Every brand or business uses Facebook as a business marketing tool. Well, why shouldn’t they? With almost 2.45 Billion active users per month, Facebook is the world’s biggest social media platform 1.62 Billion users are active at the same time on Facebook every day. It is enough for a business to use the platform as a marketing tool. Every brand is using the platform for marketing purposes so, it has become crucial for each of them to attract the maximum reach for their updates. To get the maximum reach, it is important to know the time their audience is most active. And it encourages us to know how we can know the best time to post on Facebook? media platform
When is the Best Time to Post on Facebook?
No specific time has been recorded to answer this question that “what is the best time to post on Facebook”. There are a dozen studies regarding this statement and each of them shows different results. For different organizations, we can have an overview of what time Facebook is most active?
For B2C:
9am-10 am, 12 pm-1pm, 4pm, 5pm.
For B2B:
9 am to 4 pm, from 3 pm to 4 pm
For Software Services:
9 am to 5 pm. 9 am, 3 pm, and 5 pm are the consistent times for peak engagement.
For Healthcare:
6 am-7 am, 9 am and 11 am.
For Media:
7 am, 11 am, and 6 pm.
For Higher Education:
8 am and 3 pm.
Up mentioned are the peak engagement times of the Facebook audience for respective purposes.
Now, we will take a general look at what is the best time to post on Facebook for maximum exposure according to other sources.
- According to Hootsuite, on weekdays, post between noon and 3 pm. The purpose is that when people will be on lunch break, they will be active to avail of a distraction.
- HubSpot suggests that 1 pm to pm is the best time.
- Bootcamp Digital says that following your Facebook Insights is the best strategy. Following your strategy, you should post high-quality content 1 to 4 times a week.
- According to Unmetric, the best time is from 9 am to 2 pm.
- QuickSprout says that the time to post on Facebook which gives great results is different for different industries. But generally, the posts get boosts in the latter times of the week.
- Mariah Althoff suggests that the best posting time is at 9 am, 1 pm, and 3 pm on Thursdays.
We can analyze that there are different suggestions whenever we look up to different sources to find the “best time to post on Facebook”. Now anyone can wonder, when is the worst time to post on Facebook? Well, to answer this question Impulsive Creative suggests that posting between 8 pm and 3 am is the worst time.
What is the Best Time to Post on Facebook?
Considering the search results through different sources, we know that there is no consistent time for peak engagement. Brian Boland, who is the VP of Advertising Technology at Facebook, while explaining the matter that why the organic reach of Facebook is declining stated that:
“Competition in News Feed — the place on Facebook where people view content from their family and friends, as well as businesses — is increasing, and it’s becoming harder for any story to gain exposure in News Feed.
The second reason News Feed is designed to show each person on Facebook the content that’s most relevant to them.”
This explains two things:
- There is a lot more content that is published on Facebook than we think.
- Brands face too many competitors for their posts to show on people’s feeds.
Evaluating the data, we can say that there is no specific best time to post on Facebook. Let’s suppose, you are following a certain source that says the high performing time to post on Facebook is 3 pm and you post your content at this specific time. It is no doubt that there will be hundreds of different brands that will be considering the same thing as you are. That means they will post at the same time you are posting. It ultimately increases the ratio of competitors you will be facing.
If we think otherwise, and you post at off-peak times, still there will be hundreds of brands thinking the same and they will do the same. That too increases the ratio of your competitors. The ambiguity still lies there; whether your post will get the maximum reach or not.
We can settle the issue by concluding that the best time to post is not specified. It is different for different purposes and events.
How to Determine the “best time to post on Facebook”
The question here is if there is no best time specified to post on Facebook than when one should post. The following factors can explain it.
Understanding your Audience on Facebook
If business marketing is the purpose of posting on Facebook, then there is a no better option to determine the best time of day to post on Facebook than analyzing your audience. You can check and evaluate from the Facebook Insights that at what time your target audience is most active. You can also check the time when your posts had the maximum reach.
