When Is The Best Time To Post On Facebook?

If you use Facebook to market your business, then you may feel disheartened at times with the reach and engagement on your posts. One of the ways to maximise your reach is to post during the times most of your followers are online. So, how do you know when the best time to post on Facebook is? Let’s take a look.

How can you work out what is the best time to post on Facebook?

The first thing you should do is visit the Insights section on your Facebook page. This can be found down the left-hand menu when you are on your page. When you land on the insights tab, you will see something similar to the screenshot below.

This page gives you a summary of your activities over the last 7 or 28 days, depending on your selection from the dropdown. If you click the posts option from the menu on the left, you will see something like the below.

Here you can see a graph. The Days section along the top shows you roughly how many of your followers are online each day. They are relatively similar across the board here within 100 or so. Below is the time graph. This shows you how active your followers are at different times of the day. It peaks between 11 am and 1 pm and starts to drop off around school run time, with dinner or tea time being the lowest point of the day before it starts picking up again.

Your graph may look slightly different depending on your followers, but they tend to be pretty similar.  If you hover over the days above the time graph, you can see how it differs on different days slightly.

Test Your Posts

Now that we can see it generally pays to post between 11 and 1 pm, you should run some tests. Create some posts and share them within this time to see what effect this has on your reach compared with your previous efforts.

Remember to give it time while testing and to compare like for like. So, use a similar mix of post content to the previous period.

Studies have shown that people are more likely to engage with posts on Thursdays and Fridays. Why, well, the nearer to the end of the week it gets, the more people begin to check out from their job and look at their social media accounts.

Factor in your Followers lives

You should know who your key audience is. If, for example, they are parents, they are more likely to be out during school run times until their children go to bed. This explains the big dip from 3 pm onwards on the user graph.

If your audience is professionals who work 9-5, you may find they peak during commutes and lunch breaks.

Weekends, especially Sundays, can be quiet because people are doing things with their friends and families and don’t want to be marketed to so much. They have switched off. Summer can be less active for this exact reason. While everyone is out enjoying the sunshine and life, they are less active on social media.

Below is a demographic assessment that our scheduling software Social Pilot shows us. This can be helpful in determining who is following our account, you can also toggle on the right to people reached and get some more data. There are further, more in-depth data insights available within the analytics suite there too. You can also gain some info on your followers in the Facebook insights panel.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. The most impactful thing you can do is know your audience and try to fit in with their schedules. Test your theories and monitor the results periodically to check for any changes.

If you would like some assistance with your social media, we offer a range of services from a tailored plan to full social media management. Get in touch here.

Read The Best Time To Post On Instagram Here.