Does your website or blog have its own Facebook page? When should you schedule Facebook posts for your page?
The best time to post on Facebook is when YOUR audience is online. But how do you know when your audience is online?
If You’re Just Getting Started
Image by Master OSM 2011 via Flickr
It’s a good idea to start posting during the suggested best time to post on Facebook for maximum exposure for your website or your latest blog post, if you (or if someone helped you) recently set up a Facebook page for your website.
The common suggestions for when to post on Facebook for the most views are Wednesdays at 3 p.m. during the work week and during the weekends on Saturdays, between noon and 1 p.m. The online marketing company Hubspot has a great, user-friendly guide to the best time to post on Facebook and other social media platforms.
Open a Window
The Facebook tips for posting times mentioned above, give you a general idea for when many people are online.
But what about your audience?
One great way to find out what times a lot of people similar to your audience are on Facebook is to look at your personal Facebook page. Pull up the “Chat” window and see how many of your Facebook friends are listed as available (or have a green dot beside their name).
If about 10 percent of your Facebook friends are online at the same time, that might be a good time to post to your blog’s Facebook page. Especially if many of your personal Facebook friends also follow your blog or website’s Facebook page.
For example, if you have 200 personal Facebook friends and about 20 of them are online on Thursday evening at 7 p.m., that might be a good time to post on Facebook.
What Do You See?
Another good idea for when to post on Facebook for the most views is to watch your personal Facebook page for two weeks.
This doesn’t mean you have to be on Facebook all the time. Just take note of certain things whenever you’re usually on Facebook.
For example, note of any days and times you notice about 10 percent of your personal Facebook friends available in Chat. If during both weeks you noticed 10 percent of your friends were available on Thursdays at around 7 p.m., then that’s a stronger reason to post at that time, compared to just one of the Thursday evenings having 10 percent of your friends available in chat.
One Final Note
Also, keep in mind that a large number of your Facebook friends might be online because of a sport event (like the Super Bowl) or due to people commenting on major news story. Again, looking at online activity during two or more weeks will help you avoid the mistake of using an unexpected or random spike in online activity to plan future Facebook posts.
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Did this post inspire and help you? How do you decide when to post on social media? Share your advice, writing experiences and questions in the comments section below.
Very useful information here about posting to Facebook! The suggested times are good to know. Thanks, Maya! 😀
You’re welcome, Cori-Leigh. I’m glad this post helped you!
Thank you, Maya! I was just wondering the other day where I had left the Hubspot guide, as I needs to check it out once more! Now this is synchronicity 🙂
You’re welcome, Meg! You know what they say about great minds…
I’ve read the HubSpot article. Co-schedule also writes some great articles on these sorts of things.
Being based in the UK, I find it can be difficult to choose the right time particularly as I find most of the people that follow me are from your side of town.
The one thing I find is important and I’m nor perfect at this by a long way is “consistency”. If you can be consistent and your timings are a little off, then the fallout isn’t too severe.
Nice article Maya.
Crazy Yankees. 🙂 I agree that it’s important to be consistent. For now, sharing my latest blog posts shortly after they post on Wednesdays seems to work for me. I’m so glad Facebook lets FB blog/business pages schedule their Facebook posts. I’m glad you liked this post, Lee!