When you take the time to craft content for your Facebook page, you want it to have the greatest chance of being seen. One of the factors the Facebook algorithm considers when choosing which content to serve for each user is when that content was posted.

That means you need to know the best to post on Facebook in order to get your content seen by the most people.

Posting at the right time also helps boost other algorithm signals, like early engagement. After all, you can only get early engagement if your audience is online to see your posts soon after they’re published.

So how do you know what is the best time to post on Facebook for your business page? Is there a general best day and time to post on Facebook? In this post, we’ll answer these important questions and highlight tools you can use to find the best Facebook posting times on any given day of the week.

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Is there a best time to post on Facebook?

What is the best time to post on Facebook? In theory, it’s a simple answer: The best day and time to post on Facebook is when more of your followers are likely to be online.

This is when your audience is most likely to see your content and engage with it, which sends important signals to the Facebook algorithm to extend the reach of your posts.

In practice, it’s a little more complicated, since your audience is not necessarily the most active online at the same time as anyone else’s. Add in time zones and different social behaviors during weekdays and weekends, and things get a little tricky.

Here are some important factors to consider:

• The average Facebook Page posts 1.68 times per day.
• More than two-thirds (67%) of Facebook users log in every day.
• About half of Facebook users (49%) visit the platform multiple times per day.
• People spend an average of 33 minutes a day on Facebook.

So you have a few chances throughout the day to reach most Facebook users.

Fortunately, there are some great tools to help you learn the best day and time to post on Facebook for your specific Facebook Page. We’ll get into those in the last section of this post. For now, here are some general guidelines to use when planning your Facebook posting strategy.

Overall best time to post on Facebook

Based on an analysis of 30,000 social media posts, Hootsuite found:

The best overall time to post on Facebook is between 8 a.m. and noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Of course, you’ll need to think about the time zones in which your audience lives when planning these posting times.

For example, the Hootsuite social team likes to post at times that work for both the Eastern and Pacific time zones in North America, since that’s where many of Hootsuite’s Facebook followers are based.

That means 6:15 a.m. PST, 9:15 a.m. PST and 12-12:30 p.m. PST are usually the best posting times. That first slot may seem awfully early for followers on the West Coast, but it’s already 9:15 in the major centers or Toronto and New York by then, so it’s the perfect time to reach Eastern time zone followers as they sip their first workday coffee. It also catches audiences in the UK and Europe while they’re still at work, reaching them mid-afternoon.

“We are aware that our audience is global,” says Eileen Kwok, Hootsuite’s Social Marketing Coordinator. “So we try to schedule posts at different time marks to increase our chances of our posts getting viewed by a variety of followers.”

Best times to post on Facebook for every day of the week

In addition to the best time of day, you need to think about which days of the week make the most sense for publishing your content.

For example, the Hootsuite social team finds that Mondays through Wednesdays are the most effective days to post on Facebook. That doesn’t mean Hootsuite only posts Mondays through Wednesdays. You just have to think strategically about ways to boost relevance and engagement on those non-peak days.

“When we publish over the weekends or holidays we try our best to make the content playful or something aligned with the holiday/cultural moments taking place,” says Brayden Cohen, Hootsuite’s Manager, Social Marketing.

Hootsuite’s Social Media Marketing Coordinator, Eileen Kwok, adds that you can help boost engagement on non-peak days with specific copywriting techniques:

“Writing copy that is relevant to the day of the week can help boost engagement,” Kwok says. “For example, on Friday morning, posting something like, PSA: Remember to schedule your posts for the weekend would be a helpful reminder to our audience.”

With all that said, here are the peak times to post on Facebook day by day, based on a Facebook heatmap of when Hootsuite fans are online. (Learn how to find your own custom Facebook heatmap in the final section of this post.)

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Best time to post on Facebook on Monday

The best time to post on Facebook on Monday is between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST.

The worst time is between 9 p.m. and midnight.

Best time to post on Facebook on Tuesday

The best time to post on Facebook on Tuesday is between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST.

The worst time is between 9 p.m. and midnight.

Best time to post on Facebook on Wednesday

The best time to post on Facebook on Wednesday is between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST.

The worst time is between 8 p.m. and 1 a.m.

Best time to post on Facebook on a Thursday

The best time to post on Facebook on Thursday is between 6 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST.

The worst time is between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m.

Best time to post on Facebook on a Friday

The best time to post on Facebook on Friday is between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST.

The worst time is between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m.

