We all want to find the best times to post on Facebook to help get our content noticed and to grow our following. However, how do you actually find when these times are? Do you look at general studies? Post at different times and see what happens? The simple answer to these questions is to look at the data.

This article will go through how to research the best times to post on Facebook for yourself rather than relying on general data published online. As we will see, all you need to do to find a social media tool that provides “best time to post” analytics and follow a few simple steps.

Why you Should Care about When to Post on Facebook

Finding the best times and days to post on Facebook is important for a few reasons. First, Facebook takes into account the engagement rates of profiles when determining what posts are favored by the algorithm. When you post at the time when your audience will be more likely to engage with the content, then you have a greater chance of bettering your standing with the algorithm, which helps you increase your reach.  

The second reason is that you simply want to find when your audience is most active so they interact with your posts. No matter if you are a business or influencer, you want to do anything to help boost your post interaction rates and get people to engage with your content. 

For many companies, discovering when is the best time to post on Facebook for a business is essential for reaching new customers and getting your product or service recognized. All businesses want to find the best time to post on Facebook for likes, comments and shares. The key, then, is to find what times correlate with the highest post interaction rates.

Why Articles on Finding the Best Time on Facebook may be Misleading

Chances are you have come across a number of articles giving you tips about when to post on Facebook since they conducted a study. These studies are based on data, so why wouldn’t you trust them? In reality, the issue at hand is not about trust since these articles can, at times, be helpful. However, they don’t take into account a variety of factors that dramatically affect when YOU should post. 

Finding the best times to post on Facebook for businesses can mean the difference between showcasing your product or service to your intended audience, or missing out on potential interactions and reach. If you are relying on studies that are not focusing on your industry, timezone, or target audience, then these best times to post studies may not actually be helping you. Searching for the best times to post on Facebook should be tailored to your profile and not general times that take into account thousands of profiles across the globe and in different industries and niches.

Finding the Best Times to Post on Facebook

Below, we will walk through the steps you should take when finding the best times to post on Facebook. As we go through the steps, we will continually refer to a concrete example to help illustrate how you should go about finding the best times to post on Facebook for your business or brand. 

In this case, we will look at a variety of European and American car brands. Our data set will include: BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Ford, GMC, Mercedes-Benz, Opel, Peugeot, Porsche, and Renault. Please note that we will be using the main corporate profiles for these brands, as some of them may have region-specific profiles as well. 

Our goal is to analyze their performance and posts in order to understand when we should post if we were a new car brand looking to start promoting our vehicles in these markets.

Step 1: Determine what Profiles to Track

Determining when is the best time to post on Facebook has a lot to do with what profiles you are including in your data set. For this reason, the first step to finding the best times to post on Facebook for your own profile is to decide who your industry peers are and whether they are targeting the same audience as you. It is important to always ask yourself who has the same target audience and whether they are posting content on the same topics or issues as you.

Step 2: Choose the Timeframe for your Data

In going through the steps to better understand what are the best times to post on Facebook, you should always be aware of how the timeframe you choose for analysis can affect your data output. Let’s take our example into account in this case. 

If your new car brand is only focused on the European and North American markets, it doesn’t make sense to include profiles that are focused on the Chinese and Japanese markets, even if they are similar industry-wise. Determining when is a good time to post on Facebook should be focused on the timezones in which your audience lives.

Let’s look at a few examples of how the timeframe you select can change your data output. First, we will look at the best posting times for a 6-month period that runs from January 2023 to June 2023 for the car brands mentioned above. Please note that the greener a circle you see means there is a higher relative post interaction rate, while the larger a circle, the more was posted in that particular time. 

As you see, there are a number of areas when we may consider posting such as mornings on Monday, Tuesday, Saturday, and Sunday as well as later in the evening on Saturday and Sunday.

Next, let’s look at how our data output may change if you only focus on a single month, in this case November 2023. Since we are only looking at a single month, rather than 6 months of data, we will be analyzing a much smaller, but more focused timeframe.

As you see above, there is some general overlap in times that may represent good times to post, such as Monday and Tuesday mornings. However, this more focused analysis also shows a number of new opportunities, such as on Friday afternoons, that didn’t look so promising when analyzing the data from the first 6 months of the year.   

