I knew this. So I wasn’t surprised by the results.
If you post to LinkedIn on Friday afternoon your post won’t get seen by nearly as many people, because most people have dialed back their weekly social media activity by then and are less likely to be on LinkedIn over the weekend, either.
Last Friday afternoon I had coffee with marketer Samantha Stone and we swapped books. We took a selfie and, since this was a real-time activity, I immediately posted it to LinkedIn. By Monday morning it had gotten 26 likes and 5 comments, but was only seen by 382 people. Over 7 percent of the people who saw the post engaged with it – a very high engagement rate – but many people ended up seeing it.
Compare that to a post earlier in the week that got 6 likes and 1 comment but was seen by 1,407 people!
I find on LinkedIn that posting around 7 or 8 AM on Tuesday or Wednesday, maybe Thursday, produces the greatest engagement and visibility for a post. But late in the week or on the weekend generally results in far less.
Now, this is going to vary depending on the platform and the demographics of your audience, of course. Posts to Instagram may be seen and engaged with throughout the weekend, and the same for Facebook. Test and see what works for you.
But for professional social media, stick to the middle of the work week.
And for emails, similarly, I’m surprised at people who send their weekly email on Friday afternoon. Generally that’s not going to get a lot of play. Emails to senior people early on Saturday morning, though, often do well because they use the weekend to catch up on non-essential reading.
