Video Promotion: What Is The Best Time To Post Videos On Social Media?
Pulkit Jain
Distribution is a core aspect of video promotion. Read what practices you must follow to ensure that your video gets the maximum reach and is promoted to the right audience on the Internet. In this article, I’ll also walk you through the best times to post your videos on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
So you invested a good amount of time and resources and created an incredible video. But does the internet know your video exists? Is your existing video promotion strategy getting your video the engagement it deserves? What video strategy should you be implementing to improve your metrics?
Video Promotion 101: Know Your Audience (KYA)
Stefan Krafft, the co-founder of Haaartland quoted:
“No matter how good you are at producing videos or how good you are at distributing it, it has to resonate with your audience.”
Once you have the perfect persona of your target video consumer ready, put yourself in their shoes and start thinking like them.
Which sites or networks am I likely to visit? Do I prefer to watch the video on my phone or desktop? Would I want to watch similar videos frequently?
Rachel Parker, the president of Resonance Content Marketing, suggests:
“Know who they are, what they need, what keeps them up at night, what makes them laugh, what inspires them, what makes their lives easier and where they hangout in the digital world.”
Here are some questions you will need to find the answers for:
Why do you want people to watch your video? Define your goal – the same goal you wish to achieve through video promotion. Through video marketing, you can build brand awareness, generate leads, increase user engagement, improve conversion, and get your users to interact more with your product. Here is a list of video goals. You can also use videos to get users to sign up for your newsletters, and then include videos as a part of email newsletters for promotion.
Who is your audience? Next, build a persona of who you’re trying to reach. Are you looking to speak to new prospects or existing consumers? Do you want to introduce your brand to millennials and nurture them to become brand champions? Or do you want to reach senior-level executives who have the purchasing power at their organizations? Building a list of audience personas is particularly useful to find video distribution channels, and as I said before, distribution is a core aspect of video promotion.
How does your audience consume video? The next step is to create a list of websites where your audience hangs out. Identify how, when, and where they engage with videos, and incorporate those insights into your strategy. Which sites or networks are they likely to visit? Do they prefer to watch the video on a phone or on a desktop?
After you have the answers to these questions, use this information to create a list of sites and mediums your audience frequents and then kickstart your video promotion campaigns. This will also give you an idea about what video type you should focus on for your next videos.
Once you have the list ready, the next step is to start video promotion activities on these platforms. Each platform has its strengths and specific strategies for success. Choose the ones that work best for your brand, audience, goals, and type of videos you’re promoting, and develop a strategic plan for posting videos and building engagement.
What is the best time to post on YouTube?
Over 1.3 billion people use YouTube to watch 3.25 billion hours of video every month, making it the biggest platform for hosting videos and video promotion. You have the highest probability of finding your target audience on YouTube – simply because it has the maximum number of users.
Best time to post on YouTube (All times are in EST)
Monday
2 PM – 4 PM
Tuesday
2 PM – 4 PM
Wednesday
2 PM – 4 PM
Thursday
12 PM – 3 PM
Friday
12 PM – 3 PM
Saturday
9 PM – 11 PM
Sunday
9 PM – 11 PM
Viewership on YouTube tends to be at peak on the site during weekday evenings. Thus, the best time to post on YouTube is weekday afternoons because it gives YouTube ample time to index videos and then show them in the feeds of subscribers.
How to promote your video on YouTube
Here is a list of some elements of a YouTube video that you can optimize to improve the reach and visibility of your YouTube video:
Title: Your audience should have a good understanding of what your video is about by reading the title. Aim for between 40-66 characters for maximum effectiveness.
Description: Use this to ensure your video’s SEO ranks properly. Aim for between 200-800 words. YouTube lists some good practices you can implement to write the perfect description for your video.
Tags: Tags are used to categorize your video with all other similar videos. Tags allow viewers to discover your video when searching and browsing on your topic of discussion.
The checklist above also applies to any other video hosting site you wish to upload your video on. A few examples of alternate video hosts are:
Vimeo (you need to pay $199/year for a Vimeo Pro account),
Wistia (Wistia videos are also watchable from within a tweet),
Sprout Video (integrate your video content into your marketing strategy by adding a call to action), and
Vidyard (real-time analytics)
Devices on which YouTube videos are viewed the most: Mobile, Desktop and Tablet
Facebook has more than 2.38 billion monthly active users. Also, the average time spent per Facebook visit is 20 minutes. This means that you have a short time period to make your impression. Make it count!
