When’s the Best Time to Post on Facebook?

August 15, 2017
By Zack Poelwijk

We may think we know when the best time to post on Facebook is. But have you actually checked it out? The data doesn’t lie! Here’s how to tell when’s the best time to post on Facebook.

Open up the admin of the Facebook page you want to check out. Then click on the Insights tab. Then click on Posts. There’s a report called “When Your Fans Are Online” that visually shows an average of how many people are on your page and when. Using the days of the week numbers at the top, you can also see how these numbers vary on specific days of the week. In our case, Thursday showed the highest numbers. Tuesday showed the lowest numbers. Tuesday was a 230-person difference from the highest.

Here’s the data for how many people are on the page at 6am, Pacific time. More than 91,000. That’s 9am Eastern time. I always take into account that Facebook visitors are not all in the same time zone as I am.

Compare that to the data for how many people are on the page at 9am (noon Eastern time). There’s almost an 18,000-person difference!

When you open Facebook, it’s algorithm springs into action. It scans and collects everything posted by each of your friends, and activities in your groups. It remembers all of the things you’ve liked. No one outside of Facebook knows the actual formula for what it displays to its users. It takes some combination of what it believes to be the order of importance you’ll prefer based on your past actions. Out of what could potentially be thousands of posts, the average user may only see the top hundred or so.

If Facebook shows something and it doesn’t get reactions, it’s not likely to show it again. That’s why the more likes or comments a post has, the more likely it is for others to see that particular post. To maximize your exposure, post at the optimum time for your group of fans.

We checked out the Insights for the pages we manage and they all followed this general shape of the curve shown in these screenshots. They also showed a bump in views at the 6pm hour.

If you post earlier in the day and get a lot of activity on your 9am post, it’s more likely that the 6pm crowd will see that post. If you use another social media platform like Instagram or Twitter, try to get some data on those platforms and coordinate, so each of your posts is getting the max exposure.