Social Media Posts: Finger off the hour
Posts on the Hour: According to Socialbakers, this is a cardinal mistake made by the majority of brands on social media.
For one thing, users are online at different times. With this logic, social media teams often post past the user. Secondly, if everyone is posting on the hour, brands are competing massively for attention in the timeline. "Stay away from the hour, and the same applies to the minutes immediately before and after," advises Bernadette Brown, Vice President DACH & Benelux at Socialbakers. But when is the best time instead? "Timing is crucial for successful social media marketing, whether it's chronological or algorithm-based news feeds," emphasizes Bernadette Brown. A good time to publish depends on the social network, the industry and the different interest groups of a brand. However, social media teams can use the following three metrics to find the right time for each post.
1. engagement of past posts
The easiest way is to look at historical data. Get an overview of which of your posts performed particularly well at which times. But: You should take into account that timing is not everything and that quality content sometimes also performs well independent of the point in time. Deliberately remove these outlier posts from your analysis.
2. Facebook's "When your fans are online"
Engagement on your own posts alone doesn't show the whole picture. If you've never posted around 8:20am, how would you know that's the perfect time? The best way to do this is to use a metric provided by Facebook called "When your fans are online" and combine it with user engagement throughout the day.
3. the commitment of the competition
Social media habits vary greatly between different user groups - each community has its own phases of activity. Therefore, also observe when your community is active based on your competitor pages.
4. post predictions
A good algorithm based on an extensive data pool can make it easier for you to select the right time with appropriate predictions. Therefore, when selecting your social media analysis and optimization tool, pay attention to the selection and quality of such prediction algorithms.
Socialbakers is the global market leader for tracking, analyzing and benchmarking social media engagement. Over 3000 customers in more than 100 countries trust the service provider. Socialbakers helps to achieve measurable success with social media activities. The company monitors more than ten million social profiles on all major social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google+ and VK in Russia.
