Starting at the beginning, how long is the life of a Facebook post? According to a new report from Wisemetrics, it’s only two hours. Within the first two hours of making a post 75% of your audience will likely have seen your message. From then on it’s buried deep into their timelines and can take another 9 hours for the remaining 25% to see it – if they do at all.
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| Wisemetrics‘s report indicates 75% of users see a post in 2 hours or less |
Time is on your side
The reality is that the perfect time to make a post is when YOUR fan base is most active. This will change from brand to brand and page to page. Have a look at your insights page to determine what time of day your posts get the most activity. It might be mid-morning; it might be midnight. It all comes down to your particular fan base.
However if you haven’t been testing different post times, or you are setting up for the first time, there has been plenty of research into the best times to post on different platforms. However when it comes to Facebook, the general consensus is:
When to post:
• Early in the morning - 80% of Smartphone owners check their phone as soon as they wake up.
• Between work and dinner – This is capturing both the people who can’t Facebook at work, and those who have long commutes on public transport.
• Bedtime – More people now access Facebook from their mobile than the web.
When not to post:
• After dinner – This is when Facebook gets most active, which means you now have to fight for attention between user posts.
• During work – Studies have also shown that more than half of users only access Facebook when they’re not at work or school.
• Weekends – Weekends are for going out and doing all the things we post about during the week.
The key is to remember the two-hour window. In order to optimise your post’s chance of engagement, you need to ensure that you are not only posting in the keys times, but also allowing enough of a buffer for a significant amount of your fan base to see it.
Seize the day
Just like the time you post, the day you post can be equally if not more important. Again, it all comes down to when YOUR fan base is the most active. Although there is research is on hand to give you further guidance. A report from LinchPinSEO shows that different brands will find better success on different days. In short: • Automotive: Saturdays and Sundays
• Clothing and Fashion: Thursdays, Saturdays and Wednesdays
• Consumer Packaged Goods: Sundays, Saturdays and Wednesdays
• General Retail: Mondays, Fridays and Tuesdays
• Health and Beauty: Mondays, Sundays and Saturdays
• Technology: Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays
• Entertainment: Sundays and Mondays
• Finance: Mondays, Fridays and Sundays nights
• Food and Beverage: Saturdays and Sundays
• Not for profits: Thursday nights, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays
• News and Publishing: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and late Sunday
• Telcos: Fridays, Sundays and Mondays
• Travel: Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and peaking on Sundays.
That same report also found a rise in engagement for posts that were shared after 8pm and before 7pm. It also found that brands and companies that posted more than 7 times per week saw a 25% drop in engagement levels.
When it comes to Facebook there isn’t one single time of day that works for all brands. The key really is to do a bit of trail and error to see when your fan base is most engaged.
