As you will have read here on the EML Wildfire blog, Facebook recently launched its new Timeline for brands feature. And the guide Facebook produced to help businesses get to grips with the changes is really useful and worth a read.

Reading through it again, I was struck by a comment and statistic that is hidden away on the last page:

On average, we have found that people visit and engage with Pages most often between 9pm and 10pm, with the 18-24 age group being the most active.

This made me think. How many companies have factored this into their social strategies? I’d be prepared to bet that the majority of companies will update social profiles within normal nine-to-five working hours. But, if this information is true, they might therefore be missing out on a key audience.

Test, test and test

Of course, this is an average across the entire Facebook ecosystem. Different companies and different audiences will use Facebook at different times.

So the best advice we’d give would be to use the power of Facebook analytics to test posting at different times and see what works best. Do interactions and engagement (e.g. likes, views etc.) increase at certain times of day and/or on different days of the week?

This is something we’ve advocated on Twitter for a long time. On the EML Wildfire Twitter account, for example, we find that posting first thing in the morning, at lunch and mid afternoon are the best times when it comes to replies and retweets.

But again, for different companies, these times will likely vary.

One of the great benefits of digital and social media PR is the ability to use analytics to be smarter about the way campaigns and strategies are put together.

So get testing…

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