We see that even though we are looking at the same profiles, the change in timeframe can alter our results. Why might you consider looking at a certain month? There may be a few reasons for this. First, we may work in an industry that has a busy period with sales or other promotions, which changes the behavior of our audience. In this case, you may want to focus on a specific timeframe to focus more closely on these certain periods. 

Second, we may want to focus on the historical data from a particular type of year since we may be running a specialized campaign. In this case, we don’t want more generalized insights, but rather specific insights into, for example, the best posting times in July.

The important point here is that the timeframe you choose to analyze can have implications for finding the best times to post on Facebook.

Step 3: Run your Analysis

Once you complete the first two steps and have selected the profiles you will analyze and the timeframe you are interested in, it’s time to study the best days and times to post on Facebook. When looking at the data output, you want to, of course, look at the average post interaction rates for a given time and day (how green a circle is on the chart). However, you should also look at when your competitors might be posting and give special focus to those times where you can expect the smallest number of competitor posts (look for small circles).  

You should also put significant thought into running different analyses of your data. For instance, perhaps you want to run specific campaigns for your North American and European audiences separately from one another to focus on the unique aspects of each market.

In this case, it may make sense to separate the profiles you are tracking and study the data output. Let’s walk through an example. We will focus on the summer of 2023 and analyze three different data outputs related to the profiles we are studying: 1) both European and US car brands; 2) only American car brands; 3) only European car brands.

To start, we will review the data output when we analyze the profiles of both US and European car brands we mentioned above. 

At first glance, we can see from the data that mornings on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday may be good times to post our content. However, let’s then look at the data output when we only include car brands based in the US and exclude those in Europe.

As you can see, the data output suggests that afternoons on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, as well as Saturday evening, may be good times to post. Finally, we will only look at European car brands.

In contrast to when we include only the North American profiles, we see that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday mornings are good times to consider posting. 

By looking more closely at the location of our profiles, we come to very different ideas of when to post. We are only analyzing 14 profiles in total (7 European and 7 American) so our initial data set is fairly small. This is especially the case when looking only at the 7 profiles in Europe and the United States, respectively. However, our examples show us not only that our data changes with increase or decrease to our data set, but also why we need to understand where our data comes from.  

However, selecting profiles in a particular timezone is not the only way you can adjust and study your data. For instance, on Facebook, you may be posting a video, reel, or a link, and you may be interested in understanding what time is best to posts those content types. For instance, if you often post reels, you would mostly likely then want to find the best time to post Facebook reels.

If you are looking to modify your analysis for content type, in this case to find best times to post reels on Facebook, you simply need to make an adjustment to your data output in the setting section of the Fanpage Karma tool. This means that if you are investigating when is the best time to post reels on Facebook, you only need to select the correct setting without having to create a new dashboard.It is important to note that if you want to find the best times to post reels on Facebook, you should be sure that the profiles you are studying actually post reels on Facebook and that they do so often enough for your dataset to be meaningful.

Step 4: Implement your Findings and Monitor

Just knowing when is best time to post on Facebook will not help you if you don’t act on your research. There are, of course, many factors that go into determining when you will post on your Facebook profile, such as your overall content strategy or when you are running a promotion. However, if you are not paying attention to what your data analysis is telling you, then you are missing out on a significant amount of potential. 

Keep in mind that simply finding out when the best times to post on Facebook are, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to focus on your actual content. Knowing what times are correlated to high post interaction rates is only one part of the battle. You also need to create engaging and relevant content for your audience in order for it to be successful.You should always monitor your performance on Facebook even when relying on data to find the best time to post. The best day and time to post on Facebook for your profile can change since your audience behavior could evolve over time, especially if you are growing your following. All-in-one social media tools come with monitoring and benchmarking features that help you to continually assess your progress and compare it to your competitors.

The Best Time to Post on Facebook

Finding out when to post on Facebook requires some work, but can provide your business with real benefits. By thinking clearly and carefully about what data you want to analyze, as well as what timeframe is relevant for you, you can use advanced social media analytic capabilities to find the best times to post on Facebook. 

If you are interested in finding the best time to post on Facebook for your own profile, Fanpage Karma offers a free 14-day trial of its all-in-one social media tool which includes benchmarking, planning and publishing, community management, and research features. 

Fanpage Karma also offers a free weekly webinar that highlights how to use social media tools to help you with your social media activities.