Many materials handling businesses (including this one) have turned to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, blogging, and others to promote their businesses and products.
But simply having a social media presence is not enough, according to a social media expert. The timing of your promotional posts may be more important than what you have to say.
Know When to Post
Dan Zarella is a social media scientist on the popular social media website HubSpot. In a guest article on the ProBlogger blog, Zarella outlined the optimal times to post content on the most popular social media platforms:
- Twitter — The best time to post on Twitter is on weekends. That’s because users are more likely to be looking at their Twitter accounts when they aren’t at work. Similarly, Twitter usage peaks after 4 p.m. weekdays, when many people are either just finishing their workday or already on their commute home. There’s also a peak between 1 p.m.and 3 p.m. weekdays when many workers are on their lunch breaks.
- Facebook — The best time to post a status update, link or other content on the world’s most popular social media platform is at 3 p.m. on Wednesdays. Other peak usage times include 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, and between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. The worst times to post on Facebook are weekdays before 8 a.m. and after 8 p.m., when most people are least likely to be looking at their social media accounts.
- LinkedIn — Optimal posting times are during normal working hours on Tuesday through Thursday, but the absolute best time to post is on Tuesdays between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. because data shows this is the one hour of the week with the highest amount of click-throughs and shares.
Business-to-business content performs 16 percent better during standard business hours, while business-to-customer content performs 17 percent better on weekends, according to Zarella.
Helpful Analytical Tools
Many business owners are not aware of the tools they can use to optimize the effectiveness of their online posts, Zarella said. For example, Tweriod is a free Twitter tool that helps users understand the most optimal times to use Twitter.
Followerwonk is another tool business owners can use to see such things as who re-Tweets their posts most often, which followers also follow their competitors, and what kind of content your followers like, share, and link to from other posts.
Facebook Insights is a tool that can tell businesses the best times and days to post based on the performance of previous postings. The data –which is constantly updated via an algorithm — will even chart “When Your Fans Are Online” so you can see at-a-glance the optimal target times for your business’s social media posts.
Understanding when your business can get the most mileage out of a social media post can add value to your online marketing efforts.