Businesses posting on Facebook naturally want to achieve the maximum possible reach. One of the strategies for accomplishing this is to post with strategic day-part timing. Here is what you need to know to get the most out of your participation on Facebook.

First, keep in mind that most Facebook users see your content in their own news feeds – not on your page. Facebook sorts each individual news feed according to each user’s demonstrated preferences, but to a large extent the news feed shows posts in chronological order. The posts on top are most likely to be be read, while the ones on bottom are often missed entirely. Most Facebook users read only a small percentage of what is available in their own news feeds. Therefore, posting at the time of day when there are the most users maximizes the reach of an individual post.

As you might imagine, Facebook’s lowest point is 3AM. The audience grows rapidly from 6am to 9am. The audience grows steadily from 9am, peaking at 1pm. From there, the audience troughs slightly. At 3pm, the audience starts growing again, reaching a peak at about 5pm to 6pm. Consistently, the greatest Facebook audience is at 9pm. The 9pm audience is 20% to 30% greater than the lunchtime audience and almost double the breakfast-time audience.

You might glean from this that the best time to post is 9pm. If you have a small fan base, this may work to your advantage, but for more established pages, 9pm is not optimal. The problem is that the Facebook audience drops off rapidly after 9pm. A Facebook post is “new” in news feeds for about three hours after it is posted or shared. The greatest three-hour block, by far, is from 6pm to 9pm. For maximum reach, the best time to post is about 6pm.

This does not mean that every post should be at 6pm. Every user has their own reading habits. Some read on their lunch breaks, some at breakfast, some after the rest of the family has gone to bed. By varying your post times on occasion, you maximize the total reach of your page. By posting at 6pm more often than not, you maximize the reach of each post.

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