What Time Should We Post to Our Facebook Page?

I get this question quite often, especially from churches and non-profits:

“What time of the day should we post to our Facebook page to make the most impact?”

It’s a tough question to answer given the number of variables and because every church/group has a different set of Facebook followers and likes. You’ll find a number of posts on the web giving you suggestions as well (such as this one from CoSchedule). However, churches and non-profits are different beasts than companies, so you have to keep that in mind when finding a good time for your posts.

Here are a few graphs we put together from four different churches and non-profits we work with at Harrelson Agency (anonymous and with their permission). The graphs display the times when the fans of a Facebook Page are using Facebook on their computer, iPad or mobile device over the span of the last month on average. All have relatively the same size of Facebook audiences (and are close to the same size in terms of members).

This is completely anecdotal data, but it looks like the peak time for the most users being online is around 9 PM (that’s especially true on the weekends). Some days like Mondays had fewer users on Facebook but the graphs display a pretty interesting average over the past month. So if you’re looking for the most immediate eyeballs, the afternoon into the evening is a better bet than first thing in the morning or into the late evening (though there are some advantages to that as well).

So take from that what you will… I think it’s pretty interesting. Keep in mind that there is a great deal of variance and data points to employ if you’re looking to come up with a specific marketing plan around Facebook posts. This is just to provide a rough approximation based on a data set that I came across and thought was intriguing.

And you should probably not post an important update at 3 AM.

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