Know Your Audience Pick the Best Time to Post Graphic

Know Your Audience – Pick the Best Time to Post

Use analytics and statistics to narrow down which post times get read. Speak to the audience with content they understand, and resonate with.

In the great expansion and proliferation of social media over the last 10 years (and some will say over-saturation), the challenge continues to be in answering the question “when is the best time/day for my message to be read?”.  Well, we found the answer:

It depends.

We know that sounds cheeky, but it it really does depend on your message and your audience and their optimal reading/consuming habits. For the purposes of this exercise we’re going to look at the LinkedIn platform and environment. There’s plenty of other data, charts, and opinions out there about the other platforms like Facebook and Instagram, but we’re going to focus on the jobs/networking world.

So first you have to look at what information you want to disseminate. Do you want to post jobs you need to fill? Advice on the job hunt? Or advice on navigating your career. Or maybe you want to post about your expert POV on the latest industry trends. If you want to find the optimal time to post a job, according to LinkedIn people are searching for and applying to jobs more on Monday/Tuesday and then trailing off consistently through the week. Monday blues? The Mama’s and The Papa’s might agree. But regardless of the reason, that’s when the fish are biting so that’s when you want to cast out your best bait.

Medical Technology Recruitment

And there’s also some longitudinal seasonality to consider over the year. Again, according to LinkedIn, there’s an inverse relationship of job applications to job hires in the 4th Quarter and in January, and pretty much a direct correlation the rest of the year. As we would expect, people are clamoring to apply in the 4Q for those jobs that budgets will allow come January and the new year.

Med Device Recruitment

Now, if you have some other types of content you wish to post and hope to engage people with, there’s a few different sources that say mid-week is the best time to post on LinkedIn. HubSpot and Sprout Social both say Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are best, early a.m. Noon, or 5-6pm, with maybe a “sweet spot” of Tuesday at 10am. Again, it depends on your content and intent of message.

(Also: don’t forget about Time Zones)

We in the talent acquisition field would argue that Tues-Wed-Thurs is probably not the best time to reach our primary audience, especially with jobs to fill. If most of our target candidates are sales manager road warriors, then their key down days at the home office are Mondays and Fridays. But if we are trying to reach them when they consume during the week it’s probably very early or after dinner.

The real key is examining your key, primary target audience, and trying to get inside their head and define their habits. Then the only data and charts and graphs that will matter will be your own.

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Floodgate Medical is proud to have been ranked #9 in LinkedIn’s 2017 Top 25 Most Socially Engaged Staffing Agencies for North America in our category.