The best time to post on Facebook is a hotly contested topic, with some experts claiming to have the end-all-be-all answer while others admit that it isn’t an exact science.
While the best time to post for your demographic will ultimately depend on that demographic’s habits, regional location, and more, AI machine learning may ultimately provide the answer that you’ve been looking for.
To assume that there’s a universal “best time” to post on Facebook is a bit contrived, given the dynamic nature of people and their various nuances; however, there is almost certainly a best time for you to post to your followers. This time will depend on a myriad of different factors, which is why you shouldn’t have to calculate it yourself.
There are plenty of social media analysis tools available, one of the popular options is Socialbakers which offers a comprehensive suite that you can try for 14 days to see if it even works for you. The idea is that the suite will analyze your posts’ traffic, giving you a day-by-day report on when is the best time for you to post to your audience.
This dynamic approach allows you to target specifically the most active section of your audience without having to guess or account for outliers (e.g., holidays) by giving you an exact (often down to the minute) time at which your posts should go out for your selected day. The suite also learns as it is used, meaning that your posting hours will only improve in accuracy with time.
While experts are still throwing out best posting time estimates like between 1:00 and 4:00 on weekdays, the fact remains that the optimal posting solution for you most likely doesn’t always fall during this vanilla time frame—and even if it does, the exact time will always net more views and engagement than tossing a post into the void of the Internet during a three-hour window.
The bottom line is this: your social media game may be fine, but knowing the exact time of day on which to post – a luxury afforded only by an AI suite – is the only way to post reliably during your audience’s sweet spot.
Jack Lloyd has a BA in Creative Writing from Forest Grove's Pacific University; he spends his writing days using his degree to pursue semicolons, freelance writing and editing, oxford commas, and enough coffee to kill a bear. His infatuation with rain is matched only by his dry sense of humor.
