I blogged recently that page administrators must invest time into understanding the psychology of Facebook users, and that virtually all page interaction happens in the users own newsfeed unless there is a good reason to revisit a page. And with this specifically in mind, the importance of scheduling page updates takes on huge relevance. If a tree falls down in Facebook and no-one's there to hear, it really does make no sound!
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Administrators of Facebook pages must go through a series of steps in order to devise an effective page and keep people engaged. These include customisation of page graphics, welcome message and tabs, an effective content strategy, and regular updates. But the timing of posts is something that many, if not most, page administrators overlook and, in my experience, if they give any thought to timing at all, most tend to work on gut feel. But what time of day are people most likely to be checking their newsfeed? Are weekends better or worse than weekdays? When can we catch most people inside Facebook?
I've carried out a study via this blog, Facebook and Twitter that provides some answers to these questions and promises to help administrators devise more effective content strategies for their pages. It suggests that the best times to post new content on your Facebook wall are weekday mornings before noon (when 42% of people are most likely to login), weekday evenings after 6pm (one in three people login) and Saturday mornings before noon (34% of people login). Lunchtimes and Sunday evenings, times when page administrators I've spoken to feel people are likely to be logging into Facebook, are a big no.
One of the most surprising findings to come out of this for me is how many people check their Facebook account before 9am on weekdays (not so at weekends, which makes sense) and the opportunity this provides. I've noticed during my research that ASOS regularly updates its page early in the morning, and this makes complete sense with these findings in mind. I was also surprised at how low the statistics for weekdays between noon and 6pm are, perhaps disproving a myth that people check their Facebook page during their lunch hour and during the afternoon when motivations are flagging and they're looking for a distraction.
So how do we take advantage of these findings? Well, unless you don't mind getting up at the crack of dawn to post updates or sitting on your computer into the evening, the first thing to do is to get plugged into Hootsuite (if you're not already). Hootsuite provides the ability to pre-program and schedule Facebook updates at the click of a mouse, meaning that you can write your updates during work hours and stream them for early mornings or late evenings. The second thing to do, I would suggest, is to list out key times and experiment. Use the study to pick out some key zones and then try different times within those to find out what gets the greatest reaction among your fans.
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