Throughout 2020 and 2021, social media grew more vital than ever as a tool for individuals to retain an immediate connection, discover new trends and interests and remain current on popular events.
To succeed in an unexpectedly quick digital revolution, brands had to pivot, and social marketers had to fight fatigue as the number of social interactions and message demands rose. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that our assessment of the best times to post on social media for 2021 revealed numerous significant changes in the data, with higher and variable involvement across platforms and sectors.
Given Facebook’s position as the most popular social media network in the world, it’s hardly surprising that there was nearly constant activity in 2020.
There were few truly ‘off’ moments for Facebook in the prior year’s data when compared to previous years. Weekends, late nights, and early mornings all have higher levels of interaction, making them significantly more beneficial periods for businesses to garner attention to their material.
Throughout 2020, Instagram stepped up new features like Reels, improved Stories, and pushed discovery on its Explore page. This makes it an ideal venue for social media audiences grappling with lockdown measures to discover and share new hobbies—something companies can use social listening to keep up with as these trends arise.
In 2020, the top times to post on Instagram grew in comparison to previous years, similar to Instagram’s parent firm Facebook. Midday involvement got even denser during the weekdays, with peak periods spanning the 11 a.m.–2 p.m. range, and nights and weekends saw increasing chances for participation.
Instagram is an excellent platform for companies to experiment with their content: strengthen their visual identity with high-quality photographs, or emphasise their brand’s graphic design efforts by displaying what they’ve generated for material such as graphs and statistics analyses. Instagram Live, like Facebook Live, burst in popularity in 2020 as a method for people to stay connected in a more immediate and less filtered way. Reels also allow for shorter, more viral-ready videos, which may be used to supplement your feed content. Instagram has dabbled with longer-form content by introducing Instagram Guides as a method to deliver more in-depth information on wellness, later expanding to other topics.
Twitter’s peak engagement hours remained strong across all weekdays in 2020, with additional periods of high interaction continuing into the nights. This might represent the platform’s continuous focus on creating news and updates, as well as its function as a source of amusement via viral Tweets and memes.
While Twitter defined itself as a source for up-to-the-minute news in 2020, it is also a significant area for customers to instantly connect with companies via discussions and mentions.
This implies that establishing a customer care plan in place is essential for the platform, as is moving beyond reacting to specific complaints and toward proactively enhancing the consumer experience through social media monitoring and voice of consumer data analysis. Due to these areas of attention, companies might have several and often competing agendas on Twitter.
How do you choose the optimum times to publish on social media?
When social marketers have data on the best times to publish across social networks, they can plan content more efficiently. Nonetheless, as companies continue to experience the effects of an exceptional and transformative year in digital media, new approaches to innovate emerge all the time. New content forms and trends may enable you to reach your audience in unexpected ways, or perhaps discover new segments and personalities you weren’t previously aware of.
While posting at peak engagement hours is a tried-and-true tactic, a deep audience analysis may show less busy times when your specific audience is online but rivals are not. A platform like Sprout Social may assist you in delving into your own statistics and developing customised discoveries for your accounts to supplement the huge range of data across sectors that we’ve reviewed here.
With The Social Lions, you can know the best posting hours and analyse what works best for your brand as well as your audience. Get in touch with us to know more.
