When is the best time to post on social media?

When we talk about the best time to post on social media, you always have to keep your list of priorities in mind when working on social media. It's true that the time you post is fundamental, but so is content quality and countless other factors. And many of them are more important than the time.

The top priority is to post at all, then content quality and consistency, and four or five spots further down we have timing. That's because each social network processes information differently. Some take longer and others less, the algorithms move a lot when deciding when to show each post, and the best times for each one can change too.

Study the time slots and the different ways your audience behaves over the days and weeks. See how it works and how they react. No article will ever be as good and precise as knowing your own audience.

Even so, at Polimake we do work with what we call "time slots," and we understand very well that audience behavior changes throughout the day. Just like television (and how advertising is designed around it), we also define a set of time slots. Hours when a different type of content gets posted.

Pre-Breakfast (6 - 10)

Pre-breakfast is the earliest moment to post content. You prepare content for breakfast, posting it very early if the social networks take a while to process it. And closer to the time a person picks up their phone and would check it over breakfast. An interesting spot for adding content that will be seen throughout the day (as on social networks like Pinterest).

Pre-Lunch (10 - 12)

Pre-lunch is usually when we put up the second post on social media, if you post two a day. A lot of content has been tested successfully at this hour. It lets you spread things out (one at night, the most eye-catching one, and one mid-morning) so it gets viewed during free moments.

Pre-Midday Meal (12 - 14)

The pre-midday meal is also a good moment targeted at the "corporate" zone. On top of that, we've noticed that if we want to run a CTA (grab users' attention), it's successful.

If we want to promote a product you can buy at a supermarket, you can do it before the midday meal because a lot of people do their shopping around mealtime. For example, going to a restaurant or ordering delivery. Our favorite hour and the best time to post "formal" content on social media.

Pre-Afternoon Snack (14-17)

Next we have a slot where we don't usually post much content. Mainly because many users have different schedules and it's hard to measure. Some take a nap, others are heading to work or leaving. Even so, it's also a moment when companies tend to have a lighter workload and content gets posted and consumed more.

Pre-Dinner (17 - 21)

Pre-dinner is one of the most important moments we have for social media. Dinner is what we call prime time, and we usually place it at 9 p.m. For us it's the most important entertainment slot, because people have gotten home. The kids should have finished their homework and are having a bit more downtime. People are passing the time before dinner or consuming content after dinner with a TV in front of them. A very important spot, and one where we always try to place eye-catching pieces of content.

Pre-Bed (21 - 23)

Next comes pre-bed, or post-dinner. This is when people tend to consume content on their phones while watching TV or about to fall asleep in bed. It's a fairly common spot where we notice attention spikes. At the same time, these moments encourage "digital" sharing more. Kids at school physically share by "showing each other their phones" during recess. But if they're not together, content gets shared through the social network instead.

And this helps our KPIs. Social networks act as communication pipes, and as a result, our content will perform much better. Our favorite hour and the best time to post "casual" content on social media.