Before you waste time comparing infographics on the best times of day to post to Facebook, make sure you know when your audience is scrolling through their feeds. Industry trends can be helpful directional data but your audience may be on a completely different schedule.
Here’s an example, I recently worked with a client whose clients were entirely B2B. Naturally, they expected the best time to post to all their social platforms was during normal business hours. Once we dug into their Facebook page analytics, we learned the largest volume of their audience tended to be online at 9:00 p.m. The organization was one with limited resources. Based on our new information, we were able to make a plan. If there was only time for one post in a day, it would be at 9:00 p.m. because that was when there was the most opportunity for organic reach.
Let’s Get Started!
I assume you’re all so fascinated by this story that you’re logging on to your business Facebook page right now. Are you there? Great! Let’s figure out when your audience is online.
At the top of the page, you’ll see an “Insights” button on the toolbar. This is where the magic happens. Once you click on “Insights,” you’ll be presented with an overwhelming amount of data. Don’t get stressed! We’re only here to look at one graph.
Along the left side of the page, you should see a long menu of options. Click on the button for “Posts” and be sure you have selected “When Your Fans Are Online” at the top.
This graph provides a holistic view of what times a day your audience is online. In this case, you’ll see the audience is online fairly consistently throughout the day. Next, you’ll want to mouse over each of the days of the week to learn about you audience habits for that day.
In this example, I’ve moused over Tuesday to see how the audience on that day might differ from the average. The graph tells me that 8:30 p.m. is when I have the most number of fans online. Now I know I should adjust my planning calendar to ensure that Tuesday’s posts publish at 8:30 p.m.
Make a Plan
Now that you’d learned how to check in on you audience’s activity, it’s important to keep checking. As your number of followers grows, your trends will change. Ideally, I’d recommend checking in each month before you make you planning calendar. If you tend to post on the fly, make sure you’re at least checking once a quarter.
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