using the same argument by those proponents of early morning posting.

All Total Broadcasting Service customers surveyed operate businesses on the West Coast of the United States in the Pacific time zone. Data used to formulate this information comes from Facebook Insights during a recent 1-week period in July 2013.

The Best Days and Times to Post on Social Media According to National Data-

Look hard enough and you’ll find conflicting data online. We came across blogs referencing studies that said Wednesday was the absolute worst day to post. We found more studies and ones we found more credible stating that Wednesday was best.

The chart below gives very specific recommendations for all the major Social Media sites. Click on it to see a larger clearer version.

What you’ll find it says is not too dissimilar from our findings in studying Total Broadcasting Service customers. It says:

Best time to post on Facebook? Wednesday at 3pm.

Worst time? Overnights and weekends.

Best time to Tweet on Twitter? Monday-Thursday 1pm-3pm.

Worst Tweet times? After 3pm Fridays.

Best time to post on LinkedIn? Just before or just after normal work hours; 7am-9am or 5-6pm.

Worst? Mondays and Fridays.

Best time to Pin on Pinterest? Interestingly, Saturday mornings and evenings from 8pm-1am.

Worst time for Pinterest? Late afternoons 5pm-7pm.

The chart also mentions Google+, and while I know they have a significant membership it’s not unlike a forced Labor Camp. You are only on Google+ because Google makes you have an account when you want an account on YouTube or Gmail. There is still no one playing on Google+. So who cares.

How Much Should You Post?

On Twitter there is virtually no penalty for over posting. Have at it. Tweet yourself to death.

But on Facebook there are definite penalties for posting too often. Your Fans will stop being your fans. They’ll stop paying attention, they may unlike you. They may just Hide you.

Various data sites calculate that 2-posts per day is optimum. Once you post 3 times or more the amount of interactions in the form of Likes, Comments, and Shares starts to drop off.

Use this information to your benefit and you will find Social Media terrific for staying in touch with customers and finding new ones, or more specifically, making it possible for them to find you. Above all, as we like to say with regard to our posting live by this rule…ALWAYS BE INTERESTING! Boring sucks.

Thanks for visiting. Comments are welcome.

Call for Video Production Services: 425-687-0100

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August 2, 2013
Categories: Business, Washington State . Tags:advertising, blogging, Business, facebook, Google, LinkedIn, social media, Social media marketing, technology, twitter, YouTube . Author: Michael Schuett

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