How much importance do you place upon your social media activities? Be honest!
We’ll always fly the flag for social, as particularly in the current climate, it’s one of your primary channels for building relationships and demonstrating your relevant experience.
Now, one of the common questions we get asked is ‘how can we beat the algorithms?’ It’s a good question and I’ll be honest, not an easy one to answer, especially where LinkedIn is concerned. However, what I can say, is one of the core elements of their algorithm is how much engagement your posts generate – how many comments, likes and shares.
‘But how do I get engagement if my posts aren’t showing up in newsfeeds?’ And that’s the typical follow-up question. One thing you do have in your control is the ‘time’ that you can post. The time and day of the week that you post can play a part in how your posts will perform, because by posting at the optimum time your network is online, the more chance you have of getting that critical engagement.
We recently came across this useful infographic by Blog2Social which highlights from their research the optimal publishing times for various social networks.
We thought it was worth sharing. So, what does it say about the most common platforms professional services firms are using?
Unsurprisingly, it’s weekdays, but according to their research Tuesday’s to Thursday’s between 7am-10am and 5pm-6pm is the optimum time for prime engagement with your network. The research concludes that posting once a day is best for sustained engagement, and that makes sense – we typically recommend 3-5 times a week.
Twitter as we all know moves fast. I remember once reading the average lifespan of a tweet is 7 minutes, before it just disappears way down the feeds. Similar to LinkedIn, those morning and evening slots (8am-10am and 5pm-6pm) are optimum times but so is lunchtime (11am – 1pm). Frequency wise, because of the lifespan of a tweet, volume is important, unlike LinkedIn, so you really should be aiming to tweet around 3 times a day for maximum impact. But, please remember quality over quantity.
Instagram and Facebook
Although these are not the most important platforms for professional services firms, I still thought it was sharing the best times this research says to post on Instagram and Facebook, in case you are using them. Timings do vary from LinkedIn and Twitter with Facebook peak times covering much of the week – Tuesdays, Thursdays to Sundays, and anytime from 1pm onwards. Instagram appears to peak on Mondays, Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
Do these days/times marry up with what you are seeing in your engagement data?
The pandemic and people working from home can obviously throw a lot of things up in the air, in terms of timings, but for me these timings ‘feel’ right. Give it a go and see if it makes an impact on your engagement. Your data will give you the answers.
Good luck!