Effective Social Media Scheduling: Best Time to Post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

A social media strategy includes creating engaging content and delivering it to the right audience at the right time. So, what should be the best time to post on Instagram for likes? And what about the best time to post on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter? Would it be efficient to push out content across all platforms at the same time? Read on to find out.

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An effective social media strategy helps you boost brand awareness, drive engagement, and communicate with your target audience. When your content is competing against numerous others to make it to users’ news feeds, how do you ensure your social media audience sees it, and that they engage and interact with your content?

We’ve compiled some data on when in their day your audience uses specific social networks. This will help you to effectively schedule your social media posts for better reach and engagement.

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Let’s first look at the criteria that decide how content appears on various social networks.

• “On average, there are 1,500 stories that could appear in a person’s News Feed each time they log onto Facebook. For people with lots of friends and Page likes, as many as 15,000 potential stories could appear any time they log on,” says Brian Boland, Facebook.
• Facebook uses signals that monitor how many people react to, comment on or share posts to determine where they appear in users’ News Feed.
• Instagram recently updated its algorithm to allow you to choose feed refreshes, finally! Now, newer posts are more likely to appear first in the feed. Apart from how the recent the post is, Instagram ranks posts based on a user’s interest and relationship with people who have shared the posts, along with frequency, following and usage.
• The LinkedIn feed is powered by three signals — user identity (profile, skills, connections, etc.), content (engagement, interaction, mentions, etc.), and user behavior (preferences and interests).
• Twitter ranks tweets in reverse chronological order and users can also choose more important tweets to appear first at the top of their timeline, with the rest of the tweets underneath.

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Now that you know how content appears in users’ feeds, let’s look at some insights regarding when users in the US are active on a particular social media platform to receive your content.

According to Hootsuite,

• The best time to post on Facebook is between 12 noon – 3 p.m., Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday and 12 noon to 1 p.m. on weekends.
• The best time to post on Twitter is around 3 p.m. on weekdays for your B2B customers, while B2C brands can post between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., Monday to Friday.
• The Hootsuite team posts on LinkedIn at 7.45 a.m., 10.45 a.m., 12.45 p.m., and 5.45 p.m. Monday to Thursday, and have seen significant numbers.
• The best time to post on Instagram for likes is between 12 noon to 1 p.m. on weekdays.
   

SocialBakers.com suggests the optimal time to post on various social platforms, based on the data they collected about users’ activity

• The best time to post on Facebook is Mondays, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and Sundays, from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m. The impressions statistics change from region to region.
• They suggested that the best time to post on Instagram is Monday and Thursday, anytime other than 3 p.m. to 4 p.m.
   

Neil Patel’s blog says the optimal tweet times can be 12 noon and 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. When publishing on LinkedIn, Tuesdays through Thursdays in the early office hours (9 a.m. to 11 a.m.) will give your content some traction.

Here is what Hubspot has to say about good post timings and how your target audience interacts with various social media platforms.

• The best time to post on Facebook is 9 a.m., 11 a.m. to 12 noon, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. — Thursday to Sunday.
• For Twitter, they recommend, 8 a.m. – 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. – 9 p.m. on weekdays for B2B companies, while B2C companies can leverage 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., 12 noon and 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
• You could also shoot LinkedIn posts on Wednesdays between 10 a.m. and 12 noon.
• To drive engagement on Instagram, try posting on Fridays, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.
   

Learn More: Are You Making The Most Of Social Media Web Analytics?

Takeaways for Marketers

Different data sets, audience segments, and businesses will require varying post schedules and post types (image, video, link, text) to capture the right audience’s attention. The timings mentioned here are merely pointers to when most users are active. Segment your audiences and create use case scenarios for who they are and what their day looks like. For example:

1. You can share posts for Instagram audiences even in the middle of the night, because your followers’ feed will be static at that time and if your target audience is Gen Z and Millennials, you can capture their attention even at 2 a.m. Also note that 5 a.m. is a good time to post on Instagram for likes, since users like to browse their phones before starting their daily activities.
2. If targeting young, stay-at-home moms, the best time to post on Facebook would be between 12 noon to 3 p.m. while their babies nap.
3. To reach out to professionals, pushing updates on Twitter during peak commute times 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. or 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. could do the trick.
4. For your B2B customers, morning working hours are a good time to capture their attention, but to drive engagement, target commute times as they are more willing to react and connect.
    

For effective scheduling of posts on social media, here are some tips that will help:

• Identify and segment your target audience and their preferred platform for your niche segment.
• Identify your goals – whether you want to garner likes, comments, shares, or link clicks.
• If your audience is in multiple time zones, choose an intersection of the two time zones when most of your audience could be active.
• Best time to post on Facebook and Instagram for engagement (comments, shares, clicks) are after-work hours. The best time to post on Instagram (or Facebook) for likes and shares is during lunch hour.
• Professionals tend to use Twitter and LinkedIn for news and updates, so the best time to post is before and after work.
• Use analytics and insight tools available on each social media platform to understand how your post is performing and use these insights to plan your next post.
• Use automated post scheduling tools to post at the right time.
• Keep experimenting.

How do you schedule your posts on social media? Share your tips with us on Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook; we’re always listening!