There is a lot to think about when you are executing a social media marketing strategy. The use of visuals, your content strategy, who will be executing the work, how will you measure your results, when the work will be done. All of these play an enormous factor in your success.

There is such an overwhelming amount of planning that goes into executing a social media marketing strategy and, inevitably, something will be left to the last minute. But one extremely vital point that gets left out in the cold during the social media strategy planning stage is when is the best time to post content to Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter?

Think of an email marketing campaign that you have previously executed.  If you have looked at the studies done on email marketing, you’ve no doubt noticed that by altering the time and date of your blasts, you can increase effectiveness.

This holds true also when finding the optimal posting time on social media. At the wrong time, a well-written post with wonderful content can languish at the bottom of the barrel. But once you know the optimal posting time and use it, you can garner exponentially more engagement by only changing the time and date it was shared!

Have you ever posted something to social media that you truly believed to be earth-shatteringly good and….crickets? This is a prime example of the importance of choosing the right time and date when posting your social media content. To help you along, here are some times that we have found to be helpful when posting content to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram respectively.

Below are a good starting point for posting times, and are just what we recommend—you will have to refine based on your own campaigns.

Facebook:

• Best Time to Post: Daily, between 1-4 pm
• Peak Time to Post: Wednesdays at 3 pm
• Worst Time to Post: Saturday and Sunday before 8 am and after 8 pm

Twitter:

• Best Time to Post: Monday through Thursday, 1-3 pm
• Peak Time to Post: Monday through Thursday, 8 am
• Worst Time to Post: Every day after 8 pm, Fridays after 3 pm

LinkedIn:

• Best Time to Post: Tuesday through Thursday
• Peak Time to Post: 9 am Tuesdays and Wednesdays
• Worst Time to Post: Monday through Friday, 10 pm-6 am

Instagram:

• Best Time to Post: 11a11 am Wednesday
• Peak Time to Post: 11 am on Wednesday

These are simply guidelines for you to use which will effectively bring you closer to finding the optimal time to post on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. This will not guarantee you success, but it will be an important factor that you should abide by when posting.

Try these out and monitor your success. You will need to massage these times and dates to find out what works best for you and your industry or target market. When it comes to your content, what should be the most important thing is that you plan to deliver it to the correct audience at the time when they are ready to receive it. This will create a social media home run not only for your content, but also your campaign!