Post on the best time according to the event
Your audience follows your content according to the upcoming event or we can say that when they are expecting something. We can take a common example that the audience of a clothing brand will be expecting the updates and posts when a new collection is expected to be launched.
The posts you publish will get the maximum reach when they will be relevant to the event. For example, the launching of the new collection will be exactly after its announcement to the audience.
How to Find the Best Time for You to Post on Facebook through Facebook Insights
You can use Facebook Insights to get an idea about how well your posts are doing. Also, you can analyze the engagement of your audience to your posts as well. Observing these two things, you can evaluate what time would be best for you to post on Facebook.
To go to the Facebook Insights Tab, you will have to select the ‘Insights’ option at the top of your Facebook page. From there you can observe a lot of data about your posts and audience.
How to know when most of your audience is active?
After reaching the ‘Insights’ column, select the option for ‘Posts’ from the left corner. It will open you with a graphical representation of your active audience engagement throughout the week.
We can see the graphical representation of follower’s engagement on our Facebook Page. Considering the graph, we can easily predict the following things.
- Throughout the week, there is an active engagement of the audience.
- The maximum audience engagement can be noticed on ‘Thursdays’.
- The peak engagement times are from 10 am to 8 pm. Because there is a rise in the slope after 10 am and we can see that the slope starts to decline from 8 pm onwards.
How to know the time of your ‘top posts’?
If you want to know the publishing time of your top-performing post, you can check it as well from ‘Facebook Insights’. From the ‘Posts’ column, next to the ‘Fan engagement’ tab is the tab for top posts. All the top-performing posts are listed here, and you can easily determine the time of your top post.
The purpose to collect the data is to find the time that is best for you to post. When you will know at what day and what time your majority of the audience is active, and the estimated time when the performance of your posts is good, you can easily interpret the time that would be best for you to post.
How can you put your efforts into use now?
Now when you know the best peak times for the post engagement, you can schedule Facebook posts to that time. For this, you will need a social media management tool to schedule posts in bulk.
How to schedule posts on Facebook through SocialBu?
You know the best time to schedule posts, all you have to do now is to schedule posts on Facebook through SocialBu. For this, you will first have to connect your Facebook Page to the SocialBu. Here you can have an idea of how to schedule a post on Facebook:
After connecting your Facebook Page to SocialBu, you can go to the ‘Schedule’ tab from the top left corner.
Create your posts and then schedule them according to the best time which you evaluated through Facebook Insights.
It is just as easy as described in these two steps. However, if you want to get an overview of your scheduled posts, you can simply check it from our social media content calendar.
Each post with time and date is marked on the calendar. If you want to make changes you can do it easily.
Social Media Content Calendar Scheduling through SocialBu
Scheduling Facebook posts through SocialBu is easier and faster. The social media calendar provides the following features.
- Helps you get an overview of the scheduled posts.
- If you want to re-schedule a post, you can simply drag it from the scheduled date to the desired one.
- You can edit and update any post from the calendar.
How far in advance can you schedule a Facebook post with SocialBu?
When you will schedule Facebook posts on your evaluated time, you can schedule them for months in advance. But there is a limit to which you can schedule the posts and that is 6 months, so planning 6 months prior to posting is the best time to schedule Facebook posts. If you will schedule the posts on Facebook for more than six months; Facebook will reject them.
Also, keep in mind to set the numeric value of time like 40, 30, 20, 10, 00, and not as 35, 25, 15, etc. If you do otherwise, the post will not show on Facebook.
Final Words
Facebook is the best tool for social media marketing. There is a proverb that says, “Casting pearl before swine”. It means offering valuable things to the ones who do not acknowledge their worth. We can say the same in this scenario. It’s all about the best time to post on the widely used platform Facebook, you can also get to know the best time to post on LinkedIn.
It is important to determine the best time to post on Facebook because Facebook is a valuable asset that you can easily use to boost your brand marketing. Not knowing how to manage this asset is just going to put its worth to zero. So, it is extremely important to evaluate the best time to post on Facebook that suits your business. And after evaluating the best time, you will have to put it in use by scheduling Facebook posts at those specific times. And for that, you can use SocialBu.
