The best time to post on LinkedIn is important to know, especially if you are using LinkedIn for business purposes; whether you are focusing on building credibility with your audience or if you are focusing on lead generation.
Post at the wrong time, and your carefully crafted content won’t reach as many users as it could. If you are going to the effort of creating compelling content, or even sharing content in the first place, you want it to have maximum exposure. This is why you want to give some thought to your strategy and find the best time to post on LinkedIn.
As you begin, remember that LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site, so you can logically assume that your highest level of activity should be on business days, and during business hours.
Issues with Posting Times
Having said that, business days and business hours mean different things to different people all over the world. If your audience is entrepreneurs, for instance, “business hours” may be spread throughout the whole day- starting early and going late.
This is why knowledge of your target audience is crucial when finding the best time to post on LinkedIn, or on any social media site.
Time Zones
This means people are at work and on social media 24/7/365. If you are looking for a range of opportunities in your home country and/or specific location, however, you should post according to the typical business schedule in your area, such as Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 Eastern Time. If you were in London, you would post Monday through Friday Greenwich Mean Time; if in Dubai, Sunday to Thursday, 8AM to 1PM and 4PM to 7PM.
The Right Timing
The right timing can be related not to the clock face, but to you getting in first with the latest news (content that will engage instantly at the time it is read/seen) and how important it is to your target audience. This will usually be during business hours, and will also often be related to the time of day.
For example, morning is a good time for breaking news. Lunchtime might be good for publishing interesting and thought-provoking reads about important topics in your niche. Content published in the early evening, before people sign off from work for the day, can also get a lot of attention – provided it is useful and does not seem like spam.
The social marketing site HubSpot analyzes social media activity across a number of platforms. 80% of US workers are in the Eastern and Central time zones. The best days to post content on LinkedIn are between Tuesday and Thursday, before and after work. They tend to read LinkedIn content like the morning paper, logging in from 7 to 8am. Other times to post include noon and 5 to 6pm. They suggest 5 to 6 as the best times to post. This infographic shares more about the best times to post: Hubspot infographic
Interesting and Entertaining
Mondays and Fridays are clearly a person’s busiest days, getting set up for the work week, and winding down from it. If you are going to post on those days, keep it short, sweet and actionable – something they can do to make their lives better in some way. For example, post a great PowerPoint presentation on their sister site SlideShare and link to it via your account. The content will be interesting and entertaining if presented well.
And when LinkedIn users do visit your profile, make sure it’s solid, using the tips in this article: Effective LinkedIn profile
Time Is Money
There are a couple of reasons for wanting to hit the right time. The first is that you would like to be amongst the latest information showing up on your connections’ newsfeeds in their interfaces. You also want to position your content and business as something the busy professional can use and actually start to look forward to hearing more about. If you share thoughtful content that is useful and helpful, you start to build your reputation as someone who can help.
This is why finding the best time to post on LinkedIn is important- it has greater benefits to your overall business.
Your Goals
The right time will also depend on your goals in posting your content. Do you want to:
* Build brand
* Gain subscribers
* Increase sales
* Get likes, shares and comments (audience engagement)
* Announce a product launch
* Announce a noteworthy piece of news or milestone in your business?
Some social sites, such as Facebook, measure relevance through audience engagement. Others measure by level of activity and type of activity. LinkedIn values high-quality articles, and regular short posts.
Track and test results in terms of times posted, and types of content, then organize a posting schedule that gets you the results you’re looking for.
Do you have some questions about marketing your business online but don’t know who to ask? Why not ask me? I can help you with both strategy and implementation to make your business more profitable and more popular. We can do this together in 75 minutes; though my whiteboard session. Learn more about it!
