I’ve often wondered when the best time of day to post an official Facebook Page update was. To find out, I analyzed some of the top Canadian Facebook Pages and the posts they made during the month of November.
What did I do?
I took a look at official Facebook Pages for iTunes Canada, Starbucks Canada, Gatorade Canada, Smirnoff Canada, Bauer Hockey, Nike Training, Reebok Hockey, Best Buy and Doritos. This was a not-quite-random sample of some of the top Canadian Facebook Pages, as per this list published by Social Bakers.
I looked at every official update posted by the page during the month of November, and wrote down what time (Eastern Time) the post was made and how many Likes and Comments the post received. I then took an average of these responses per hour, and created the fun little graph below.
What didn’t I do?
I didn’t analyze the sentiment of the responses, nor did I compare the different types of posts made by the pages (photo, video, external link, etc). I also didn’t look at comments made by users on the wall and not as a response to an official update from the Page.
This study also didn’t take into account any other strategies these pages might have had. If the page was encouraging their users to upload photos, or engage with an application or contest in a separate tab, I didn’t measure that.
What did I find?
It appears that the best time to post a status update from an official page is either early in the work day (9-10am) or in the early evening. Though I don’t have any data on when people are checking Facebook the most, I suspect that they are checking when they wake up or get into work in the morning, and again when are leaving for the day or arriving home. While they might check during other times, these might be the best times for users to interact with their favourite brands.
However, the outlier post at 7:58am one day received 180 responses, far more than that brand’s average. It made me think that perhaps earlier posts like this have a way of breaking through the cluttered Facebook newsfeed.
At the end of the day, you should know your audience and what will resonate best with them. This includes both the types of posts (should they include photos or video? Should they be questions, or encourage action?) and the time of day to post them.
Analyzing and thinking about this data was time well spent, as I’m confident that looking so closely at what all these pages are doing, what has been working for them and what hasn’t been working will provide me with some insight into what I can do for my own clients. ( I’m also confident that this would have been way easier to do with a desk and dual monitors instead of small laptop screen and a notebook on a folding seat-back tray during a cross-country flight.)
Note: I’m not a trained statistician. There are probably all sorts of “standard deviation” and “relevant sample” size things I’m not taking into account here. If you’ve got a better way analyze or present this data I’m not stopping (you). -I purposely did not look at any Facebook pages that I am currently or have previously worked on. -As in the “What I didn’t do” section above, there are lots of factors I didn’t look at. These might have resulted in different conclusions.
What could I have done differently or better with this study? What do you think of the results?
I’ve certainly got some ideas for how this type research could be improved. If you’ve got some spare time on your hands (ahem, students going into break?) and want to help BlogCampaigning, shoot me an email: parker (at) blogcampaigning.com.
-Parker
PS: Next up: an analysis of Facebook pages managed by PR agencies compared to those managed by ad agencies?