When Is the Best Time to Post to Social Media?

When it comes to your social media strategy, does it feel less like a strategy and more like throwing things against the wall to see what sticks?

While that might be a good way to make spaghetti, doing that with your posts on social media can be a waste of time and money. It becomes especially difficult when you’re managing more than one social media platform.

Once you decide what to post – listings, blog posts, real estate information, real estate humor – which may seem like the easy part, then you have to figure out when you’ll post. Co-Schedule, Hootsuite, Hubspot, and Realtor Magazine have all tackled this topic over the years. Now, let’s simplify it for you, so you can make your social media marketing easier and faster, and get back to selling and listing real estate.

Facebook

The most popular of the social media platforms, it’s also the one that can send a marketer or business page owner into tears the easiest.

“What do you mean my funny cat video only got three views?!”

Try posting at these times for more engagement:

• Wednesday between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.
• Thursday and Friday between 1:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m.
• Saturday and Sunday between 12:00 p.m. and 1:00 p.m.

For the funny stuff – like that cat video – schedule it for a Friday which tends to do better for “happy” content. Studies show that posting around 1:00 p.m. gets more shares and posting around 3:00 p.m. gets more clicks.

Twitter

The nice thing about Twitter is that you can post the same content – blog posts, market stats, listings – multiple times. The average tweet only has a 24 minute cycle, so chances are most of your followers won’t see it the first time around.

No, this doesn’t mean posting the same tweet every hour on the hour. You’ll want to space them out over days and weeks.

Try these times for your next tweet:

• Monday through Friday, 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
• Wednesday, 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
• The highest retweets tend to happen around 5:00 p.m., and the highest amount of clicks occurs between 12:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m.

As a brand trying to find consumers (B2C), you’ll likely do well between Wednesday and Sunday, according to one survey.

LinkedIn

It probably comes as no surprise that the best times to post to LinkedIn are during the work week and during work hours. But, as with all the others, there may be better times to share your latest post.

You may not consider LinkedIn a great way to find buyers, but it can be an excellent resource for commercial real estate or simply to show your expertise.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are some of the best days to share content. It makes sense – Monday’s are often busy and stressful for anyone coming back into the office after a weekend off, and on Fridays, everyone is over on Facebook watching cat videos.

Best times to post:

• 7:30 a.m. – 8:30 a.m.
• 12:00 p.m.
• 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
• 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. on Tuesdays

Pinterest and Instagram

I know a lot of real estate agents who are trying to make their marketing much more visual which isn’t that difficult when you have great pictures of gorgeous listings. Some people believe that Pinterest and Instagram are interchangeable since they’re both image driven. Not quite. The two have their own audiences with their own habits.

Best times to post on Pinterest:

• Evening hours and between 2:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m., seven days a week
• On Fridays, 5:00 p.m.
• 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on Saturdays

I get it. You’re unable to sleep, tired from a long week, and browsing through Pinterest is the easiest thing in the world, especially from a phone or tablet. Or is that just me?

Because Instagram is primarily viewed on mobile devices, almost anytime of day is a good time to post – especially if you choose the right hashtags.

Best times to post on Instagram:

• Monday through Thursday, nearly any time of day
• Off work hours do very well

You’re probably wondering how you’re supposed to post to Pinterest at 3:00 a.m. or several times a day on Twitter and still sell real estate. Scheduling systems like Buffer, Hootsuite, and CoSchedule are your friends. You can take a little time once a week and plan out your social media posting for several days at a time.

And what if these times aren’t perfect for your business?

Don’t stress out over whether you should post at 3:01 p.m. on Tuesday or 4:15 p.m. on Friday. Use these days and times as a guideline. Try it out for a few weeks. Watch your analytics and see what works and what doesn’t.

Don’t keep doing something that doesn’t work just because a few surveys said that 6:34 p.m. on a Thursday under the full moon would get you the most likes on your Facebook post. Play around with the timing of your posts and when you see the pattern of which times, days, and types of content get the best response, keep doing that – even if you post a lot of cat videos on Friday afternoons.