For many smaller retailers, Facebook pages are a key marketing tool.
Retailers post cooking school schedules, holiday sales, as well as daily promotions to the social media network and many keep a more personal log about their stores, as a way to underscore their community presence with local customers.
But few track just when they post to Facebook with any regularity. And as it turns out, they should, as there is an art behind the science of effective Facebook posts: it is all in the timing.
A study conducted by Klout, a website that tracks the impact of social media, finds that with Facebook, as with true love, timing is everything.
Klout researchers analyzed more than 25 million Facebook posts and over 100 million reactions to those posts and found that, perhaps not surprisingly, some posting times are better than others if you want people to pay attention.
For instance, late mornings and early afternoons on Tuesdays and Wednesdays tends to get more reaction. But the ideal time also depends on your location.
New York stores should share their latest Facebook posts just before noon and definitely not at 3 a.m., when Facebook engagement reaches its lowest point. In San Francisco, the best time to post timings is much earlier, between 9 and 10 a.m.
The chance that someone will pick up on your store’s post changes throughout the week, Klout researchers found. And they say most “likes” and “shares” come within two hours of posting, versus Twitter, which had a more immediate reaction. Twitter users typically reacted within 30 minutes of a post.
The report also found that Twitter engagement has more ups and downs than on Facebook, with both networks peaking between 7 and 8 p.m., but with Twitter losing more than half of its activity on weekends, whereas Facebook maintains its user base throughout the weekend.
