Is your funeral home active on social media? Are you getting the engagement and responses you want? If not, it could because you are posting at the wrong times. Think of it like fishing. You don’t want to cast your best bait if the fish aren’t biting.

Each social media channel is different, and audiences tend to check their feeds at different times. To better understand the best times to post and to maximize your engagement, we’ve researched the best times your funeral home should be posting on all your social media channels.

Facebook

Let’s start with Facebook. For most funeral homes, this is where a lot of their target audience likes to spend time. In fact, there are more Facebook users 65 years old and above then there are those in the 13-to-17-year-old category. That means Facebook is the number one place you should be focusing your digital marketing efforts.

So when and how can you better engage client families? The marketing strategists at CoSchedule conducted some research and compared it alongside several other marketing studies. According to their findings, here’s what we know about the best times to post on Facebook:

• The best days for engagement are Sunday and Saturday. Both days receive a 32% higher engagement rate than other days in the week. Thursday and Friday are your next best bet, with those days receiving 18% higher engagement rates. Tuesday is the worst day to share on Facebook.
• The best times to post are between 1 and 3-4 p.m. on workdays. For the weekends, it’s best to aim for noon and 1 p.m. Evenings and early morning posts will get the least amount of engagement.
• When it comes to time zones, 70% of the United States population lives in the Eastern and Central time zones. But you should only worry about the time zone that you serve — even though you may occasionally serve families that are out of town, your main audience is those that live in your community.
• When it comes to post frequency, remember this — low volume, high value. You want to aim for fewer posts, but posts with more substance, such as newsworthy stories or informative blog posts. Aim for about three posts per week.

Twitter

For Twitter, studies show people like to scroll through their feed during downtime at work. That means the best times to post are:

• Monday through Friday, around noon and peak break periods, such as 3 p.m.
• Saturday and Sunday are cited as the worst days to post a tweet.
• Engagement rates increase during non-work hours. Hootsuite notes that “you may find that tweeting when your followers aren’t working — before 9 a.m., at noon, and after 5 p.m. during the week — is best.”
• As for frequency, it’s the opposite of Facebook. Try for about five to 10 tweets if you can and possibly two tweets per day.

LinkedIn

You might not be using LinkedIn to market to client families, but it’s a great platform for networking with other funeral professionals, as well as establishing thought leadership in your community. Here’s when you should be sharing your content:

• The best days are the middle of the work week, primarily Tuesday through Thursday. Mondays and Fridays — as well as weekends — get very low engagement.
• As for times, early mornings around 7 to 8 a.m., midday around noon, and post-work hours around 5 to 6 p.m. are the peak engagement hours for LinkedIn.
• LinkedIn is similar to Facebook, where quality always trumps quantity. Two posts per week is ideal, and five is probably the maximum amount of posts you’ll want to share.

Instagram

You might not be marketing much on Instagram yet, but perhaps it’s time to reconsider. Studies show users are abandoning their Facebook profiles for Instagram. If you’re new to the social media site, here’s an article to get you caught up.

So what are the best times to post on Instagram? Let’s take a look:

• Weekdays work best, specifically Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Sunday is statistically the worst day to share content.
• As for hours, statistics show around 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. — the peak lunch hours during work — get more engagement. So do after-work hours from around 7 to 9 p.m.
• Posting video content gets up to 30% more interactions than an image post.
• When it comes to Instagram, there’s not much agreement yet on the ideal amount of posts. Most experts agree that one to two times per day is a good starting point. But, as SocialReport points out, if you have the content, go ahead and post it. “As long as you’re capable of publishing high-quality content that provides actual value to your target audience — go for it. Test the waters and see what kind of engagement you get. There have been no documented negative side effects of doing this.”

Pinterest

We’re big fans of Pinterest. Why? Because it’s a great tool for exploring funeral planning inspiration and memorial ideas. (Don’t believe us? Check out our guide to see why.)

When posting to Pinterest, here’s what you need to know:

• Peak engagement times are highest during the weekend — especially Saturday evening.
• Avoid posting at all during work hours on the weekdays, you’ll receive very little engagement. Instead, aim for around 8 to 11 p.m.
• Engagement also varies by topic. Buffer found that Wednesday is best for inspirational quotes, while Sunday is a better day for crafts and projects.
• As for frequency, try to aim for about five to 10 pins per day, depending on your content.

YouTube

Video marketing is all the rage in 2018 and marketing experts agree video marketing is only going to get more important. If you’re not already, here’s why you should be posting to YouTube.

What about the best times to post? Let’s take a look:

• Thursdays and Fridays are the best times to post your videos. But Saturdays and Sundays tend to get the most views.
• Most viewers will watch on the weekends, so aim to post by around 9 to 11 a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. After work hours also get high engagement, so if you post during the weekdays, aim for noon and 4 p.m. You want to upload your videos before peak viewership hours, that way search engines will index your content and make it easier for families to find.
• When it comes to video frequency, it’s going to depend on how fast your funeral home can push out video content. While bigger organizations might be able to do one video per week, try and shoot for every other week or even once a month.