Supporting Your App on Social Media -  Ideal Posting Times are Changing

The coronavirus spread and the resulting international lockdowns have generated changes in consumption habits which are quite extreme. We haven’t seen anything like this in recent years and arguably since mass digital consumption has risen. The bans on travel, the significant changes to many people’s working lives and the changes in social behaviour have led to a complete remap of how and when we are interacting with digital platforms and in particular, social media.

Various online statistics report that overall social media usage and time spent online is up by an astonishing 40%. That is a significant rise in time we’re dedicating to social media and honestly, it’s not that surprising given the volume of people stuck at home with minimal genuine social options. There’s also a great deal of people not able to work, freeing up considerable amounts of spare time.

If you’re an app owner looking to push your app downloads through social media, you’d be right in thinking that now is a great time to do so. The extra eyes on social platforms means there is additional exposure to be earned and people have more time and less excuses to initiate downloads. One thing to consider though is that coronavirus and the resulting quarantine procedures may have increased social traffic, but they have also drastically changed the optimal times to post.

Social posting and scheduling platform Sprout Social recently released findings of a new piece of research which details the optimal times to post on the top social platforms right now.

Posting to Facebook

While Facebook used to have evening and midweek (Wednesday) traffic peaks as well as overall uplift on Fridays, things look a little different during lockdown. The research shows that Facebook now has a consistently high interaction and usage rate all through the week.

Evenings are busier later into the night and 11am is one of the absolute peaks day to day so if you want to promote your app on Facebook, late morning is the perfect time to do so.

Posting to Instagram

Wednesday and Friday morning posting peaks have dropped off in favour of heavy usage throughout the week. There is also a peak each day from 11am to 2pm.

Sundays often saw a drop off for Instagram, but the platform is now showing heavy weekend use, with a surge in eyeballs between 9am-5pm both Saturday and Sunday. Schedule your app posts for the weekend to capitalise.

Posting to LinkedIn

In stark contrast to Facebook and Instagram, the professional social media platform LinkedIn has seen far less drastic changes. Usage still peaks mid-week, but the hours of use have shifted slightly later. The best time to post now starts around 8am and ends around 4pm. This is just an hour later than traditionally seen on this platform.