‍

Let’s be straight up – there’s no simple, magic bullet answer to this question. You can consult your horoscope, rub an eight ball, and make sacrifices to the gods of social media, but you ain’t getting a solid bit of concrete intel on when EXACTLY you should post on social media.

Don’t worry, let’s go down the rabbit hole together, dudes.

Users browse social media platforms in loads of different ways and this changes from target audience to target audience.

The good news is there’s quite a lot of data you can get your mitts on to give you some idea of when to post.

But you’ll need to do a bit of investigating yourself, so grab your Sherlock Holmes pipe and cape and do some digging. Experiment with different times and look back to see what’s been successful for you so far.

Oh and read our stellar Lately advice, of course 😀

Repurpose your heart out, baby!

Once you’ve created some of your kick-ass content and posted it, you can’t sit back and crack open a cold one. Yes, some of your audience will see it and appreciate it, but you need to try and generate some more traction from the content you’ve worked tirelessly on.

Putting a repurposing strategy in place is your way to squeeze every drop of value from your content. We recommend repurposing your content multiple times. Hey, did you know that it can take up to 12-14 times for someone to remember what they see or hear.

The key to repurposing is to keep stuff fresh. Luckily for you, we’ve got a sweet Social Post Autogenerator™ that’ll do this for you.

How? Take a piece of content – whether it’s a press release, newsletter, blog post etc and the Social Post Autogenerator™ will automatically parse the content into dozens of pre-hashtagged and pre-shortlinked social posts! You can then post your content again and again, with different and funky fresh posts. Super awesome and saves you time and hassle!

Just think huh, amazing social media posts in just 1.8 seconds. And then our dashboard makes it so simple for you to align all your publishing schedules.

Keep your posting consistent, as well as frequent. By intelligently posting at specific times and intervals, you can build awareness for your brand cos you’re putting content out there consistently.

And of course, make sure your content is slick, informative and provides tons of value to your audience. There’s no point blasting out reams of content if it’s all junk.

There is no magic number

The timing of successful posts can differ, depending on the type of business you are and the industry you’re in. Your audience might be more alert during work hours, or your target audience could view most of their content on a work commute or late at night. The amount of variables that determine when people are active online is massive!

Keep Eastern and Central Time Zones in mind for US posting. And that’s not to mention whether your business has a global reach. If you’ve got a market in other countries then you obviously need to take note of different time-zones, so you can post at the right times for specific demographics.

When it comes to social platforms – the subtleties between post effectiveness are huge.

• Twitter is much more accommodating of frequent posting and it’s not frowned upon for brands to post several times a during the day – reacting to events, trends and questions. DowSocial recommends at least 6 tweets a day to build engagement and keep your audience interested in your content. Users browse Twitter on desktops and mobiles and tend to use it during breaks, distractions and commutes, so aiming for 7-9 am, 12–3 p.m and 5-6pm can be successful. Some target audiences will be more responsive in evenings, late evenings and weekends though, so do your research and play around with timings.
• Instagram is predominantly used on mobile devices and the key to successful posting is being consistent, but not posting excessively. Posting 1-2 photos per day is enough to not bombard users’ feeds, with Buffer finding that big brands share on Instagram on average 1.5 times a day. HubSpot’s research found that with Instagram, any posting between Monday and Thursday, other than 3-4 p.m would get good numbers, which gives a lot of creative freedom.
• Adobe recommends posting 6-11 times per week on Facebook, so you don’t start to annoy your base and get too spammy. And click-through-rates are thought to be best during the weekdays between 1pm – 4pm and 12-1 p.m on Saturdays and Sundays. But Facebook has such a massive, global reach that you really need to start spotting trends and collecting data for your specific demographics and the target audiences you’re connecting with.
• LinkedIn has the unique ability to look socially acceptable if you’re checking it at work. You’re totally ‘networking’, k? Users will browse LinkedIn around work hours but are prone to checking during working hours too. LinkedIn recommends posting at least 20 times a month, which could potentially be every business day.

Lately learns from your audience!

We’ll let you in on a pretty cool secret. Gather round…

The more you use Lately and your Social Post Autogenerator™, the more we’ll learn about your audience, their content habits and when they like to browse! And this means that we’ll be able to gather some relevant, useful data around the best times for your business to post its fabulous content.

When are your audience most likely to engage with your social posts? Our smart AI tools will do all the hard work for you and do their nerdy magic to give you some handy recommendations to give you optimal times to post.

Our Omni-Analytics tool gives you 100% visibility across 100% of your channels, so the whole-picture graphs will let you examine data points and check for patterns and spikes in post success at certain times.

What’s the bottom line? Post your content through Lately and our AI will make you smarter than any article. 😉