Introduction
Making the most of Facebook’s organic reach is a difficult balancing act. The brand certainly favours personal posts over business posts.
And unless you are paying for targeted advertising, it’s very hard to know if your messages are being displayed to your target audience. One of the main factors at play is the time of day you choose to hit the publish button.
Overall best time to post on Facebook
There are some general rules of thumb that can be applied here and they will give you an instant boost to potential viewing figures. Many studies and questionnaires have been carried out by various brands over the years. And while they differ in their exact findings, there are a few things that remain fairly consistent.
Between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. on a Wednesday appears to be the top spot. The theory goes that it’s the middle of the week and people are desperately searching social media for a welcome distraction. This engagement peak continues into the lunch hour as users look to see what friends and family are up to. While the other end of the scale would suggest that Sunday evenings are almost a black hole for Facebook posts.
Users look at Facebook at different times based on sector
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to timing the release of a Facebook post. There are many factors that come into play and one of those is the industry that you work in. Trying to attract attention from students at 6pm is possibly a waste of time. Whereas a media company, for example, will be highly focused at this time of day.
Best times to post by sector
- Tech companies – release Facebook posts at 9am, 3pm or 5pm during the week
- Charity and non-profit organisations – contact followers between 8am and 9am in the morning
- B2b – try the beginning of the day around 9am and between 3pm and 4pm and avoid the weekends
- B2C – 9am is the best time and you will also see a resurgence around 11am and again at 4pm
- Education – attracting a student’s attention is no easy task and when it comes to Facebook posts, they need to be deployed 8am, midday and 3pm for the best results
Use your Facebook insights to know the best time to post on Facebook
By using Facebook insights reporting it’s possible to gather loads of useful info on your users. And one data set to keep an eye on is the time when users are active. Combining this data with other useful engagement info, you can see which of your users interact with your posts and when they spend most of their quality time on Facebook.
Pulling these two data sets together can help you create an extremely targeted audience and you will be able to get your content in front of them at the right time as well. And when it comes to the type of post you may wish to use, Facebook insights will also prove to be invaluable. See which posts previously gained the best results and build on that.
Summary
Knowing when to post on Facebook isn’t an exact science. And as we have seen, it will depend on the industry you’re working in as well as other factors. In some cases, a little trial and error may be necessary for you to develop your own data from personal experience. The general timings that we’ve seen should be used for guidance only. But it is your own Facebook insights that should be studied along with previous post data to guarantee the best results.
