Determining Your Optimal Social Media Posting Time

In this day and age, we’re constantly flooded with so much information on social media that posts can get lost in the shuffle. 

Determining and optimizing for the specific times and days you have the best chance of catching your patients’ attention is important for increasing your engagement with visibility on social media platforms. 

There is no one size fits all solution for determining your optimal posting time but keep reading for some tips on when you should launch your next post!

Get Seen

Posting at your unique optimal times can help you reach a higher portion of your followers, which likely will result in higher engagement. 

This is important because most social media networks have algorithms in place favoring content that receives an initial spike in engagement – typically in the first 15 minutes after a post goes “live”. Posts that receive quick engagement signal to the social media networks that it’s quality content and their algorithms should push the post to more people. 

Since Facebook and Instagram are now prioritizing new, quality content, your best chance at getting your content seen is posting when your followers are online and scrolling.

Think Like a Patient

When determining your optimal posting time, it’s important to think like your followers. What makes sense for them and their schedules? 

In general, weekday mornings generate the highest levels of engagement since that’s when most people are just waking up and checking their phones. On weekends noon to early afternoons are popular since it’s usually when people have some downtime. 

Keep in mind what’s happening in your area. For example, say there’s a big sporting event. It wouldn’t make sense to post during that time as you know many of your followers will be preoccupied.

Thinking like your followers will help you understand their behaviors online and increase your chances of getting your posts in front of them.

Utilize Tools

Most social media sites offer analytics showing your office’s peak posting times. Facebook and Instagram both offer this on their business profiles. 

For Sesame Social members, our Sesame Social Posting Suite gives you everything you could ask for in terms of post analytics: where your followers are located, their gender, their age, and, most importantly, when they’re most active. All of these are important factors in determining when and what you should be posting. 

Also, we do all the hard work for you – when you post through our social tool, there’s also a “Peak Time” button that automatically schedules your content at its optimal viewing time!

 

Making sure your content is seen and engaged with can be a difficult task, but if you determine your optimal posting time it can be a simple way to “hack” social media algorithms. 

Most importantly, ensure your posts are reaching your audience. Sesame Social gives you the tools to make this easier for you and we recommend taking full advantage of them. 

Just remember, by scheduling your content for the best time to post, you can increase your reach, boost your engagement and, ultimately, gain more followers!

 

—Tyler Harris, Lead Social Media Specialist, Sesame Communications