When is the Best Time to Post on Social Media in Nigeria?
Social media is a great way to increase brand awareness and get your business in front of your target audience. Managing multiple social media networks can be a very daunting task added to the daily chore of running your business. Knowing the best time to post to achieve optimum engagement will save you a lot of time in the long run.
By posting at the optimum time, you increase your engagement rate and organic reach.
It will be impossible to know the exact time but would be more effective to discover time frames. Knowing the possible times in the day can make publishing simpler.
There is a lot of research out there telling businesses what the best time to post on social media is and though those may give you a good place to start, it is not always the right because the research was done based on their time zone and audience behaviour.
The buying behaviour and life style of Nigerians is different from those around the world.
The truth is, the best time to post depends on your audience.
My best posting time and yours will be different because our audience vary; their characteristics, their interest, etc all vary.
You can get this information from the analytics/insights on your social media account.
BEST TIME TO POST ON FACEBOOK
Facebook is constantly changing its algorithms and this has made it quite difficult to get organic posts in front of viewers. This is why you need to be as strategic as possible. Facebook is certainly an active spot every day of the week and you can’t go wrong while finding the best time to post.
3 Things To Know Before Posting To Facebook
Facebook is very huge, 1.2billion active users monthly in the world, 170 million in Africa and 16 million in Nigeria, so you need to be very smart about how and what you post. Here are a few things to keep in mind;
1. Use Visuals and Links
Try to include photos, videos and links as much as you can because they have more reach than text based posts.
2. Repurpose What Works
With Insights, you can know what posts have the highest engagement. Instead of posting random content, repurpose what worked in the past and tweak them a bit to get the most out of your posts.
From the image below, I can see what kind of posts people engage with the most. This section can be found as you continue scrolling down your Insights page.
3. Keep Posts Short and Sweet
Yes, Facebook allows over 1k characters per post, but do people really want to read that much content? You should aim for about 100 characters per post for quick engagements, which work best.
So, how can I know the best time to post to Facebook?
Facebook has provided an analytic tool they call Insights to help page owners better understand the behaviour of their fans. Navigate to your business page, click on Insights, then click on posts.
A page with a bar chart at the top and a graph should follow immediately after.
The bar chart shows the total number of followers who come online each day, A graph of the people who came online versus, the time they came online can be see when you hover your mouse over individual bar charts. From this, you can come up with optimum times each day,
This is the Insights of an account I manage. I can see that the best day and time to post is on Friday from 7pm to 9pm.
These charts are developed on a weekly basis, so you will have to be checking back almost everyday till you have noticed a consistent pattern.
BEST TIME TO POST ON TWITTER
Every second, an average of 6,000 tweet are tweeted. Twitter moves at a faster pace than Facebook, so you need to know when your audience are online to increase the chance of them seeing your twee
To make matters worse, in 2016, Twitter introduced an algorithm to determine the order tweets are displayed rather than the default chronological order.
3 Things To Know Before Posting to Twitter
For your social media publishing, you have to think quality over quantity. Here are a few things you should know;
1. Follow Your Industry Leaders
Following your brand leaders helps you get your brand name out there and increases your chances of being seen. By engaging with their posts, you’re more likely interact during their optimal times, getting you in front of your audience.
2. Engage With Your Audience
As much as you tweet, engage. Users get annoyed at brands that are too promotional. For Twitter, be ready to limit your promotional content and instead engage with your audience, you’ll build a better relationship and increase trust.
3. Clicks are Important
Twitter was found to be the least effective in driving clicks compared to other social networks. Because it’s so hard to get clicks on Twitter, your content has to be clickable and engaging. Your photos and texts have to be catchy.
So, how do I know the best time to post on Twitter?
Even though twitter has its own analytic tool, it can only be used to check the level of engagement. To check the best time, I use Tweriod an external analytics tool. It’s pretty easy and straight forward.
You can toggle between the days and it will show you the times your followers are most active.
BEST TIME TO POST ON INSTAGRAM
A good number of Nigerian businesses have discovered the power of Instagram in terms of boosting the awareness of their brand. Forrester has discovered Instagram has the highest per-follower interaction rate, compared to any other social network.
With this immense potential, a newly implemented Instagram, algorithm and more users joining everyday, knowing the best times to post can be what seperates you from your marketing goals
3 Things to Know Before Posting to Instagram
More brands are expected to be on Instagram than Twitter according to data from eMarketer. Here are a few must know tips before you start posting to Instagram;
1. Have a Color Theme
To kill it on instagram, you need to have a consistent colour theme your followers can associate with you, Use the pecific themes and colours to make your visual content meld together. This is called developing a visual brand identity.
You can use tools like Canva and Desyner if you cannot afford a graphics designer. They are pretty easy to use and come with thousands of templates to choose from.
2. Use Hashtags and Emojis
With emojis, you can connect with your users on a personal level. You can use hashtags to reach more people because people constantly search for thse hashtags everyday. I get 10 targeted followers anytime I make a post just because I use hashtags relevant to my niche.
3. Avoid Oversellling
You never want to be overly promotional with your product, focus instead on engagement. You can use the 80/20 rule which states that 80% of your content can be educational and engaging while 20% can be self promotional. This will help you keep your audience attention and make you a source of information on Instagram.
So, how do I know the best time to post on my Instagram?
This can only work if you are using the Instagram Business Tool which connects your Instagram and Facebook page. Click on the little chart at the top of your profile page.
Scroll down till you get to followers and click “see more”
Scroll down to followers, you can toggle between days and hours to see the days that have the maximum people. Instagram is already kind enough to plot us a graph of the time versus the days. This makes it easy to know the optimum time to post each day.
Conclusion
Now you know how to calculate your best time to post on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You will want to develop a time table for these times. To save you some time, use Buffer, Hootsuite and Tweetdeck to schedule posts ahead of time.
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Originally published at Biztorials.