AP 0634: When Is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?

AskPat 634 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up everybody? Pat Flynn here, and welcome to Episode 634 of Ask Pat. Thank you so much for joining me today. As always, I am here to help you by answering your online business questions five days a week, because right now I'm actually broadcasting this live on Periscope. I thought because of the question and its content type, that would be very appropriate to do this.

Before we get to the question, though, I do want to mention that I am very active on many social media platforms, so whatever one that you are active on, I want to be there serving you there. If you want to follow me on Instagram or on Twitter, you can use @PatFlynn. I'm also @PatFlynn on Periscope, and then if you want to follow me on Snapchat, somebody stole my Snapchat name. Not really, but I just wasn't quick enough to get on it, but my Snapchat name is not PatFlynn, it is @PatFlynnSPI, so PatFlynnSPI. Here's today's question from Gil.

Gil: Hey Pat. This is Gil. You can find me @GilliamWallace on all social media platforms, and Gilliam.Wallace on Snapchat. The question I have for you today is, with all the different social media platforms out there and trying to reach to every piece of your audience, when is usually the best time to post content? You know, because there's a difference between Facebook and Twitter, and then you also have YouTube and you have Snapchat, and you also have Periscope. I'm just curious now for 2016 what feels like the best time to make that reach and make that message reach out to more people?

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, Gil? Thanks so much for the question. I appreciate this, and like I said, I'm doing this live on Periscope now, so I got about 220 people in the room right now, and they might even be able to add some value here too for this question, but what time is the best time to post on social media? Now, my standard answer for this back in the day was test. You know, always be testing, right? ABT. Always Be Testing, and, you know, keeping track. I know some people…I don't do this anymore, but I used to, and I know a number of people who actually do this still: They keep track of every social media post that they post. They keep track of what time it goes out, and later on, they input all that data from how many people it reached and all that stuff, and it's insane. That's probably the best way to figure it out, but not the most efficient ways, and there are some tools out there that might be able to help you. Because that will take a lot of work. Not everybody can be that organized, and that's something, you know, you need to do it for months, because there's certain different factors. There's seasons. There's a number of other things going on that might affect those numbers, but there are some quick answers for you.

My secondary most standard answer for this question was to use a tool because I am mostly active on Twitter. There's a tool for Twitter peeps, so if you're on Twitter this is a great tool. It's free to use. You can get a free analysis on when most of your followers are on, and this tool is called Tweriod. It's a weird name, but it's like period and Twitter put together and it essentially tells you when most of your followers are on. If you go to Tweriod.com, you can go there, you can authenticate your Twitter account, and when you do that it'll tell you. For me, for example, let me turn around the camera for all the Periscope peeps here. For me, it says things like, “Most exposure when Tweeted between 8 A.M. and 10 A.M., and 12 P.M. and 1 P.M.,” and then it even gives me a chart on when most of my followers are on depending on what day it is. Monday, weekdays combined, Sundays, all that stuff. It's pretty interesting data, and that's kind of useful, right? I mean, it gives me some guidelines, and, you know, if I had a choice on when to tweet I would tweet during those times. It does work a little bit.

There is an article out there by the crew over at HubSpot, which is an awesome content marketing company. They help a lot of people in their businesses. HubSpot is great. They posted this earlier this year. I was saving this for a question just like this one, so thank you again, Gil. The title of this post is “The Best Times to Post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Other Social Media Sites.” I'm actually going to be posting, or Mindy or whoever, will be posting this on SoundCloud and on SPI. They're going to be linking to this, so you can find it there. Again, this is episode number 634 of AskPat, but that's the title of it, and you can find the show notes there, but again, you can find it on HubSpot. I'm sure if you Google this you will able to find it too. I'm essentially going to go over this infographic for you and just tell you what they say, because they collect a lot of data. They know exactly what's going on, and apparently people on Periscope are saying that I have double voice…two voices, which is kind of weird. That's kind of funny. Technology isn't always perfect, but I'm going to switch back and hopefully it works out.

Anyway, I'm going to keep going because I'm recording this. Here we go: the best times to post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Instagram. Should you post whenever? No, you shouldn't post whenever, because it's not enough just to post whenever you feel like it, but the question is, is there a perfect answer when to post? It really all depends. It depends on the platform you're using, the region, because you know there's different timezones of course. Your goals. What do you want? More clicks, more shares? How your target audience interacts with that particular platform. Here we go, just straight up answers from HubSpot. Facebook: 12 and 1 P.M. on Saturdays and Sundays, 3 and 4 P.M. on Wednesdays, 1 to 4 P.M. on Thursdays and Fridays. Very specific, right? Here we go. It's because people use Facebook at work and at home on mobile and on desktop. You know, they just go through all this data. Again, just one more time: 12 to 1 on Saturdays and Sundays, so around noon time on the weekends. On Wednesdays specifically between 3 and 4, and then 1 to 4 P.M. on Thursdays and Fridays. It's true a lot of people do use Facebook at work, and when I was still working a 9 to 5, I was on Facebook quite as bit until they stopped us or they stopped allowing that.

