Social Media Marketing Tips: When Is The Best Time To Post on Facebook

Paul, one of our readers, asked me the following question:

Help! I’m trying to work on marketing for my business, but I have budget constraints. How can I use social media to help bring in customers and money?

These days, everyone knows that posting on social media can be great marketing for your business. Not everyone knows how exactly to use social media websites to push their brand, however. We’ve all seen those Facebook pages of businesses who push their advertisements all day everyday, attempting to be in your mini feed and in your line of vision at all times. There are too many people out there using social media to market their business, all of the time, that it might seem difficult to break in yourself.

The key to effectively using social media for marketing is timing. If you sit in front of your computer and push advertisements all day–like many people do, unfortunately– all you’re going to effectively accomplish is getting people to unfollow you. Be strategic with the timing of your messages, and only post during your most high-traffic times. If you spend the day posting away when almost none of your customers will be online in the first place, you’ll have wasted efforts and money in addition to not drawing anyone in.

How do you know when your viewers will be online?

Get to know your audience! If you’re marketing toward moms, for example, you might want to avoid posting early in the morning or during dinner time. If you’re marketing toward teenagers, try to post around their school schedule or late in the evening. Are businessmen your target audience? You might have better luck posting during the day while they’re at work.

Hint: there’s almost never a great time to publish new posts over the weekend. It’s too hard to track when people are online, and a lot of people are off with their families and not connected to social media.

If you’re having trouble tracking when your target audience is online, set aside a week to try out different tactics. Facebook advertising services offer a feature that allows you to view your reach for any given post. Track which posts get the most views and which don’t, and schedule your future posts around that data. Additionally, you can keep track of which of your posts get the most likes and shares–which is a great indicator of who is actually paying attention to your content.

Google Analytics is another great tool for tracking your outreach. One advantage of using this app is that it allows you to analyze where your audience is actually coming from. Do you have a lot of visitors from Mexico to your site around 3pm? Try posting in Spanish at that time!

Remember that you might have your audience’s habits down to the hour after doing a lot of research, but this data is likely to change over time. Whether this is because you’re drawing in more customers around the holiday season, or your fan base just changes you’ll want to check in with your audience periodically to make sure you’re on top!

By Nestor Gilbert

Nestor Gilbert is a senior B2B and SaaS analyst and a core contributor at FinancesOnline for over 5 years. With his experience in software development and extensive knowledge of SaaS management, he writes mostly about emerging B2B technologies and their impact on the current business landscape. However, he also provides in-depth reviews on a wide range of software solutions to help businesses find suitable options for them. Through his work, he aims to help companies develop a more tech-forward approach to their operations and overcome their SaaS-related challenges.