The main goal pursued by companies that own accounts on social networks is to attract the maximum number of users to their page. The successful timing of publication determines how many followers will see the information offered. Therefore, it is important to choose the best time to publish posts, when the majority of the audience is active, but at the same time the social network is not oversaturated with other publications.
The analytical agency Popsters conducted research on the dependence of the time of day and day of the week on user behavior on social networks. Based on the data from this study, we can draw conclusions about what time the effectiveness of publications will be highest. Research provides only average data: to determine the best time to post a specific page, it is necessary to conduct experiments with the period of news posting and monitor the activity of subscribers.
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The best time to post on Instagram
The Instagram social network reaches a predominantly female audience aged 25 to 45 years. The range of interests of this audience: beauty, fashion, cinema, celebrity life, active and healthy lifestyle. Most often, users access Instagram from their mobile devices.
The optimal time for posting largely depends on the target audience: young people and students visit Instagram throughout the day, working users most often go to view news during their lunch break or at the end of the working day. According to the schedule, the greatest activity occurs at 9 a.m., at lunchtime from 3 to 5 p.m., and in the evening from 7 to 9 p.m. It is also worth noting that between 9 a.m. and 10 p.m., the activity of Instagram users drops slightly.
Latergramme experts say that it is best to post content between 17.00 and 21.00, when most people leave work and go home. The smartphone is always at hand, so you can read the latest news.
Experts point out that in the evening the number of publications is significantly reduced, which increases the chances of reaching a larger audience.
Analyzing the activity of followers by day of the week, we can draw the following conclusions:
- On Monday, entertainment content is most popular. Users are starting a new work week and do not want to overload themselves with unnecessary information.
- On Tuesday, you can post important and useful texts - subscribers have already joined the work rhythm.
- Wednesday is the perfect day to share the results of your work. You can show a live broadcast or video from the workplace. Readers will also be interested in learning about interesting promotions and projects in which you participate.
- Thursday is customer day. Show your followers happy customers and tell them about your interactions with them.
- On Friday, it is recommended to post light content that prepares users for the weekend.
- We continue to share entertaining pictures and videos over the weekend.
Text length and day of week
On VKontakte, activity on posts with short texts increases over the weekend. On Monday, long texts are in the lead.
On Facebook, long texts receive more reactions during the week, and only on Sunday are they overtaken by short texts.
On Odnoklassniki, short texts dominate during the week, but on Friday interest in posts with long texts increases sharply.
For Instagram and YouTube, the day of the week does not affect the popularity of a certain text length; long texts invariably lead.
On Telegram , long texts consistently receive more engagement during the week; their engagement drops slightly on weekends, but at the same time they retain their leadership positions.
On Tumblr, long texts dominate on Monday, then as the week goes on, interest in them drops, and short texts gain more engagement.
On average, materials with long texts lead in terms of engagement throughout the week across all networks. Interest in them drops slightly on weekends. Short texts perform worse than average texts during the week, but get more reactions on the weekend.
The trend of growing interest in short weekend posts has continued since 2021, when the study showed a similar result.
When is the best time to publish posts on VK?
The active audience of users of the VKontakte social network are young people, schoolchildren, students and freelancers aged 13 to 34 years. VK users communicate, listen to music, post photos and read news in various communities.
The peak activity of VKontakte users occurs at lunchtime from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and in the evening from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m.
During the first time period, users are preparing for their lunch break. Having put aside work matters, they scroll through the news feed, waiting for the long-awaited rest. During lunch, most people continue to “sit” on social networks.
In the second period of time, users have already returned from work and continue to monitor VK news, often moving to the computer.
Analyzing audience activity by day of the week, we can conclude that the best days for posting are weekends.
Related article: How to make a post on VK correctly
Recommendations for posting content on the VKontakte social network:
- morning is the time for entertainment news, users wake up and start getting ready for work or school, they are not yet ready to perceive information;
- lunch is time for serious content that can contain numbers and analytics. People have already tuned in to the work rhythm and are ready for useful information. Until the evening, post as often as possible, alternate informative posts with entertaining ones;
- In the evening, it is recommended not to slow down the frequency of publications in order to reach the maximum audience. Leave the most interesting and important news for the evening. End the day with nice wishes for your followers.
