Finding the best time to post on Facebook is a great way to boost engagement, drive traffic, and gain new followers.
But no Facebook Page is created equal — so how do you find your best time to post on Facebook?
In this blog, we’ll share how to find your best time to post on Facebook, plus how to automate your posts to maximize reach, and win back a ton of time!
P. S. check out these Later blog posts to know the best time to post across platforms:
When Is the Best Time to Post on Facebook in 2023?
When it comes to the best time to post on Facebook, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
Each Facebook Page is unique, with different audiences, cities, and time zones to consider. So while some encourage posting on weekends, others say the best time to post on Facebook is at 9am, no matter the day.
Here at Later, our social team found that the best time to post on Facebook is between the hours of 6am-12pm PST.
“It will really be determined on where your audience is located,” shares Later’s Social Media Manager, Christine Colling (more on this later).
You'll also want to avoid posting when your audience is offline, AKA the worst times to post on Facebook. These might include hours of slumber or long weekends when your audience is less likely to be scrolling.
This means finding your personalized best time to post on Facebook is integral to increasing the likelihood of followers actually seeing and engaging with your posts.
Ready to start scheduling your Facebook posts with Later? Sign up today — it's free!
How Do I Find My Best Time to Post on Facebook?
To find your best time to post on Facebook, you’ll need to do a little digging (and some testing) to figure out when your audience is most active.
To get you started, here are three tried and true tactics:
Use Facebook Page Insights
Check Facebook Audience Insights
Experiment with Posting Times
#1: Use Facebook Page Insights to Find Top Engagement Times
Facebook Page Insights has tons of useful data surrounding your Page’s performance — which can help you discover your top posting times!
Knowing when your audience is most engaged is a great indicator of when your best time to post might be.
You can find this data by opening your Facebook Page and clicking “Insights”.
On the left side of the screen, you’ll find different sections of your Page Insights, while the right side shows graphs and charts.
To start, scroll down to “Your 5 Most Recent Posts” section and click the title. This will open a graph showing when your followers are online:
TIP: If you hover your cursor over the days at the top of the page, you can see which ones result in the most engagement on your Page.
Facebook also tracks the reach and engagement of your Facebook posts to find when your followers are most likely to react, comment, and share your content.
To see this metric click “Posts” from your Page Insights and scroll down to “All Posts Published”:
Here you can sort posts by clicks, reactions, and more, to see the total engagement by type for each post:
Pay attention to the Published column timestamp — this tells you when each post was published to your Facebook Page and is a great way to track when your audience is most likely to engage with your content.
NOTE: Keep in mind that your engagement numbers may be a bit skewed if you boost your Facebook posts.
Schedule your Facebook posts to publish automatically with Later, for free! No early morning logins required!
#2: Check Facebook Audience Insights for Optimal Timezones
Facebook Audience Insights was designed to help plan and optimize your Facebook ad campaigns — but it’s also a valuable starting point to find your audience’s locations and top time zones.
Unlike Page Insights — which tracks interactions with your Page via reactions, comments, and shares — Audience Insights looks at your current or potential audience’s age, gender, and most importantly, location across all of Facebook.
To get started, select “Audience."
Scroll down to find the top cities and countries where your followers live. This is extremely helpful for pinpointing your top time zones and identifying when your audience is most likely to be online and active:
For instance, Colling notes, “most of our audience on Facebook are from the USA, UK, and South Africa, so posting when those three countries are online has worked best for us.”
So if you learn that the majority of your followers are based on the west coast of North America, consider experimenting with posting in the PST time zone.
TIP: You can also discover a breakdown of audience locations by using Facebook's Creator Studio.
#3: Experiment with Posting Times and Measure Your Progress
Once you have a clear idea of where your audience lives, it’s time to experiment and measure your progress!
For this, we recommend creating a spreadsheet to track how much engagement you receive when you post at different times, on different days.
Start by picking five different times throughout the week.
For example, if you notice that your followers are most active between 5 and 9 pm EST, schedule your posts to appear at 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 pm.
In your spreadsheet, track how many likes and comments each post receives, along with the date and time you posted them:
The following week, switch the timing of your posts for each day. For example, if you posted at 5 pm on Monday in week 1, post at 6 pm during week 2:
It might take a few weeks, but you can use this information to help determine the best days to share content with your audience, along with the times that work best to drive traffic.
How to Schedule for Your Best Time to Post on Facebook
Now that you know when your Facebook audience is most active, the last step is to schedule your Facebook posts to fit your best times to post on Facebook.
There are many reasons why you should be scheduling Facebook posts in 2023 (re: saving you tons of time and streamlining processes), but one of the top reasons is that you’ll be able to consistently publish content during optimal posting times.
For this, we recommend using Later’s Quick Schedule tool.
With Quick Schedule, you create “time slots” on your calendar based on the times of your choice:
Select your posting times once, and easily drag and drop posts onto your calendar — which will automatically be scheduled for your best times to post on Facebook:
Once scheduled, your post will automatically publish to your Facebook Page (no push notifications required) win-win!
Facebook is an incredible channel for brands and creators to achieve their marketing goals but to really stand out, you’ll need to re-think your posting strategy.
By nailing down your best time to post on Facebook, you can increase your chances of reaching your audience when they're online, active, and ready to engage!
So, what are you waiting for? Later makes it easier than ever to plan and schedule content to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more! Create an account today:
