Daniel Decker

Last week I posted “Want to Know the Best Time to Tweet / Update on Twitter? Here’s How…” The post has received a lot of retweets on Twitter, organic search traffic coming in from Google, residual traffic, etc.

It appears to have served a need.

So today I thought I’d tackle relatively the same question but for Facebook. Let me preface this by saying that this is something more so for Facebook Pages and brands or companies interacting via pages but the information is very useful to regular Facebook users as well.

First, let’s start with the question again. When is the best time to post on Facebook?

Second, why does this matter? It matters because when you know the best times to post, you can do so strategically so that you’re more likely to reach the highest percentage of your followers. Not only that but you can better gauge when the best time to create conversations might be. Conversations create engagement and that’s like gold in the land of Social Media.

Third, the answer. What is it?

Well, as reported on Mashable, social media management company Vitrue recently released a study that identified the days and hours users are most active on the Facebook channels maintained by companies and brands.

Vitrue analyzed Facebook post data from August 10, 2007 to October 10, 2010 from more than 1,500 brand streams — more than 1.64 million posts and 7.56 million comments in all. Shares and “likes” were not included in the study.

Here are some of the big takeaways:

• The three biggest usage spikes tend to occur on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET.
• The biggest spike occurs at 3:00 p.m. ET on weekdays.
• Weekday usage is pretty steady, however Wednesday at 3:00 pm ET is consistently the busiest period.
• Fans are less active on Sunday compared to all other days of the week.

The study also noted that morning posts actually appear to be more effective. Although most posts and comments appear around 3:00 p.m. ET, posts published in the morning tend to perform better than those published in the afternoon.

Vitrue’s data indicates that morning brand posts are 39.7% more effective in terms of user engagement than those published in the afternoon.

Additionally, the top of the hour (:0 to :15 minutes) tend to see more interaction than other parts of the hour. The second half of the hour (:30 to :45 minutes) is the second most popular time for interaction.

You can read the full report from Mashable’s site here.

Like all things in marketing, you need to test what works best for you. Use the above as a guide but test, retest and test again. Pay close attention to what you post, when you post and how users interact with it. Keep a chart of your own and determine when your Tribe is interacting most. Over time you’ll be able to pick up patterns that can enable you to better engage and catalyze your community.

It’s worth it.

I’d also suggest you read….

• “How Facebook Users Interact with Brands” as well. It’s another very intriguing article with stats and data that will help you better understand why people LIKE Pages and more.
• “5 Questions and Answers About Facebook Marketing” from Dan Zarella. Great info graphic that will give you some killer insights as well.

Question: Do you have a Facebook Page for your Brand or Business? What’s the link? Have you seen any trends or patterns in your followers that support what Vitrue’s findings suggest?

Related posts:

1. Increase Facebook Interactions and Engagement with this Simple Tool
2. Measuring Facebook’s Most Engaging Pages & “People Talking About This” Percentage
3. How Often Should You Blog? The Answer…