The best time to post on social media varies, depending on your audience and what you want to achieve with your posts. With so many options to choose from, it can be hard to determine the right day and time to schedule posts so that they are likely to be seen by the widest audience possible. Here’s a helpful guide to some of the best times and days to schedule social media posts to maximize reach and engagement throughout the year—no matter what your business goals are!
Posts With Images Get 150% More Engagement
While you might feel compelled to share words and thoughts in cyberspace, remember that your followers are also interested in visual content. According to recent data, posts with images get 150% more engagement than those without. So take a screenshot of a chart or graph—if you can’t do it yourself, use an app like Skitch or Snapshot—to include in your next post. A picture is worth 1,000 words!
Short Posts Perform Well Too
Posts that are only a few words in length perform better than longer ones. But before you post, there are several factors to consider: first, what time of day do your followers most often check their feeds? Is it early in the morning, while they’re having breakfast and getting ready for work? After they’ve come home from work? Or late at night as they settle into bed?
Live Videos Are Good
No matter how compelling your case studies or how convincing your authority is, you still need to test different variations of your posts at scale. There’s a common misconception that running an A/B test takes special technical knowledge or tools; if you have a regular job, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to invest a lot of time into these tests—and even if you did, there would probably be limits in what could be changed and when. As such, most people end up running far fewer A/B tests than they’d like because they simply don’t have enough time.
Interact With Your Followers
It’s easy for your followers to forget about you once they stop seeing new posts in their feed. Interacting with them occasionally is important, but it’s also very time-consuming. Consider automating some of your social media interactions so that you can focus on more pressing issues within your business or at home. For example, one of our favorite tools is Wildfire Engage, which allows users to schedule when they want Facebook and Twitter posts sent out and where. It also offers advanced targeting options that are essential for reaching a wider audience online. A $9 per month subscription may seem expensive upfront, but it could be money well spent in terms of long-term growth.
Test Schedule Variations Yourself
When posting at different times of day, you want to see which performs best. You can use services like Iconosquare or SproutSocial or Hootsuite with a free trial period to test it out yourself. While Instagram doesn’t offer specific statistics regarding engagement or reach, you can check your analytics on other platforms and apps like Buffer that help track these metrics. You’ll be able to see what times of day are best for gaining more followers, likes, and comments. Remember: All these results will vary depending on your business and type of Instagram account; so keep experimenting until you find what works for you!