Finding the best time to post on social media
How do you plan your content on social media? Not all times are equally engaging for your followers, that’s why it’s important to discover the best times to post.
The challenge of finding your best time to post
This is going to be different for every charity (and person!) because everyone has a different following. Even different individuals pique the interest of different crowds. To really simplify it, a parent is unlikely to be on social media during the school run, so may not be looking at Twitter between 7-9.30am. Whereas a ‘professional’ may well take that time to browse Twitter during their commute to work. When you consider that a school may have a large audience of parents or a larger charity like Cancer Research UK may have a large audience of many different types of people, different charities will have different ‘best times’ to post.
Finding the best time to post on social media – Why does it matter?
It’s as simple as this: you can’t have good conversations if you only try to speak to someone after they have left the room. You shouldn’t post content for parents during the school run, for the same reason you don’t post content at three in the morning. They won’t see it.
If they don’t see it, they can’t engage. If they can’t engage, then they can’t be prompted to donate, subscribe, participate or take any other supportive action.
How to: plan your schedule, then tailor your content
Good news! Working this out is easier than ever.
Step 1: Post to a social channel for a month, consistently.
Step 2: Login and connect your account to Lightful, and prepare to learn!
Step 3: View your insights report & use the best time to post scheduling
Lightful’s ‘Best time to Post’ Insights report
Okay! Let’s do this, It’s easy and pretty powerful once accomplished.
Startup your Insights report
Log in to Lightful, and click your organisation name in the bottom left, and click the ‘Social Profiles’ menu. Now click the ‘View insights report’ link.
Enjoy learning about your posts!
The report is full of valuable tips – but on slide 4, you’ll find you ‘Best posting times’. As you can see in the below example, the best times to tweet will be 4 pm, 5 pm, 2 pm and 12 pm – expecting performance to rank in that order.
Lightful’s ‘Best time to Post’ Scheduler
Log in to Lightful, and click ‘Create Post’. Draft an amazing post or tweet, and then click Schedule, once you’ve set a date, Lightful will advise you on the best time to post for that date based on your previous posts engagements.
Extra credit: communicate this to your team!
You now have a really powerful way to ensure increased engagement. The best part of this is that as you grow, the engagement will naturally increase too. For example, if four in the afternoon on a Thursday is always going to be good for you, it may become exponentially better and better as you reach more people.
Communicate these ideas to your team, and get everyone thinking about great ideas for #ThankfulThursday!
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