Sprout Social Study Reveals The Best Times To Post Social Media Content
Research from Sprout Social reveals how by posting content on the right days at the right times can lead to increased reach and engagement.
It’s a question almost as old as social media marketing itself: when is the best time to post content? Social media management software Sprout Social released results to a recent study that reveals insights to help companies answer this question in modern business environments.
According to the results, posting on a Tuesday or Wednesday can lead to higher reach and engagement of published content. The results also stated that the best time of day to post content is before 2:00PM, especially on weekdays.
On the other hand, content posted on a Saturday or Sunday generally performs worse in terms of reach and engagement on popular social media platforms.
The data of the research is collected from Sprout Social’s customer base of over 20,000 with the goal to better understand the time of day/week consumers are most active on their social medias.
The below bullet list is a summary of the best times to post content for each of the major social media platforms:
- Facebook: The most popular days for audiences to be online is on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. The most popular times to be on Facebook is from 9:00AM-1:00PM.
- Instagram: The most popular day and time for audiences to be logged in is on Tuesday from 11:00AM-2:00PM.
- LinkedIn: The most popular days and times for audiences to be networking on LinkedIn are Tuesday and Wednesday from 9:00AM-Noon.
- Twitter: The most popular day and time for audiences to be scrolling Twitter is on Wednesday from 9:00AM-3:00PM.
The study also recognizes that for different industries, there are different ideal times to post. For example, Thursday may be the best day to post content for travel and tourism companies, while Monday is the best day for a restaurant to post on Instagram.
However one consistency across industry and social media platforms is that weekdays are generally better to post on than weekends for more reach and engagement. By understanding and using the right analytics, companies can boost their reach and engagement metrics, simply by changing what time of day they post their content.