Best time to post on Facebook on a Saturday

The best times to post on Facebook on Saturday are at 8 a.m. or from 10 to 3 p.m. EST.

The worst time is between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m.

Best time to post on Facebook on Sunday

The best time to post on Facebook on Sunday is between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST.

The worst time is between 8 p.m. and midnight.

6 tips for finding your own best time to post on Facebook

The overall recommendations for the best time to post are a good guideline to get you started before you have your own data to dig into. But like we said above, you’ll get the best results if you tailor your posting time to your specific audience.

Here are some ways to find your own best posting time data.

1. Use Hootsuite

The heatmap used in the section above comes from Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature. It shows you the best day and time to post on Facebook based on your specific goals:

• Increasing reach
• Building brand awareness
• Increasing engagement
• Driving traffic

Hootsuite also uses your specific audience data and past post performance to recommend optimal posting times within the Composer, so you can select the best time with a simple click.

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2. Check your audience demographics

While your target audience demographics won’t tell you when your followers are online, they will at least give you a sense of the time zones that are important for you to consider when planning your post times.

To find your audience demographics, open Meta Business Suite and click Insights, then Audience.

Scroll down to Top Cities to see where most of your followers are based. Here’s what this looks like for my Facebook Page:

Source: Meta Business Suite

It’s clear that I should plan my posting times around the Pacific Time Zone. Taking a look at your own Top Cities may reveal time zone clusters that you can focus on, too.

If you have an existing customer database that includes shipping addresses, this is another good source of timezone data.

3. Review past performance

Analyzing past performance can help predict what will work in future. If you’ve already been posting on Facebook for a while, take a look at your recent posts to see which ones have the highest reach.

Reach indicates the number of people who saw your post at least once, so this is a good representation of how much of your audience you reached with a post. There are many metrics for evaluating the success of a particular post, but reach is the most useful one for getting a sense of how effective your timing was for maximizing views.

To see the reach for your most recent posts, open Meta Business Suite, then go to Facebook Insights in the left menu. Click Content, then use the drop-down menus in the top left to select a 90-day timeframe and remove Instagram posts from the analysis. Click the Reach column header to sort posts by the highest reach, and then click on your top posts to see the posting times.

You can also easily access Facebook reach data alongside stats from all your other social channels in Hootsuite Analytics.

4. Test and tweak

Testing is an effective way to refine many aspects of your social media strategy. This also applies to learning what is the best time to post on Facebook for your business.

In order for your timing tests to be effective, you need to use very similar types of content. Otherwise, it will be unclear whether the time has an impact on the reach of your post, or if it’s seeing wider exposure because of high engagement.

If you regularly share links to content from your blog, try crafting similar posts – with similar lengths and styles of headlines and similar styles of photos. Then, share the posts at different times.

Again, this will not give you specific data about the best times to post, but you may start to see some general trends. You can then continue to test within narrower limits and refine your post timing strategy over time.

You can find more best practices for testing in our beginner’s guide to A/B testing on social media.

5. Ask your audience

Of course, it doesn’t make sense exactly to ask your audience when they want you to post on Facebook. But it does make sense to ask them when would be the most convenient time for them to participate in a Facebook Live event.

To use this strategy, do some brainstorming to come up with something valuable you can offer in a Facebook Live. Maybe it’s a chance for your audience to ask questions in real time, or to see a special live performance.

Once you’ve got your content idea, tease your Live event with a post announcing the special live experience you’re working on. Then ask your audience when would be the most convenient time for them to participate. Asking people to comment on the announcement post is a good way to collect real data from your most interested followers.

6. Be consistent

When you’re first testing to see what times work best to post Facebook content, your posting schedule might be a little all over the place. But once you start to get a sense of what works, your goal should be to aim for consistency.

That means if you find a time that seems to work well for your audience, it’s a good idea to start posting consistently at that time. Your audience will come to expect content from you on that schedule, which will lead to greater overall engagement.

You can still continue to test other times. Remember, the average Facebook business page posts 1.68 times per day, so you have more than one opportunity every day to see what might work best.

You can also play around with formats like Stories and Reels to experiment with new content sharing times while continuing to maintain a consistent posting schedule for Feed posts.

Get personalized recommendations for the best time to post on every network and manage your Facebook presence alongside other social channels with Hootsuite. From a single dashboard, you can schedule and publish posts, engage the audience, and measure performance. Try it free today.

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The post The Best Time to Post on Facebook in 2023 [SOLVED] appeared first on Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard.