If you run a Facebook Business Page, you know that organic reach is dwindling on the platform. The average organic reach on Facebook is 2.2%. This means that if you have 1,000 followers, only 20 of them will see your new posts and updates in their feeds. Sucks, doesn’t it?
Now, the number of people who see your posts depends mostly on Facebook’s algorithms, but there’s one thing you can do to increase your reach and engagement. And that is to post content at the right time.
But when is the best time to post on Facebook?
Does a best time to post on Facebook really exist?
Before we get into this, note that everybody and their grandma has done a study on the best times to post on Facebook (and other social platforms) and the results vary widely. So if you really want to know the best times for you to post on Facebook, you’ll have to take a dive into your own followers and Facebook analytics — because peak times that work for other social media marketers can very well flop on your account.
That being said, recency is a major ranking signal for Facebook. So if you want to boost your odds of appearing at the top of your followers’ feeds, you have to post when they’re online.
If you’re just starting with Facebook and you don’t have an audience yet, you might not know when, exactly, your target audience comes online. In that case, you can start posting at the universal best time the team of social media experts at Hootsuite or Sprout Social recorded in their research.
When you do have an audience, it’s extremely easy to figure out the best times to post on Facebook — especially if you have the right tools. Read on for specific tips!
The best time to post on Facebook
According to Hootsuite’s analysis, the universal best time to post on Facebook is 8:00 am to 12:00 pm on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
According to Sprout Social's analysis the universal best time to post on Facebook is at 9:00 am to 10 am on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
For your own brand things might be different as your users might be following a different timeline than the universal market. This is why it is important to monitor your own posts and see what times and days you get the most engagement. There is no one size fits all.
It’s best to post first thing in the morning because this is when people are catching up on their news feeds. Lunchtime is also great because it’s when people tend to have the biggest gaps in their schedules. Just after working hours are effective too, because people are checking out what they missed over the day.
So, as you can see, there’s more to finding your most effective time to post on Facebook than simply knowing when your audience is online.
When posting on Facebook, here are some key Facebook statistics to consider:
51% of people check Facebook several times each day
74% of users check Facebook at least once a day
People spend 34 minutes (on average) per day on Facebook
80% of people use mobile devices to access Facebook (19% use both mobile and desktop)
How to find the best time to post on Facebook
If you want to find your own best times to post on Facebook, here are six things you should do:
1. Find out when your audience is most active online
Facebook prioritizes recent posts. Why? Because people care about new things — not old things.
Posting content when your followers are most active online can increase the chances that your content will reach them. And when Facebook’s algorithms detect that you’re posting when your fans are browsing through their feeds, it will push your content to the feeds of people who don’t follow you (yet!).
For Facebook, all you have to do to know when your followers are online is to look at your analytics.
2. Look at your best-performing posts
After you figure out when your audience is online, the next step should be to study the content you’ve posted in the past. Look at your social media reports and analytics tools to see the most successful posts for each metric you track. For instance, check for posts that performed well for:
Awareness: posts that have high impressions and/or views
Engagement: posts that have spectacular engagement rates in terms of likes, comments, and shares.
Traffic/sales: posts that got many clicks
Then, look at the time and day of the week you posted this content, and see the patterns that form.
Pro-tip: You can even see your best times to post on Facebook based on impressions, engagements, and click-throughs.
3. Post in your audience’s time zone (not yours)
If you want to reach people who scroll through their Facebook accounts as soon as they wake up, posting in the early morning (at 6 am to 7 am) is a good idea. In Africa it is generally good to post between the hours of 6-9 am. The earlier being the better.
If you’re a brand that has a large number of audiences in a particular region, you might want to create a separate Facebook page for that audience. This allows you to post in the language people in that region understand.
If you have a global customer base, you should consider posting content throughout the day. In this case, you’d need a good social media scheduling tool.
4. Study what your competitors are doing
As you work on your Facebook account, you should also check your competitors’ accounts to see what they’re doing–especially if you’re new to Facebook.
Look for their high-performing posts to get an idea of the sort of content your audience might be looking for. Or you could even do a full social media competitor analysis and reverse-engineer your competitors’ Facebook tactics.
For instance, if you notice that your competitors publish content on the hour (the :00 mark), you could try posting on the :15 or :45 mark to get ahead of them.
Keep your ears peeled for news concerning your industry. You might learn strategies worth incorporating, pitfalls to avoid, or opportunities to take advantage of.
5. Test and modify your posting times
After doing your research, you’re ready to press “Publish” on those brand new posts you’ve created. But what would you do if your results aren’t as good as you’d hoped?
Short answer: run A/B tests.
With A/B tests, you post the same content at different times to see which time gets the best results. You can take things up a notch by changing the images (if there are any) on the post or even the post copy itself to see which version performs best.
Pro tip: This advice applies to all social networks, not just Facebook!
6. Keep checking for changes
Facebook is ever-changing, from its algorithms to its users. For instance, since COVID and the surge of remote work in 2020, people use Facebook (and other social media platforms) more. People shifted from scrolling through Facebook during lunch breaks to checking in between Zoom meetings.
You have to look at your top-performing posts weekly to determine if there is any data in there that can provide you with insights to rework your posting time. For example V5 Digital has found that the earlier posts go out on Special Holidays the more engagement they get. So we aim to post our Holiday posts between the hours of 6 and 7 am.
The trick is to regard time as an important, but variable, factor as you tweak your social media scheduling strategy.