To more accurately determine the best time to publish posts on VK, taking into account the specifics of the audience, you need to:
- Identify your target audience;
- Conduct an analysis: what groups are your users subscribed to, at what time are they most active (likes and comments);
- Determine the rest time for users; during this time you should post only short entertainment news and funny pictures.
- Publish posts at non-standard times: at 12.20, 13.45, etc. During peak activity hours, a large number of publications are posted, which increases the risk of your news getting lost.
This is interesting: Guide to the VK article editor
Audience activity in posts with different types of content
The service breaks down all publications by attachment type: photo, video, text and link. If a post contains multiple elements, it is counted as a separate unit for each content type.
On VKontakte, posts with photos receive the most reactions. Posts with videos and links get less engagement.
On Facebook, posts with videos lead the way, while posts with links have the lowest share of engagement. Over the year, the gap between publications with video and other formats has noticeably narrowed.
Posts with links receive the least reactions on Odnoklassniki . Posts with text are the leaders here, and photos are ahead of videos in terms of engagement.
On Instagram, posts with links received the most engagement, and photos are significantly ahead of videos.
On Twitter, the most engagement is on posts with photos, the least on posts with links.
In Telegram, posts with videos have the best engagement, while posts with photos are in last place, slightly behind posts with text.
On Tumblr, posts with links lead the way, while posts with videos get the least reactions.
On average, across all platforms, posts containing photos receive the most engagement. In last place are video recordings.
When is the best time to post on Facebook?
Facebook users are predominantly entrepreneurs, top managers, public figures, programmers and people of creative professions aged 25 to 50 years. They are interested in business, political and cultural news. This social network concentrates most of the professional audience that establishes business contacts.
The best time to publish is from 14:00 to 15:00. Facebook is dominated by working users who, after their lunch break, want to read interesting news and comment on friends' updates. Posts published at 13-14 hours collect a large number of reposts; if you need clicks, post the news after 15.00.
User activity increases on Monday and Friday, because... on Monday, users are not yet ready for the work week and spend time on social networks, and on Friday they are already preparing for the weekend.
According to research from HubSpot and Microsoft, the optimal time to post is Thursday and Friday from 1 to 3 p.m.
Instructions on the topic: How to post on Facebook
Recommendations for posting on Facebook:
- Pay attention to the specifics of your target audience (housewives can view the news at any time, and business people only during their free hours).
- Study the statistics of visits to competitors' pages depending on the time of day and day of the week.
- Publish news during periods of greatest user activity.
- Experiment with posting times to find the best option; try publishing information during periods of less active audience activity. Perhaps the amount of information is dwindling at this time, but your audience is still online.
- Post your news at the same time so that your subscribers get used to the regularity of your posts.
- Experiment with posting days if you post several times a week.
This is interesting: What is the best time to post videos on Tik Tok?
How to manually determine what time to post
If you are an adept at manual labor and trust only yourself, then to choose what time is best to publish posts, you will have to do the following.
Step 1 . Select an analysis period - for example, 3 months. Step 2 . In an Excel table, mark the day and time of publication of each post, its topic, the number of reactions in general and the number of reposts, comments, and likes separately. Step 3 . Sort posts so that those with the most reactions are at the top. Step 4 . Analyze the time at which you published posts that were in your personal top. Step 5 . Draw conclusions about when your audience is more engaged in a discussion.
When is the best time to publish posts on Odnoklassniki?
The target audience of the Odnoklassniki social network is similar to the VKontakte audience, but older. Odnoklassniki is visited mainly by women who communicate and look for something interesting. Users do not like to read long posts: they are more interested in entertaining and humorous content, as well as short videos.
The largest number of users log into the social network in the morning from 9 to 11, when they get to work or places of study, in the afternoon from 15 to 17, when students and schoolchildren return home, and in the evening from 19 to 20, when they come home working people. During periods of greatest audience activity, it is recommended to post at least twice a day.
Similar to the social network Vkontakte, most people are on Odnoklassniki on weekends. Recommendations for posting posts on Odnoklassniki are similar to those given for the VKontakte social network.
This is interesting: How to promote a group on Odnoklassniki
Audience activity by day of week
VKontakte audience activity peaks on Monday. The least active day is Saturday. On other days, engagement remains at approximately the same level.
