Social media is a highly effective way to engage with target audiences, however posting when you feel like it even if it is consistent is not enough. There are times that are optimal to post on social media and will bring you better results.
There is no set answer as to what the best hours to post on various social media platforms are as each social media network’s users browse at different times.
Heres the thing: Social media timing matters.
Marketers should conduct their own research to see what timings are most effective for their audience.
HubSpot has provided a few guidelines and tips from their extensive research on social media timing.
Determining Your Optimal Frequency
Frequency is a crucial aspect of your organization’s social media presence, too many posts can be annoying, and too little can show poor presence. Getting the right frequency is very important for social media updates.
The General Guideline
Don’t crowd your content. Companies that allow each shared link a buffer zone of at least an hour on either side see higher clickthrough rates overall according to HubSpot.
How to Find Your Personal Sweet Spot
Start by taking an informal audit to see how many followers your typical follower has. If most of your active followers don’t follow many others you’ll want your sharing habits to be less frequent, You should also do some testing to determine your optimal publishing frequency.
Here is a simple one to get started:
Week One: Schedule your shares two hours apart as HubSpot recommends
Week Two: Increase publishing frequency gradually, but keep the caliber of the content fairly similar
Compare the activity levels of each week. Separate all forms of engagement such as retweet/reposts, replies/comments, clicks. You may notice that one methods could vary, for example one could result in fewer comments but more clicks and vice versa, determine which method meets most share of your goals as a marketer.
Determining the Best Time for General Engagement
After understanding the frequency of posts for your business, it is important to find out which days and time of day work best for generating the most engagement and activity for your posts.
The General Guideline
Twitter: Late in the day and week are most retweetable times
The analysis found that on weekdays, later in the day between around 2pm and 5pm (Eastern Time) was when the greatest retweet activity occurred
Facebook: Shares are at their highest during the weekend
Facebook saw more activity during the weekends.
How to Find Your Personal Sweet Spot
Start by looking at your past shares to understand which days of the week and what time of the day works best for your business. Sort your past engagement by number of clicks in whatever social media publishing tool you use.
Next look for trends in the posts that generated the most clicks (what time and day they were posted).
Determining the Most Targeted Time for Lead Engagement
Finding the time the overall users on a social media platform are active at does not mean that this time is optimal for the acquisition of leads and customers. As a business it is important to differentiate and seek out users that are on the road to becoming customers.
For that your business will need a social media tool that is directly connected and integrated with your marketing database or CRM.
Creating a Well-Balanced Schedule
Settle on a schedule with the best times to post on each platform and posts, lock it into your publishing tool. HubSpot has a free social media scheduling template that can be very useful: https://offers.hubspot.com/social-media-content-calendar
Go back and re-evaluate to make sure the effectiveness of your timing and day doesn’t change over time.
General Guidelines
- make sure you’re not sharing the same content, types of content, and method of positioning of your content repetitively. Mix it up!
- Visual content helps to drive engagement on Facehook
- On Twitter mix in @replies and retweets of other people’s content
- On LinkedIn share blog posts and details from within it
Read full article at: https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/33601/a-marketer-s-guide-to-nailing-the-timing-frequency-of-social-media-updates.aspx
