Social Media Marketing is one of many extremely effective channels to have in your overall marketing strategy.
The basics of social media marketing are relatively simple. You post content, include relevant hashtags, build a following, and turn that into sales. What can be tricky is optimising your content and implementing strategies to boost your following and sales from social media. One key element of this optimisation is finding out when to post and how often.
Getting the timing and frequency of your posts is often the one thing that could be keeping your excellent content from blasting off. If you are posting when your audience isn’t around, they can’t share your content with their friends and spread it. At the same time, if you aren’t posting frequently enough you risk your audience switching off.
So, do you want to know what the magic post time is?
The truth about social media marketing
The truth is, there is no magic time. Ask any social media marketing expert and they will all give you a different answer. It depends entirely on your business and your industry. There is, unfortunately, no one size fits all strategy.
While the average business may find success posting, for example, at 5 pm, if your audience isn’t online at 5 pm then you won’t see the same success. If you sell products to stay at home mothers but are posting at an average time set for businesses targeting office workers, you may miss your posting window entirely.
How to find out when to post
The trick to finding out when to post is by trial and error. Posting at times you think may work and waiting to see if it did. Spending a month on each social media platform posting at different times with a range of content is a good way to find out which times receive the most engagement.
When you have enough followers, you can use each social platforms’ analytics tools to test your posts. Compare which posts got the most attention and at what times they were posted. These analytics tools also have graphs that may tell you when your audience is most active. Take advantage of these and your own testing to better understand when you should be posting.
How frequently should I post?
Posting frequency will also depend entirely on your industry and your audience. Some businesses may find that posting once a day is perfect, while others may struggle to keep up or may find their followers are disengaging. The trick is to post frequently enough that you are not forgotten (at least once a week) but not so much that you annoy your audience.
Finding that balance is once again all about trial and error. See how your engagement, conversions, and other metrics, change as your posting frequency does. Work out the best posting frequency that works for your business and for your audience.
Conclusion
As algorithms have begun changing the way posts appear in our social media newsfeed, finding the best time of day has become increasingly less important. Now, what content social media users see is sorted by the algorithm based on their interests. Of course, there are many instances when time of day is important, hashtag feeds on Instagram for example. To take advantage of those cases you should experiment with posting times and see what works.
Creating good and engaging content has become the most important element of social media. Knowing how to craft an excellent caption that achieves results, as well as eye-catching imagery, is vital to social media success. Fortunately, if you find social media overwhelming, you do not have to go it alone. We can help your business create high-quality content, excellent captions, and social optimisations to skyrocket your leads and conversions. Have a chat with our social experts today.