The most active day on Facebook Saturday, unlike VKontakte, is not inferior to weekdays in terms of activity. Users perform the least number of actions on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Compared to last year, there was a noticeable increase in Facebook activity on Sunday.
in Odnoklassniki over the weekend; the lowest activity levels in communities occur on Saturday. Monday saw peak activity. With a slight difference from Monday, Friday publications were in second place.
On Instagram , as well as on Odnoklassniki, Monday is the leader. Activity on weekdays remains virtually unchanged. Users perform the least number of actions on Saturday.
On YouTube, activity is higher on Sundays and Fridays, with a decline on Monday and Tuesday.
Over the year, activity on Twitter has increased significantly; engagement in posts on weekends has increased by 17% for Sunday, 15.2% for Saturday. On Thursday and Friday, users are the least active; these days account for 13.1% of activity.
In Telegram , Saturday and Friday are the most active. The decline occurs on Tuesday.
Tumblr has the least activity on Sunday, but Saturday has the second most activity, behind only Thursday .
For Coub, the most active days are Saturday and Sunday, with a decline on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
On Flickr, the least amount of activity occurs on Wednesday and Friday, with Thursday leading the way.
In TikTok , 15.5% of all activities occur on Saturday and Sunday; on weekdays, activity is practically unchanged, with a slight decline occurring on Friday.
On average, for all sites, weekends are the days with the most activity. Users perform the least number of actions on Tuesdays and Fridays.
In 2021, activity declined on Wednesday, and engagement on Saturday was comparable to weekdays. Now the audience has become more active not only on Sunday, but also on Saturday, and on weekdays the decrease in activity has shifted from Wednesday to Friday and Tuesday.
When is the best time to post videos on YouTube?
The majority of YouTube users are people aged 18 to 54 years, 10% of the audience are children and teenagers from 12 to 17 years old. Most often, video clips are viewed by men aged 18 to 24, who are interested in cars, electronics, sports and computer games. The most active users are considered to be young people from 25 to 34 years old.
According to data from the Frederator Networks site, the maximum number of users gathers on YouTube from 14 to 16 hours from Monday to Wednesday, from 12 to 15 hours from Thursday to Friday and from 9 to 11 on weekends. This is the best time to post videos on your channel. Thursday, Friday and Saturday are the days on which videos receive the most views and likes.
Instructions to help: How to upload a video to YouTube
Recommendations for posting videos on YouTube:
- determine the average age of your target audience. Schoolchildren are free in the afternoon, and working users watch videos most often in the evening;
- take into account the difference in time zones if you want to reach the maximum audience around the world;
- post videos regularly at the same time, so subscribers will know when to come to the channel for a new video clip;
- Monitor the video view statistics to adjust the time if necessary. Statistics can be viewed in the Creative Studio - YouTube analytics.
General
On VKontakte there is almost a direct correlation between the number of subscribers and the number of posts: large pages, from 100 thousand subscribers, publish more than 10 posts per day.
The situation with ER (graph: ERpost) is the opposite: in small communities, each post receives better engagement. But at the same time, the total ER for all publications per day (ERday) grows in proportion to the number of subscribers and publications.
On Facebook , larger pages tend to post more per day, but each post has a lower ERpost.
On Instagram, small accounts with up to 10 thousand followers receive the best engagement per post: the average ERpost for them is 4.3%.
However, there is no significant drop in ERpost with the increase in the number of subscribers from 50 thousand to million-plus accounts: the figure remains at the level of 1.96-2.36%.
On Odnoklassniki , as on VKontakte, large groups publish more posts, each of which receives fewer reactions.
Twitter accounts (up to 10,000 subscribers) showed the best engagement per post, while large accounts showed the worst ERpost. It is noteworthy that, unlike other platforms, here ERday does not grow in proportion to the number of subscribers and posts - each tweet gains reactions on its own, regardless of the other content of the account. This is explained by new algorithms for generating Twitter feeds.
On YouTube, small accounts receive the best engagement both per post and on average per day. The likely reason is that creating video content is more labor intensive, and even large channels do not publish multiple posts per day.
Useful articles on a similar topic:
- Methods of analyzing competitors on social networks;
- A detailed guide to the TikTok app;
- Audience of Runet social networks - latest data.
- Statistics and analytics of any channel in Telegram.