The most successful branded Facebook pages are those with a community of fans that is both highly interactive and supportive and while the importance of the size of your Facebook fan base is obvious, the level of engagement with your fan base is at least as important.
Knowing when to post on Facebook is one of the challenges marketers face and depends on your industry, target market and existing fans or followers. In general, the stats on post types are as follows:
- Photos get 104 percent more comments and 84 percent more click-throughs than text and link posts.
- Questions get 100 percent more comments than non-question posts.
- Short updates with 80 characters or fewer get 66 percent more engagement than longer posts.
However, I can tell you this, the weekend is (for all intents and purposes) almost always the best time to post on any platform (especially Facebook). What time of day may still differ depending on your industry, but the fact that people use social media more on the weekend is undeniable.
Discover Your Audience Preferences
Play around with different post times to figure out what is best for your industry and target market. Good baseline times to start experimenting are 8AM, 12PM, 4PM, 7PM, and 10PM. Another way to gain some insight is visit your competitors’ Facebook pages and see when they are posting. Note which posts get the most likes and comments and what time of day they are published. In this case you can learn from your competitors’ successes and mistakes.
Once you have discovered when your audience likes to hear from you on the weekend, begin to extrapolate those patterns into the week and see how it goes. Typically, Monday is not as big of an engagement until after the work-day because most people are focused on getting their work-week started. I have also found that Thursdays and early often Fridays work well. But, again, this is all subject to your target market and industry.
Remember to pay attention to your page insights – they will show you the way! Good luck and feel free to ask questions below in the comments section.