Anyway, Twitter. These are general Twitter times that you should be posting. Twitter is used at work and at home they say, usually during down times like commutes and breaks. These are relevant to the timezones that you wish to be posting to or, you know, if you're in the U.S. obviously there's a three-hour time difference coast to coast, so just keep that in mind, but 12 to 3 P.M. on Monday through Friday, so 12 to 3 P.M. on Monday through Friday. If you're gonna post on Twitter, just wait until after lunch. Again, these are just general rules. This is based on a lot of data that HubSpot collects. 12 to 3 P.M. on Mondays through Fridays, and then 5 to 6 P.M. on Wednesdays. It's weird how they kind of pull the Wednesdays out, which is kind of interesting to me and I'd love to learn more about why, but 5 to 6 on Wednesday seems to be very popular. Doesn't say anything about the weekends though, which is interesting. Again, for Twitter, Tweriod will be great for you.

Okay, now LinkedIn. LinkedIn is obviously a tool for professionals and HubSpot says that they tend to use it during work hours, so here are the hours: 7:30 to 8:30 A.M., and that makes complete sense, right? You go to work, and if you're in a professional setting, you go and check your professional social media accounts at that time right when you get to work. 7:30 to 8:30, and then noon time, and then after work, 5 to 6 P.M. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. That's really interesting. Basically, when you think of when you get random things done at work, that's when you would go on LinkedIn.

Pinterest. Pinterest users skew female, as most of us know. I think it's 90 percent female, though I think it's growing on the male side of things as of late, but still, very female, and are most active in the evening. Here we go. Whoa, really? 2 to 4 A.M. That's interesting. I don't know. Evening hours every day. Basically if you're going to do—general rule, I would say, if you're gonna be on Pinterest, schedule your post using—somebody mentioned Edgar or Buffer, or just post your Pinterest posts in the evening if you can. Night feeding time, says Morgan.

Now, Instagram. Instagram is meant to be used on mobile devices, so you just tend to be on all the time, and it says best times to post: anytime Monday through Friday, except between 3 and 4 P.M. That's weird, but it kind of makes sense. I mean, it's basically a whenever type of thing. The thing about Instagram is it does a good job of collecting those feeds. Most people scroll through until the last one they remember. That's how I use Instagram, so it just says, “Don't post between 3 and 4,” so right now, apparently, on the west coast of California, I'm not going to post on Instagram right now because it's telling me not to, but, you know, I typically do follow directions from these bigger companies who have a lot of this data.

Again, I just make sure to pay attention. I don't go as far as keeping an Excel file for all these things, but I do pay attention and just am conscious about my results from when I post. That's it. There are other social media platforms out there. In terms of Periscope I would consider who your audience is, what they're doing at that time, and do you really want to be interrupting them? Or do they actually want to be interrupted? Lunch time I would assume, Periscope is very popular. In the evening time also. Not necessarily at work, because Periscope is video, and people need to listen, and they don't have the capacity or ability to listen or watch video at work. Or maybe they do; they just are good at hiding it. I don't know. Again, these times are just guidelines that are set by HubSpot, and I would care to believe them, or at least use them as a starting point for you and figuring out when…LunchScope says, guilefully, “Hi, guys. Good to see you.” For those of you that are listening, thank you so much, and I'd love to converse with you on some of these live platforms. I'm going to be more Facebook Lives and Periscope too. Follow me: Periscope.tv/PatFlynn. I mentioned Snapchat earlier, PatFlynnSPI.

But also, Gil, I want to thank you for having your question featured here on the show. I want to send you an AskPat t-shirt because of that. For everybody out there listening or watching, if you have a question that you'd like potentially featured here on the show, just head on over to AskPat.com. You can ask right there on that page, and I'd love to hear for you. Again, I just want to thank you so much for your time and attention today.

As always, I like to finish these episodes with a quote, and here's today's quote from Cocoa Channel, says: “Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.”

Man, that's a deep, deep quote. We're not just talking about online marketing anymore, are we? Thank you guys so much. I appreciate you, and I look forward to serving you in the next episode of AskPat. Bye now.