Love it or hate it, most office-based workers are now working from home. Gone is the daily commuter grind that many faced in the early hours and after work. 10 am coffee breaks and a chat with work colleagues have been replaced by a chat with your partner, your pet, your roommate, or a chat with the kitchen walls.
With all this change, we’ve had a lot of customers asking us when’s the best time to post on social media? Has the pandemic affected when people are engaging on social media?
Sprout Social set out to answer these questions and conducted extensive research, analyzing data from 20,000+ customers to see how usage of social media has changed during the pandemic.
The data shows that the most popular B2B networks, LinkedIn and Twitter, haven’t seen a great deal of change but the optimum times have moved slightly. For B2B brands establishing or cementing their Facebook and Instagram social strategies, though, there’s been a general trend of more weekday, daytime activity.
Here we look at the data and highlight the best times to post and for engagement on the most popular social media channels. First, though, we’ll share the tried-and-test advice for the eternal question of when’s the best time to post on social.
Remember Your Audience
Averages are just that. Averages. The best time to post will always change depending on your industry and your audience. In B2B, the start of the workday, the end of the workday and midday breaks in between have generally dictated social media engagement levels.
Post success can also depend on the seniority level of the person you want to engage. For example, when trying to influence the C-Suite it’s been shown that they often work on the weekend. Harvard Business Review found that leaders work 79% of weekend days at an average of 3.9 hours daily.
Talk And Test
The only real way you'll know what the best time to post on social media for your audience is to test, test, test! Is your data showing a drop in views or engagement? If it’s not, you may not need to do anything other than your usual optimising and testing.
If you are seeing a drop in the performance of your social posts, you need to take a good look at your content. First, ask yourself if your content is relevant and interesting to your audience. Then ask yourself if you’re sharing at the right times.
When examining your content and considering when the best time to share is, think of the conversations you’ve had with your customers and prospects. How has their workday shifted and changed in our ‘new normal’?
The Best Time To Post On Social Media
The Best Time To Post On LinkedIn
Best times to post on LinkedIn: Wednesday at 3 pm, Thursday between 9 am to 10 am, and Friday between 11 am to 12 pm
LinkedIn’s best engagement has always centred around working hours due to its user-base of working professionals. The chart below shows that Monday’s and Tuesday’s are low-engagement days for LinkedIn – this makes sense as many professionals are ‘getting started’ with their workweek attending numerous weekly meetings on Monday and beginning on their tasks for the week on Tuesday. Wednesday, it seems, is when we start to check out LinkedIn, engaging with the platform more as the workweek rolls on.
Sprout Social also found that as many are working remotely, hours of regular weekday engagement now start and end a little later, with activity starting up at 8 am rather than 7 am and wrapping up around 4 pm rather than 3 pm
Source: Sprout Social
The Best Time To Post On Twitter
Best times to post: Friday between 7 am and 9 am.
Twitter’s always seen fairly high levels of activity throughout the working day, with 9 am usually being a good time to post on any day (although Wednesdays and Fridays are usually the best days).
The optimum time to post now is now on just one day: Friday between 7 am and 9 am. Again, there seems to be a pattern of compacting social activity into the end of the workweek.
Source: Sprout Social
The Best Time To Post On Facebook
Best times to post: Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays between 10 am - 11 am.
The Facebook data from Sprout tells an interesting story. Before COVID-19, people seemed to reward themselves with an 11 am check during the working day on a Wednesday and a lunchtime check at 1 pm.
Now, the data shows that engagement levels are highest generally between 10 am and 11 am and that there’s generally a large drop-off in engagement after 5 pm.
Source: Sprout Social
The Best Time To Post On Instagram
Best times to post: Monday, Tuesday and Friday at 11 am and Tuesday at 2 pm.
Instagram is another social platform where activity has increased during the working day.
Before the pandemic, Sprout Social found that Instagram had medium to high levels of engagement on most working days between the hours of 8 am and 7 pm, with the most engagement on Wednesdays at 11 am and Fridays from 10-11 am.
Sprout Social’s data now shows that there are much higher levels of activity during weekday and working hours, and there are now four periods that you should target your social posts for: Monday, Tuesday and Friday at 11 am and Tuesday at 2 pm.
Source: Sprout Social
Sprout Social’s data shows interesting trends but, as we’ve said, the best way to find your optimum social posting schedule lies in speaking with your audience and looking deep into your own data. For us, we always find that data more fascinating.
When do you have the most engagement on social media? We’ve love to hear!
