An ongoing question amongst content creators is always: how do you find the best time to post on social media?
With over 3.6 billion social media users worldwide, creators are constantly looking for ways to get the upper hand on the competition and maximize the performance of their online content.
In this article, we’re sharing the importance of optimal posting times and how to use each platform’s native analytics feature to make informed publishing decisions. We’re also sharing creator tools, like the VISO Video Comparison Tool, that are built to help you conveniently reach your existing audience while drawing in new viewers.
The Importance of Posting Content at the Best Times
Social media content is cycled through and consumed 24/7, so it is essential for your content strategy to stand out from the scroll. One way creators do that is by researching for optimal times to post on social media.
Timing is everything; it is important for you to publish content at peak times when your target audience will be tuned into their socials. According to Neil Patel, the Central and Eastern time zones account for over 80% of the population in the United States, signifying the need to accommodate your upload times to your audience.
For example, if you are uploading at 9:00 p.m. in Pacific Standard Time, your content will be published at midnight on the East Coast. Unless your audience consists of night owls, you are missing a significant portion of your viewers. When the morning rolls around, your content may be pushed to the bottom of the pile when users are scrolling for updates.
Another factor to consider is when your audience is actually using these social platforms. It is key for you to schedule your content to be shared on the days and time frames your audience is most present and engaged on social media.
Here’s how to find the best time to post content using analytics for some of the most popular social media platforms.
How To Find The Best Time To Post On YouTube
If you are having trouble navigating through YouTube analytics, BBTV’s creator network can help you save time and better understand your data with the VISO Video Comparison tool. With built-in key metrics for comparison and defaulting to comparing the first 48 hours of video data, the Video Comparison tool offers valuable insight to help you make informed publishing decisions.
Your YouTube video’s activity is largely a result of your choices as a creator, such as when and how you publish your videos. To draw more search results and boost the recommendations by YouTube, your content strategy should accommodate your audience’s viewing schedules and consumption trends. Some creators rely on their audience’s opinion for the best time to release their videos. For example, some creators will poll their audience through social media.
With YouTube Analytics, creators can accurately identify specific days and times to upload a new video. In your YouTube Analytics, you can click on the Audience tab to view a section labelled, “When your viewers are on YouTube.” You will see a table highlighting the days of the week in different shades of purple.
Light purple indicates low activity from your viewers on YouTube. Dark purple indicates high activity from your viewers on YouTube. This data will help you identify your best posting times throughout the week, enabling you to publish your content when the majority of your audience is on YouTube. Understanding this data is especially useful when scheduling live streams or premiering your videos in order to boost the initial performance of your content and subsequent ranking by YouTube’s algorithm.
Also, consider checking the Realtime activity tab within YouTube analytics after you post your video. On this page, you’ll see all your videos listed, their publish date, how they’ve been performing in the last 48 hours, as well as their activity in the last 60 minutes.
Mastering your YouTube analytics and understanding how to navigate your data will help you make informed publishing decisions to boost your video’s performance.
How To Find The Optimal Time To Post On Instagram
Uploading content to Instagram is a different ball game than YouTube considering its visual layout and user consumption. To keep up with Instagram’s fast-paced nature, you’ll want to post at least three to four days a week. It is also important for highly-visual brands (i.e. fashion, food or recreation) to sustain a high-frequency posting schedule to adhere to Instagram’s different content types.
In order to identify your optimal posting days and times, you can research your audience using Instagram’s native analytics tool, Insights.
Under Insights, you can view your data broken down by content, activity, and audience. Select the Audience tab to view data on your followers, including when they access Instagram, as well as their location, age range, and gender. You can toggle between hours and days to view their most active times, too. With this data, you can optimize your publishing schedule when your followers are the most active and consuming your Instagram content. In the past, we’ve shared a number of beneficial creator apps and tools that you can use to streamline your upload process, and access key metrics such as your optimal posting times, all in one place.
How To Find The Best Time To Post On TikTok
Posting on TikTok can be a free-for-all considering how quickly content is both uploaded and consumed on a daily basis. With over 689 million monthly active users, TikTok is constantly evolving, making it essential for you to understand your TikTok analytics, and how the ‘For You’ Page algorithm really works.
Researching the ‘global best times to post on TikTok’ is a great way to enhance your strategy, however, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. To boost your posting strategy, TikTok Analytics will provide you with a bird’s eye view of key metrics to identify the best times and frequency to upload a TikTok video.
The TikTok Analytics overview page is dedicated to showing you personalized data on three key metrics: Video Views, Followers, and Profile Visits. Through your analytics, you can dive deeper into your audience demographics to determine the source and location of your video traffic. The more you know about who’s watching, the more you can tailor your content and programming schedule to fit their needs.
Your Follower Activity will also shed light on when your followers are most active, helping you determine your best times in a day to post. This is especially helpful with the recommendation to post multiple times a day.
With the need to pump out content more than once a day, your analytics will help you meet the criteria and make informed publishing decisions when your audience is actively scrolling through TikTok.
Using Analytics To Find The Optimal Time On Facebook
With Facebook ranking as the most-used social platform in the world, creators should consider building a content strategy to tap into the extensive user base of over 2.79 billion people. The challenge with Facebook, however, is the lack of a universally accepted ‘best time to post.’ Instead, your own data found in Facebook’s Insights tool will help you identify your optimal publishing times.
Head over to the Insights section of your Facebook page, which you can find in your Facebook Business Manager. From there, you will have access to your dashboard with your most recent posts.
At the top of your page, you can view which days result in the most engagement on your page. You can also open the Page Views section of Insights (the number of people who have viewed your Page), and sort by country or city to see which locations are generating the most views.
Facebook’s Audience Insights dashboard enables you to dig deeper into your audience’s characteristics such as location, language, age, gender, and interests. This will allow you to pinpoint the main source of your viewers and align your publishing schedule according to their time zones, and when they’re presently engaged on Facebook. This will put your content in the limelight when your followers are using Facebook and engaging directly with your profile.
Navigating your data and insights may look like a science experiment, but once you get the hang of it, you can filter out the noise and focus on the metrics that are essential to your content strategy.
If you have trouble understanding your analytics, partner with BBTV today for access to valuable creator tools such as the VISO Video Comparison Tool, which will help you analyze your YouTube video’s data based on best performing elements of previous videos, and offer actionable insights to execute in future videos. You will also have access to expert support and knowledge from the Channel Growth team, dedicated to helping you boost your content strategy, and attract new followers.
