Timing means everything in life, and Facebook is no different; get it right and you’ll reach as many people as is physically possible for your page, get it wrong and you’ll be just like one of those trees falling in the forest when nobody’s around!

So if you have a business in Devon or Cornwall and you’re wanting to get the most bang for your posting buck, when is it that you should be posting?

Try searching for the answer online and you’ll be met with hundreds of blogs, many based on unfounded research and conflicting comments from every country other than the UK.

Why? Because, not unsurprisingly, one size doesn’t fit all, so here are some factors you should be considering…

Lifestyle

Generally, people around the world tend to have similar lifestyle patterns, with work and weekends two of the major factors.

What do you do when you have free time; visit friends, go out for dinner with family, check Facebook? For many, it’s the first thing to be done when you wake up, during the commute to work, have a quick browse at lunchtime and then a cheeky evening scroll of the newsfeed when you get home or are watching telly on the sofa. Before you know it, the evening’s gone and you’ve spent the whole time on Facebook!

It’s during these times you should be posting. Statistics show:

• Posts made on weekdays between 1-2pm are likely to get most shares.
• Posts made at 3pm usually gain the most clicks.
• Posts made between 5/6pm and 10pm gain the highest levels of engagement.
• With the weekend in sight, people are happiest on Thursdays and Fridays, meaning posts apparently gain more positive engagement than on any other day (especially a Monday!).
• Posts made on Saturday and Sunday gain 32% more engagement than those made at the same time on a weekday.

The perfect post time?

4pm on Sundays are the top performers!

Location

The only complication to this is if you’re trading internationally, in which case you’ll need to be varying your content, message and delivery time, related to the time zone difference. As an example, if you’re trying to hit the east coast of America then our lunchtime is the start of their working day, in turn meaning that a post sent out at 3am in the morning in the UK is going to be right in the middle of the east coast evening and a great time to be posting to those people.

Scheduling those tweets is going to be a god send to anyone that likes to sleep!

Who are you targeting?

Your target market is also going to impact on when you post.

If your business provides or offers services to other businesses, you’ll not only want to think about whether Facebook is the right channel for you, you’ll also want to be posting when decision makers are most likely to be online. So when is it they’re going to be doing that? During evenings (think later than the consumer market but not so late as to push it past bedtime!) and weekends, when they eventually get away from work.

Consumer focussed? It’s a lot easier to reach them, as long as you consider their lifestyle, which brings us nicely onto our next point!

Facebook for your business

Although the timing of your posts helps, the ultimate success will depend on the quality. Does it feature interesting content, an image, link to your website, a call to action? All these things work in harmony with each other to form the perfect post.

You can monitor the performance of your posts through online analytics programmes such as Fanpage Karma. Meanwhile, Google Analytics will tell you how much traffic your posts are directing to your website.

What are you waiting for? Get out there, and get posting!

For more information on how we can help you build a better Facebook presence for your business, call 01566 232323 or email hello@mihidigital.co.uk