The Absolute, Bestest Ever Time to Post on Social Media

“I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”

Sherlock Holmes, “A Scandal in Bohemia: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes”, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

What’s the best time to post on Facebook?

Ask Google this question and over 1.5 billion results will duly appear, all purporting to tell you the golden moment to post that picture of your new product on Facebook in order to set the social network alight in a frenzy of comments and likes.

Huffington Post claims their guide is “scientific” (“If your audience is women, for instance, mornings are probably a better bet than nights” for posting a blog…), Time reckons they know the “absolute best day” to post (Fridays, apparently), whilst Social Times tell you the worst times to post too (between midnight and 8am, unless you’re targeting insomniacs presumably). Unsurprisingly enough, all three of these articles come to different conclusions, with little consensus on the Magic Hour.

Big, stupid data

One thing all these articles do have in common is that they take a heap of big data, analyse it, and come up with something completely useless and irrelevant.

Here’s three questions to ask when reading articles like these:

Who is the sample?

It’s highly likely that the selection of accounts utilised for the study are not reflective of your own brand, product or service. Even those that are limited to particular industries or sectors should be treated with caution, as there are no guarantees that all of the accounts studied are aligned to the same objectives as you. Even direct competitors in the same market may have a completely different game plan behind their social media activity — focusing on reach and exposure, whilst your key objective is clickthrough traffic, for example.

Who is the audience?

Even if the brands selected have the same objectives and strategy as your brand, there will be very little information on the audience they are speaking to. Unless the audience closely matches your target personas, their activity on social channels is unlikely to be reflective of your existing or potential customers. Even when considering focused studies on, for example, teen usage, the relevance will vary massively if you are a fashion brand or a careers service.

What other factors are in play?

There are a myriad of variables that can affect engagement on social channels, from seasonal events to channel trends, internet memes and even the weather. Social media is evolving at a rapid rate, and there is no guarantee that what worked on Facebook last month will have anything like the same effect this month.

Self analysis

This isn’t to say that there isn’t some value in working out what days and times are driving results for your social accounts. However, rather than depending on sweeping, generalised studies, the best way to find your top post times is to analyse your own data, looking specifically at your channels, your audience and your prospects.

There are a number of free tools you can use to analyse when your followers are online and plan your activity accordingly — for example, Followerwonk or Tweriod. You can also find out what has worked well for you in the past using the data available through Facebook and Twitter analytics, embracing the power of the pivot table to drill down to specific actions like link clicks or video plays.

However, even if you profile your own data, there are a huge amount of variables that you cannot account for. At essence, finding the best time to post on your social media channels is an educated trial and error process; test different times and days, monitor the performance, then refine and optimise on a regular basis. The reality is, the best content will find an audience, whenever it is posted — worry more about what you are posting than when.

To find out more about what insights you should be looking for when analysing social media channels, download our free guide: “How to Create a Conversation Audit to Drive B2B Marketing Success”

This post first appeared on LinkedIn. Photo credit: Twitter inc, Flickr