When Is The Best Time To Post On Facebook?
Well, that is a great question my friend, I’m really glad you asked! 😬😂😉
Seriously though, I have no idea when is the best time to post on Facebook for YOU.
But I can show you how to work that out. 👌
Facebook Insights holds the key
When you create a Facebook Page you get access to a few different tools, one of these is Insights. You can access this from the app, but we’re going to need the desktop version as it has a few extra details.
If you’re on your mobile, save this post and come back to it when you’re on your computer.
Head over to your Facebook Page and select the Insights tab from the top menu.
From the Insights section you can view all sorts of wonderful stats like how many page views you’ve had, how many people you’ve reached and you can even take a look at what types of posts resonate best with your audience.
We want to find out when the best time to post on Facebook is so let’s head to the Posts section, halfway down the left menu.
At the top of this section, straight away you’ll see When Your Fans Are Online.
Here you get a graph by hour of when the people that like your page are online. It’s easy to see the highs and lows of how your audience fluctuates throughout the day. Spot any high points? Great, we’re going to use those in a minute.
You can hover over the different days in the top section to see how the data varies day to day. If there are any days that are significantly different to the overall graph, take note.
Now you’re probably thinking ‘Great, I can see the high points, I’ll start posting at those times’. Before you do that though, let’s talk about the half-life of a Facebook post.
Ummm what? Half-life?
Stay with me.
What on Earth is the half-life of a Facebook post?
So Facebook wants to keep people on Facebook. More people on Facebook, more ads it can show, more money it makes. Makes total sense right? How many people do you reckon would stay on Facebook though if they kept seeing the same posts over and over again? Exactly, not many.
One of the factors in the algorithm that decides who gets to see what posts, is how recent the post is. As you can imagine, the more recent a post is, the higher the score for recency in the algorithm (there are a lot of other factors in the algorithm, I’m definitely not saying new posts will always win the battle for eyes, however, I do believe recency is a very strong factor).
Half-life: the time taken for a specific property to decrease by half
The half-life of a Facebook post is how long it will take for your post to reach 50% of the total number of people it’s EVER going to reach.
A study from Wiselytics shows that the half-life of a Facebook post is such a short time. Can you guess? A couple of days? No. Half a day? No. A few hours at least? Nope.
30 minutes…
Crazy, right? You post something to your page, go make yourself a cuppa, answer an email or two and BAM….your Facebook post has already reached half the amount of people it’s ever going to reach.
This is why timing is crucial.
Because of this, I recommend posting on Facebook 30 mins to an hour before the peak times to make sure your post has the opportunity to reach as many people as it can within that 30 mins. The more engagement it gets, the more people it will reach but it’s crucial that engagement comes early on in the process.
From the above graph, I’d recommend posting between 2pm and 3pm to hit that sweet spot.
Posting at the same time every day though is going to get boring and predictable real quick though. How can you mix it up but still get the max reach possible?
I recommend splitting the graph into sections. The same number of sections as posts you plan on doing each day. If you plan on posting four times a day, split the graph into four and post at the peak point in the graph within that time section.
In the above example that would be at 2am, 11am, 2pm and 6pm.
If you only post once a day, split the graph into two sections, pick the top two times to post and alternate between these.
In this example that would be at 2am and 2pm.
If any of the times seem really crazy to you, keep in mind that the graph is shown in the timezone of your computer. If your main fan base is from another country, this might explain any weirdness.
So now you have the best times to post on Facebook for YOU.
All this is based on reaching the maximum amount of people, but what if your goal is to get people to visit your website?
The next step is to take a look at your Google Analytics and find out the times when people visit your website from Facebook.
Not sure how to do that?
Take a look at our downloadable guide: Facebook: Finding The Best Time To Post.
Not only does this guide help you navigate Google Analytics to find the best time to draw people to your website from Facebook, but it also includes handy worksheets and a weekly planner to help you track and measure your results.
As always, happy analysing!
Originally published at www.beesonmedia.com on April 16, 2018.
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