Best time to post on Facebook(All times are in EST)
Monday
3 PM – 4 PM
Tuesday
1 PM – 4 PM
Wednesday
3 PM – 4 PM
Thursday
1 PM – 4 PM
Friday
1 PM – 4 PM
Saturday
12 PM – 1 PM
Sunday
12 PM – 1 PM
Engagement rates for videos are a flat 18% higher on Thursdays and Fridays. Also, Facebook traffic spikes by approximately 10% on Fridays.
How to promote your video on Facebook
A Facebook study of over 300 video ad campaigns found that 73% of them had a significant lift in ad recall, and the average lift between test and control groups was 86%.
Since videos on Facebook autoplay without sound, it’s important to make sure your video ads appeal to viewers even when muted. This is where you use on-screen text to help tell your story. When enabled, your video’s sound should offer additional value to viewers and further bring your story to life.
Devices on which Facebook videos are viewed the most: Mobile and Desktop.
What is the best time to post on Twitter?
For marketers, Twitter seems more professional than other social media forums, which is particularly important if you’re a B2B marketer. In fact, Twitter has recorded over 330 million users in 2019.
Best time to post on Twitter(All times are in EST)
Monday
12 PM – 3 PM
Tuesday
12 PM – 3 PM
Wednesday
5 PM – 6 PM
Thursday
1 PM – 4 PM
Friday
1 PM – 4 PM
Saturday
12 PM – 3 PM
Sunday
12 PM – 3 PM
People often treat Twitter like an RSS feed, and something to read during down times like commutes, breaks, and so on.
For B2C organizations, the best days to post are Wednesdays and the weekends, when the clickthrough rate is highest. B2C content performs 17% better on weekends. For B2B organizations, the best days to post are Mondays through Fridays, and clickthrough rate is highest on Wednesdays. B2B content performs 16% better during business hours.
How to promote your video on Twitter
Twitter users exposed to a branded video have 28% higher purchase intent than the online norm. Also, videos featuring people in their opening scenes drive up to 2X more customer opt-ins.
Promoted videos (including 60-second TV and movie advertisements) tend to increase intent to share by up to 15% and increase engagement by 13%!
PRO TIP: Make use of @replies and #hashtags to bring tweets to the attention of influencers and communities for increased engagement.
Devices on which Twitter videos are viewed the most: Mobile
With over 259,000,000 users and 2,100,000 groups, LinkedIn is a social channel that you can’t ignore.
Best time to post on LinkedIn(All times are in EST)
Monday
10 AM – 11 AM
Tuesday
10 AM – 11 AM
Wednesday
5 PM – 6 PM
Thursday
5 PM – 6 PM
Friday
7 AM – 8 AM
Saturday
5 PM – 6 PM
Sunday
5 PM – 6 PM
LinkedIn primarily consists of a B2B audience, explaining why the highest engagement rates are during Business hours. LinkedIn has found that 20 posts per month can help you reach 60% of your unique audience!
How to promote your video on LinkedIn
Sure, you won’t generate as much traffic from LinkedIn as you will from other social sites, but its audience tends to be businesses, which means each LinkedIn visitor is going to be worth more money.
You have to treat LinkedIn less as a promotional platform and more as a place to establish yourself as an expert in your field. The videos you share should be more business-focused. Include how-to videos, company news & updates, industry talks and presentations, and content that would be helpful to other LinkedIn users in their professional careers.
Type of videos you should make for LinkedIn
Industry insight videos
Company news videos
New product & Service videos
Devices on which LinkedIn videos are viewed the most: Desktop
As a video creator, you should utilize multiple platforms for your work, and repurpose your videos by posting them on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn to maximize your video reach. Since many video viewers are extremely loyal to their platform of choice, this cross-distribution strategy is often the best way to ensure your video will always find an audience!
Let us know which platform has worked the best for you and what activities you follow to increase your video reach!
Pulkit Jain
Engineer • Marketer • Tech Geek • Movie & Comic book nerd • Avid reader • Gaming Addict • Football fanatic #GGMU
Pulkit Jain 
