Find the best time on Facebook that can help promote your business name; at the same time, increase reach more effectively to target customers even when the overall reach of Facebook tends to decrease.
This time is also referred to briefly as “Facebook golden hour”.
However, it is not easy to accurately determine that precious “golden” time.
That is why I am writing this article!
In this article, I would like to share to readers how to locate the appropriate period of updating the fanpage’s content so that it is easy to promote the amount of interaction, participation from users as well as enhance the brand of the company.
Let’s find out together now!
What is the best time on Facebook?
In fact, there is no certain time frame to update facebook.
A lot of research has been trying to discover “the best time to post to Facebook” and most other social media marketing channels. Each study found a different set of results.
Here are some of the most notable results:
- From 13:00 to 15:00 every Thursday and Friday (with Hubspot)
- Every 20 pm Thursday nights (with TrackMaven)
- From 13:00 to 16:00 on weekdays and weekends (with CoSchedule)
- No peak hours (with Buzzsum)
Marketers can rely on the above results to find the right direction for their businesses.
However, whatever time frame you choose, you should keep in mind that the golden time depends on a number of specific factors, such as: what field are you working in? Where do potential customers usually appear? When are they usually online? Are your posts running ads?
For me, instead of looking for a best timeframe for posting, maybe we should focus on what is the right time for an online business brand to work best?
Why not have a certain Facebook golden hour milestone?
The content on Facebook is an important element that we need to consider carefully.
Because in a day, hundreds of thousands of content is shared on Facebook. The task of the Facebook News Feed Crush algorithm is to determine the content displayed for each appropriate user audience.
In a business journal, Brian Boland, Facebook’s vice president of advertising technology, once said:
“On average, there are 1,500 stories that can appear in a user’s News Feed every time they log into Facebook. For those who have lots of friends and likes on the Page, this number can be up to 15,000 potential stories that are likely to appear whenever they are online Facebook.
As a result, the competition on News Feed – where people follow posts from family, friends and businesses alike – is growing. That is, the possibility of an article being displayed on the News Feed of potential customers will become even more difficult.”
In fact, whenever you post to Facebook, you are basically competing with at least 1,500 other companies or users to get a place in the News Feed and time is just one of the factors that determine what content should appear.
With this in mind, the best time to post can also be the most risky time.
One study found that the best time to publish content is at 6pm every Friday night, and every brand tries and pushes content to their audience at this time. As a result, very few of those posts will be displayed with a high level of competition.
This is similar for businesses that do not operate at a peak time frame. If only to avoid the competitive situation, some brands redirect post-peak hours, they will accidentally create a different competitive environment. At that time, they returned to the peak hour.
In general, this problem is quite vague, there is no answer that is really clear. In other words, there is no set time frame for updating Facebook content.
Facebook posting strategy – best time on Facebook
In turn, you must use strategy to post on Facebook.
I suggest table 2 approach as simple as this:
- Rely on data
- Select the appropriate time frame depending on the content of the article
Each method will be interpreted as follows:
Rely on data
When it comes to marketing and digital strategies, data is always the most effective solution.
Luckily, Facebook always has a wealth of data available to all site owners and administrators.
Moreover, a comprehensive understanding of the audience on Facebook and how the content works will bring you more success than the common knowledge that is drawn from the research on many different pages from a variety of other industries and brands.
Select the appropriate time frame depending on the content of the article
This method is a bit scientific. Specifically, some content will only work best at a certain time of day.
Especially for the business, the posting time must really match each article content.
A 2019 golden hour study of Sproutsocial
Suppose, if you had an ad on a local television station, it is best to create and share content on social networks in parallel to the broadcast time.
How to use Facebook Insights to find out the Facebook golden hour
A number of studies show that Facebook Insights is another solution to help find the Facebook golden hour.
To take advantage of this feature, first, select the Insights displayed at the top of the page:
In the dashboard of Page Insights there are many types of data available for you to choose. In this article, I will delve into some specific areas to help you discover when to post on Facebook:
Determine the time frame of online page followers
From the Insights dashboard, select “Posts” in the left column menu to open a detailed breakdown of date and time followers on the most online site:
The chart above shows the average time of the week. You can hover over each day to see how the overall situation changes from day to day on average.
Here is an example of Buffer’s Facebook page search trends on Sundays (the dark blue line is the data for Sunday):
Summary of data from the 2 pictures above:
Both images are data collected from Buffer’s Facebook page. Maybe, their customers are usually online 7 days a week and almost no days increase significantly.
