A new report from Sprout Social looks at the social media usage trends of some 30,000 of its customers over the past year to understand when content was most, and least, engaged with.
NB: This is an article from Screenpilot
When messaging via social media, regardless of the platform, the strategy should always be to engage as many people as possible to amplify the message and maximize its reach. Afterall, there’s a lot of potential reach out there, with nearly 4 billion social media users around the world, and the average person bouncing between seven different social networks each month.
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While the report offers insights that serve to enforce general best practices, the best practice of all is for every brand should analyze its own data and optimize its communications strategy for its specific audience. Note that all times are Central Time (CST).
No brand wants to broadcast into a void. Here are the top takeaways from the report.
General Social Media Bests
If you’ve yet to truly dig in to your own brand’s data, or test various broadcast days and times on your own channels, the following serve as general rules of thumb to follow.
- Best times to post on social media in general: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m.
- Best days to post on social media: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays
- Worst days to post on social media: Sundays
Best Times to Post on Facebook
With nearly 2.5 billion monthly users, Facebook is by far the largest social media site in the world. It’s no surprise that it’s also the most-used platform by marketers worldwide (93%). True, the Facebook has made recent news by recording its first-ever daily active users drop in Q4 2021, but it’s important to keep perspective. The platform added back 30 million users in Q1 2022 and today boasts 1.96 billion daily active users.
Keep in mind that the times shown are recorded in U.S. Central Time (CST). While the “middle of the night” spike in engagement may, at first, seem counterintuitive, the data reflects Facebook’s significant global reach, and the audience engagement that takes place even as U.S. businesses sleep.
Best practices to optimize engagement on Facebook;
- Best times to post on Facebook: Mondays through Fridays at 3 a.m., Tuesdays at 10 a.m. and noon
- Best days to post on Facebook: Tuesdays through Fridays
- Worst days to post on Facebook: Saturdays
Best Times to Post on Instagram
Marketers love Instagram, too. In fact, some 78% of marketers leverage the platform, second only to Facebook. That’s because Instagram recently exceeded 2 billion monthly active users worldwide, suggesting the app still has room to grow, despite increased competition from competitors like TikTok.
Best practices to optimize engagement on Instagram;
