Whether you're a Fortune 500 company or a small business, the truth is that you should be concerned with your Facebook posts not reaching as much of your target audience as it once did.
According to Forbes, Facebook pages with more than 500,000 likes are only reaching 2% of their audience organically on the social network-that's a far cry from the 16% they were hitting back in 2012.
Either way, you spend a lot of time crafting the perfect post for your audience. You put a ton of time in developing an editorial calendar and customizing graphics to accompany your posts, yet you're still missing out on 98% of your audience organically. Facebook wants you to "pay to play" and use their advertising platform, but you don't want to, and that's okay.
Luckily, Elle & Co., a business, blogging, and design resource for creative entrepreneurs, did some digging and put together this great infographic on the best times to post on Facebook and the other popular social networks.
Their research shows that you should be developing your posts and scheduling them for the weekends, as weekend posts receive 32% more engagement on Facebook than those that are posted on weekdays. It actually makes sense. During the week, most of us are busy working and going about our lives, but on weekends, we have more free time to browse the social networks and connect with our favorite brands-or at least I do. And if you're looking for the best time to post on Facebook, that'd be between 1 and 3 p.m. in the afternoon.
Of course this research and data isn't catered to your specific brand, but it does serve as a guide for when your social team is drafting the editorial calendar and scheduling out the posts.
If you're looking for specific data on your brand's page, you should check out your Facebook page Insights. You can find that by going to your Company Page and then clicking the "Insights" tab along the top navigation (between Notifications and Publishing Tools). From there, click the "Posts" tab in the sub-navigation and you'll see the days and times that your brand's posts receive the most engagement.
Infographic via Elle & Co.