Besides, from about 9 am, the number of people online gradually increased until about 4 pm. After that, it starts mitigating.
There are many ways to explain this data. For me, this would suggest that the best time for Buffer to post is between 9 am and 5 pm when their customers are most online on Facebook.
However, I think Buffer should also test different time frames in between this time period to see if any time frame works well.
Another test that Buffer tried was to post at times that were not during peak hours. Specifically, Brian, the company’s social media manager, recently tried posting in fewer online hours and found that the most effective time among them was from 3 am to 5 am.
Find best time on Facebook from posts that were once successful
Facebook Insights is also responsible for recording the number of hits and interactions of each article shared on the page.
This data can be found in the same place as the data about when the user is online.
To view data on the amount of interaction, first go to Insights -> select “Posts”. Then scroll down to the bottom of the chart to display the online time of the user. You immediately stop the “All Posts Published” section to review, as shown below.
Here, in the “Published” column, you can see the date and time when each post was published on your Facebook Page.
With this data, you can find trends related to time. For example, posts published at specific intervals are likely to receive more exposure or interaction.
Note: If your post is under Advertising Sponsorship or Boosted (like many of the posts in the screenshot above), this may also skew your data a little because these posts have intention to gain more hits than regular posts no matter when they are posted.
What does this data tell us?
I personally think the data on Buffer’s Facebook Page seems to be unconvincing. Obviously, posts published between 10am – 12pm as well as posts around 5pm seem to work quite well. However, I think they should want to test more variables before drawing clear conclusions.
Put data into actual operation
Once you have determined the best time to post to Facebook, you should test those results in practice.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to schedule your Facebook posts. This will help you avoid wasting time opening Facebook and proceeding to post manually.
Here is a quick guide on how to check post time using Buffer:
Connect your Facebook page with Buffer
First, you access the dashboard of Buffer.
Then, if you use the free Personal Plan, click the “Connect more” button at the bottom left of the dashboard and then click on the “Pages” or “Groups” section in the Facebook options section.
If you use a paid plan (Business), click the “Add social network account” button at the top left of the dashboard and select “Facebook Page” or “Facebook Group.”
Set a new schedule – best time on Facebook
Once you have connected your Facebook Page to Buffer, you only need to set the ideal posting time (as if it were a timetable) and Buffer will automatically schedule your content to show at those times.
To set a schedule, select the social account where you want to customize the posting schedule on the left side of the dashboard. Then, click “Settings”, select “Update timetable”.
From the menu shown as the picture above, under the “Add a New Posting Time” option. Then, select the date you want to add.
In addition to being able to choose a specific number of days, you also have the option of adding post times under the “daily”, “weekdays” or “weekends” sections.
Once you have selected, continue to adjust the posting time and then click on the “Add Posting Time” box to finish the process.
Note that you can still change hours and / or minutes at any time. In case you want to delete a certain time frame from the schedule, you hover over that time and click the “X” icon.
Add content
Once you have completed the steps above, it is time to focus on the content
In fact, when scheduling a post, you do not need to think about the update date and time, all you need to do is add it to the “Queue” section. It will automatically be placed into the next available time frame and published as a regular post.
Focus on content creation as well as posting time
If you want to be successful on Facebook, you need to appreciate the importance of the entire content area of the post.
I will take a simple example like this:
When one of your Facebook friends gets married, you will most likely see their wedding photos show up regularly at the top of the News Feed, regardless of how long they have posted. This happens because wedding photos, whether you like them or not, have great content and as soon as they post, a bunch of people like, share and comment on them.
It is this interactive element that helps the wedding photo show more than once and get more attention and better feedback.
CONCLUSION
You see, capturing the golden hour of Facebook is an important factor contributing to the success of business activities on Facebook.
Not only does it increase the amount of interaction as well as the ability to interact effectively with customers, but determining the appropriate time frame for posting Facebook also brings financial benefits to the company and also enhances the brand to a new level.
But always remember, there is no certain golden time for all Facebook pages and posts.
It completely depends on the content of the article, the data you collect from Facebook Insights as well as the strategy you set for each content campaign to update.
What are you waiting for without taking advantage of Facebook’s golden hour?
Try it out and share your experience with me through the comment section below!
Good luck to you!