One of the most important keys to success when it comes to social media, besides good quality content, would be proper timing. The right timing regarding your social media can mean life or death for your posts and essentially your social media image.
Every social media platform has its own unique audience but that audience then has special timing parameters for when they view their feed. Two examples would be Pinterest and Instagram. Pinterest has a high level of parents and at home moms which leads Pinterest to have a high view rate between 8AM-10AM. Instagram on the other hand tends to have a much younger demographic leading the high viewing times to be between 5pm-10pm. Knowing your platform’s audience peak times is highly beneficial to your success.
One thing that one must understand about each social media platform is how that platform distributes the information to a users feed. For example Instagram is instantaneous while Facebook uses an algorithm to show popular things over time not in a chronological order. This has its benefits and its drawbacks. Twitter may soon be releasing its own algorithm based feed which would be drastically different from its current feed.
The reason why this is important is how each platform will be used. In a recent consultation, a client brought up issues he had with Facebook posts for his restaurant’s lunch specials. I explained if he wanted to post the specials right before hand and deliver immediately then twitter or Instagram would be better for him. If he felt his customers were on Facebook more then I advised him he should post his lunch specials the night before. This was a two fold approach because it gave people advance warning and then when Facebook continued to show his post the next day the timing would still fit to drive people to his restaurant for lunch.
Once you understand how to post on each different platform, then you can begin to understand the proper response times as well. Often times social media can go unwatched by small business owners and marketing managers because they have other responsibilities. This can have a very negative effect on social media PR. An unanswered question or issue gives the idea that a company just doesn’t care. So please keep notifications on to help with this issue if you aren’t already aware of the suggested response times per social media platform.
The last timing issue is almost a no brainer but it does need attention. Frequency and consistency. All too often do I seen an Instagram account flood their followers with 18 post in an hour and not post anything else for another 2 weeks! Use common sense and space your posts out, don’t bombard your followers, and don’t fall off the face of the earth and reappear every few weeks!
Use time to help do the tough work for you. If you use it as a tool, then you won’t have to work as hard to get people to see you.
