In speaking to our clients, many have expressed interest in learning how to increase social media engagement rates. 

Have you thought about how to ensure more people see and interact with your social media content? Do you wonder when to publish content to maximize results? 

We can help! 

Why does maximizing social engagement matter? 

With more than 4 billion social media users across platforms, and the average person using more than one social platform each day, it’s crucial for brands to reach customers where they are: on social media. 

The best way to increase engagement on social media is to create top notch content that keeps your users engaged and interested. But now that platforms are moving back to a chronological feed, it’s more important than ever to ensure your knock out content is posted at the perfect time and day.  

In general, when is the best time to post?

Instagram: According to data from one of our favorite tools, Sprout Social, posting on Tuesdays and Wednesdays tends to generate the most engagement. Specifically on Instagram, if you post around 11am you should get lucky. The same data shows that weekends are the worst times to post, and Sundays usually have the lowest engagement of all. 

Facebook: Data from Sprout Social says Mondays – Fridays, between 8am and 12pm are the times when users are the most active. Slightly earlier than Instagram, which is so interesting! 

LinkedIn: As a professional networking social channel, we don’t need data to tell us that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are your best bet for posting on this app.  ​​

Twitter: Data from Spout says that 8am – 9am is the best time to post on this app, during the weekdays. Take this with a grain of salt though, given we have clients who have been successful on Twitter at all hours of the day and all days of the week. 

Do you have followers across different time zones? You will need to be creative here, or continue reading on for how to pull specific data for your business. 

What is best for MY business?

While the general stats are helpful to know, we also recommend you dig deep into your business insights for more data to tailor your approach. 

Instagram: Start by logging into Instagram, head to Insights and then tap Total Followers. Here you will see helpful information about your existing followers. If you scroll to the bottom, you will see a section titled “Most Active Times”. Tap the days button and start digging into the information. We recommend checking out the most active days of the week and hours of the day to get a breakdown of when your followers are most engaged. 

Facebook: Similar to Instagram, you can see data for your followers by logging into the app and selecting Page Insights. Check out the days of the week and the hours of the day where your followers are most engaged. 

LinkedIn: This platform doesn’t give as many detailed analytics to help decipher the best time of day or the day of week to post. We recommend instead looking at analytics from every post you have to draw trends or conclusions about what makes people engage with your content in an effort to replicate!

Twitter: Similar to LinkedIn, Twitter doesn’t provide helpful analytics for engagement from followers. Your best bet is to look at engagement of past content and continue to use that as a way to form content plans for the future. 

Consider how this data lines up with the best practices stated above and decide how to proceed with your next post. 

Did this data help you adjust your posting times and days? Let us know, we would love to see any business impact you have! 

We truly believe that publishing great content is the first step to winning on social media. Once you have that down, we recommend testing the different hours of the day and days of the week that you publish this content to maximize your results. 

Have questions? Send us a message, we would love to chat about your social media strategy.