According to Hootsuite, a social media management company, about 4.62 billion people worldwide use some social media website. That's over half of the world's 7.9 billion people. As such, any business that's looking to build its customer base needs to take advantage of social media's ability to appeal to a broad audience.
Yet, using social media isn't simply a matter of throwing out marketing content and hoping for the best. There's a technique to making the best of these social platforms, whether you're using Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn or a combination thereof. You have to know how to properly time your posts so that they reach the most people. Let's explore some of the ways clever marketers can take advantage of social media's wide reach.
The Best Time to Post
Social media platforms rely on posts from users, in which a person or organization creates some content and then broadcasts it to people in the networks they've built over time. Platforms' demographics (and the time those demographics tend to be active) vary, but as a general rule, the best time to post content is weekday mornings.
A recent article from the American Marketing Association came to this conclusion after analyzing data from popular social media management companies, like Hootsuite and Sprout Social among others. Their analysis indicates that social media users tend to be active in the mornings. If you time it right, "when your audience wakes up in the a.m. and starts scrolling their favorite platform, your post will be one of the top pieces of content in their feed. (It’s still pretty much a universal rule that the worst day to post is on Saturdays.)"
Facebook is still the king when it comes to social media reach, if only because it has the widest user base. According to data collected from Sprout Social, Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9:00 am to about 1:00 pm are the days and times when most users are active on Facebook. Similar trends are observable on Instagram. Other platforms, like Twitter and LinkedIn, tend to have more user engagement in the middle of the week.
In short, if you want to use the internet to draw in more potential customers, you should plan accordingly.
How to Reach the Most People
Consistency is key when it comes to social media posts. Posting on a regular basis drives up your profiles' SEO, and it also pushes your pages to the front of the line on people's content feeds. But reaching the most people means that you'll probably need to maintain several business pages, on multiple platforms no less, simultaneously.
Thankfully, there are quite a few tools out there that help businesses efficiently manage their social media presence. These platforms save you time and energy by centralizing the mechanics of different social media channels under one roof. One can easily link each of your social media pages onto a management site and then seamlessly control each from a central hub. They allow you to make and send out posts, receive and respond to direct messages and view relevant analytics to track the engagement on each of your pages.
Are you ready to start seriously managing your social media presence? Not sure where to begin? Web and Marketing USA can help you craft effective marketing strategies, increase your SEO, advise on content creation and guide you toward choosing the right social media management program to fit your needs. Click the REQUEST button below to schedule your free consultation.
