*This blog post was originally published and written for Brittani Wills Creative in Summer 2018.

You’ve created some awesome content and posts for your brand, and that’s great! But now what? The next step is creating a consistent posting schedule to ensure your brand gets maximum engagement and visibility. Each social media platform is different and your timing should reflect that.

Aside from the platforms themselves being innately different, social media strategists should also take the target consumer into consideration. Users who consume your content have different routines and “log on” to platforms at different times. With that in mind, you’ll also want to continually review the insights for your posts and pay attention to when users are engaging with you content. All of this information will come in hand when creating your posting schedule.

BEST TIMES TO POST ON FACEBOOK

Facebook has over 1 billion active users a day which opens up the opportunity for a great deal of user engagement. Despite the high volume of users, it’s still difficult to get content in front of followers organically. The best times to post on Facebook for your brand are between 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. in the middle of the week (Wednesday and Thursday). This is typically when followers are on their lunch break, or just have a few spare minutes during their work day.

BEST TIMES TO POST ON INSTAGRAM

Instagram is the home of engaging, beautiful content. With over 800 million active user currently, it is the fastest growing social media platform. Between Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, Instagram is the most consistently used app throughout the week and throughout the day - resulting in three ideal days of the week to post. To try and reach the highest amount of users try posting: Wednesdays at 3 p.m.; Thursdays at 5 a.m., 11 a.m., and 3 p.m. - 4 p.m.; and Friday at 5 a.m.

BEST TIMES TO POST ON TWITTER
Did you know that there are more than 350,000 tweets shared per minute? This high volume can make engagement on Twitter hard for content managers. On the flip side, because of Twitter’s fast-paced nature, it’s one of the best social media platforms for real time engagement. Twitter posts get the most engagement on Friday mornings, between 9 a.m. - 10 a.m., and the best time to ensure some sort of engagement everyday is between 10 a.m. and noon.

With these tidbits in mind, take the next step and start creating your content calendar!

Happy posting!

SO ... WHEN DO I POST?