What Days and Times Should I post?

This depends on a couple of things: The social media networks you use, and when your target audience is online.

There are several ways to find out when your audience is online to find out the best days and times to post on social media pages. One is to reference social sharing platforms that collect such data, like Buffer or SproutSocial.

The other is to analyze your data from the social accounts you use. Facebook Insights provides great statistics on what posts engage your fans, and what days and times of the week. Twitter will allow you to access analytics of your account after you sign up for Twitter Ads. Pinterest, Google Plus, and LinkedIn also offer analytics that will give you an idea of when your posts generate most engagement from followers.

Buffer gathered stats from several sources, which found the end of the week, specifically Thursdays and Fridays, is when people are online most. Another from KissMetrics found that weekends have higher engagement online, from Facebook and Twitter especially.

This following chart, with statistics from some of the biggest social media sharing and analyzation platforms, shows a range of optimum posting days and times on the biggest social media platforms, as well as the worst times to post.

Take a look, and then take action by following our recommended social media action below the infographic to find out the best days and times to post on social media for your company.

Your Social Media Action

Create a Facebook Posting Schedule

First you'll have to find out when your fans are online the most. To do this, access your Insights from your Facebook business home page, third tab from the top right of the page. Click on Posts. You will automatically be on the When Your Fans Are Online tab.

Look at the top graph and note on average what days of the week most of your fans were online for the past week. The graph below shows the most active days for this account were Tuesday and Friday. Take a look at the second graph to see what times of the day your fans were most active. The image below shows 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. were the most active times. Write down the days and times.

Tuesdays and Fridays are the most active days for fans of this page. And approximately 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. are the peak times of activity.

Click or hover your mouse over the most active days to see what times during that day your fans were most engaged. The chart below shows that on Tuesday, the most engagement took place approximately at 12 p.m., 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Take note of the times for each the most active days you want to track.

On Tuesday, 12 p.m., 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. were the times that fans were most active during the week shown.

Facebook only shows activity for the past week, so you should repeat this every week for one month to get a more accurate view of when your fans are online and most active.

Keep track of the most active days and times in a spreadsheet for the month. You now have a schedule of the optimum days and times to post on your Facebook page.

Note: Facebook allows you to export your post and page level data into .cvs or .xls format for more detailed numbers, but you'll have to sift through the numerous columns and stats to refine the numbers you're looking for and particular days. I'm not a numbers gal, and I find the above method easier to wrap my head around.

Extra action: To get an idea of what posts engage your fans more, click on the tab Post Types to see if Photo, Status or Link posts get the most engagement. Scroll through the list of your posts to see which ones specifically generated more clicks, likes, comments and shares from your fans.