One question that plagues pretty much anyone trying to use social media to their advantage, is when they should be posting to get the maximum benefit from their content.
To be honest, there’s no definite answer to this question. However, that doesn’t mean the best answer for you is hard to find! In fact, it’s a pretty easy answer to find if you know what to look for.
Some social media platforms make the information easier than others to access, but you should be able to find some audience metrics no matter what platform you’re using. This information is the holy grail of maximizing your content’s potential! Within most audience metrics you can come up with the ideal posting times, which demographic you should cater your content towards, and even what geographics you should aim to please.
Okay, I have all these numbers and information, now what?
First, you’ll have to decide who you want to target, is the audience mostly female or male, are they professionals, what timezone do they live in, when is their downtime? Are there multiple groups you want to focus on?
Once you have who you want to target, we’ll go back to the “When is their downtime” question. The majority of the time that people spend on social media is within their “downtime”.
TV schedules utilize what’s referred to as “Prime Time” slots, and they can be used as general placeholders until you are able to define when your audience is spending most of their time on social media. Prime Time slots generally lie between 11:00am – 1:00pm as well as 6:00pm – 9:00pm. These times usually line up (respectively) with lunch breaks, and just after people have had their dinner and are done for the day.
So, posting whenever they have their downtime is the best time for me to post?
Well, yes and no. If you’re simply trying to build influence or share some photography, then yes, post in your audiences downtime. But, if you’re trying to sell your audience something, even trying to build a community around your business, you’ll want to post sometime just before your audience’s downtime.
This strategy utilizes a bit of consumer psychology, but the long and short of it is this – if a potential consumer scrolls into your business/product post organically, they are more likely to pay attention to it then if they open their social media app and your post is the first thing they see.
Consumer’s, especially Millennials, are pretty wary of advertisements, and if the first thing they see is a business when sitting down to catch up on their feed, they may mistakenly assume your post is an ad, and that can hinder your posts’ performance.
In Summary…
- Figure out who your target audience is.
- Find out when their downtime is.
- Depending on the type of content you’re posting, post before or during their downtime.
