Social media marketing can be tricky at times. If you can even find the time throughout your busy day to post, you have to carefully consider a number of factors to get the most out of your social media posts. Posting too little or too much, or at the wrong time of day, can make the difference between successful posts and ones that goes unnoticed. Ideal posting schedules and frequencies vary from platform to platform and can change at any time. Without a little guidance, it can seem like a puzzle that you are forever trying to solve.

Activity and engagement on social media sites will peak at certain times throughout the day and week. These peak hours are when you want to be making your own posts to maximize the chance they are seen by your target audience. Posting during off-peak hours will likely result in your post being missed. By the time most of your audience is back on social media sites, the post will be buried in the never-ending wave of content from other businesses and users. 

So when is the ideal time to post on social media sites? SproutSocial has analyzed the content engagement of over 20,000 companies to provide us with the times of day when clients are most active and engaging on popular social media sites. Based on their findings, these are our recommendations on when you should be posting to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.

When to Post on Facebook 

Facebook tends to have the most engagement throughout the middle of the week and falls off on the weekends. Wednesday has the most overall engagement and would be the best day to post if you were only able to make one per week. Tuesday through Thursday is a fairly forgiving safe zone with strong activity as well. Outside of these optimal periods, you should simply do your best to avoid early morning and late evening hours if possible. We recommend posting at least once every day so while engagement may be less than ideal on the weekends, posting on these off-peak days is still better than not posting. 

Recommended Posting Times: Tuesday through Thursday, 8 a.m. through 3 p.m. 

Worst Posting Times: Evenings after 6 p.m., early mornings before 7 a.m. and weekends. 

When to Post on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a unique social media network given its focus on a professional audience. Engagement on the platform is very high on the weekdays during typical work hours. Wednesday and Thursday are the two days with the most interaction while days at the beginning and end of the week show less engagement. Weekends tend to have limited interaction as users spend more time on the more personal social media sites. It is recommended to post once a day on the platform. Try to get weekend posts done but if you can’t, make sure you at least post once per day during the work week within normal work hours.

Recommended Posting Times:  Tuesday through Friday, 9 a.m. through 2 p.m. 

Worst Posting Times: Hours outside of the typical work week. 

When to Post on Instagram 

Instagram is one of the most popular social media sites and is only growing in popularity. The simplistic visual-based platform makes it easy for users to quickly view and interact with posts. This may be why Instagram is one of the few platforms with better than average weekend and evening interaction. Wednesday and Friday around 10 and 11 a.m. are the times with strongest engagement. As with most other social media sites, engagement still tends to be strongest mid-week while tapering off as the work week starts to come to an end. 

Recommended Posting Times:  Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

Worst Posting Times: Early mornings before 8 a.m., late evenings after 8 p.m. and Sunday. 

Fine Tuning Your Posting Schedule 

Even if you follow recommended posting schedules, you may find that engagement is low at peak times or that it spikes for you at times that may not be considered ideal. Your social media posting habits will constantly be changing based on your own discoveries. Do not feel forced into a specific schedule if it does not work for you. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to social media marketing. Experiment within the recommended posting windows and find out exactly when your particular clients are most active. From there you can pinpoint exactly when to post to get the most interaction. These windows may constantly be evolving, and you must do the same. If you can do that, your social media marketing will be far more successful. 

The post The Best Times to Post on Popular Social Media Sites appeared first on 220 Marketing Group.

LinkedIn has also become the most used social network for job recruitment. Integrating the LinkedIn plug ins to your website will help maximize your efforts and really take advantage of the power of LinkedIn to help find new employees and new customers.

Here are 9 tools that can help you out and how to use them.

1. Share Button

Just like the Facebook share button, this allows people to share your website with other people in their network if they find it informational. It is best to use this button sparingly and place it on informational pages that will make sense to your audience.

If you have any how to guides or ebooks on your site, this is a must have on each of those pages to help spread your information.

2. Recommend Button

This button will help people visiting your site recommend your products or services to their network on LinkedIn. The recommend button can also let you feature products in your LinkedIn company page.

Intel had a great idea by featuring a product that already had a lot of recommendations to get more customers to use that product, and also encourage even more people to recommend that product if they hadn’t done so.

3. Follow Company Button

Follow Company allows you to grow the amount of people following you on LinkedIn directly from your website. Once the user follows you, they will automatically get your LinkedIn updates in their feed which will help keep them engaged with your brand.

The follow button should be put on your homepage, about us, and blog section of the website. You can also place the button in the header or footer to draw even more attention to this tool.

4. Company Profile

The company profile plug in will help you showcase a virtual business card for your company. As seen in the example from LinkedIn, it will have your company logo, description, number of employees, and even a follow button if you are logged in to your LinkedIn account.

You can choose to display a simpler version of this plug in if you just want to display your company information and logo. It’s best to add this to your homepage with your other Social Media logos/information.

5. Company Insider

The company insider tool allows you to showcase your employees on your site. It adds a little more of a personal feel, and also gives your customers access to check out the experience that your employees have. This is best set up in a “meet our team” or careers section on your website. This tool also gives potential employees a chance to see who they might be working with. It will help showcase the size of your company and the growth you’ve had.

6. Member Profile

Are you the only employee at your company? Do you belong to part of a bigger company but have your own website to generate your own business? If the answer is yes, the Member Profile tool was made for you! This is for people who only have one or two employees, or if you have a blog that only you contribute to. It has your job title and a link to your profile, as well as a way for people to see connections you have in common (if you are logged in to LinkedIn) or people who have viewed your profile.

7. Apply Button

The Apply button gives you a great resource for people to apply directly from their LinkedIn account. This will let you see their experience on their profile, as well as provide a more streamlined process for them to get their resume over to you.

The apply plug in gives you a simple button that will fit on any page in your website, and open up a place for the applicant to sign in to their LinkedIn account after clicking on it. This feature also allows you to personalize the form with your company logo and location.

8. Sign In With LinkedIn

Any website that requires their users to log in to their site can benefit from this tool. This essentially lets a visitor on your site log in with their LinkedIn account so that they can post information to your website with their LinkedIn profile information. This will allow them to feel more comfortable contributing to their site because they will not have to fill out a new registration form.

This form is also a benefit for your company, because it will help you gather information on your users without necessarily having to do a case study or send out a survey.

9. Jobs You May Be Interested In

While this tool will only work for those who have paid to list jobs on LinkedIn, it can be very useful to include in your careers page if you’ve paid for those listings.  If a user is viewing your plug in while logged into LinkedIn, it will give them a list of the jobs you have open that are most relevant to their experience.

This plug in also gives you the option to link to jobs from other companies that the person might be qualified for, but this is only useful for job listing sites, not necessarily your site.

Integrating these tools into your site is as easy as visiting LinkedIn and generating the code. If you are a current 220 customer, you can place this code into any advanced editor, or send it in to our service department to have it added. Take a few moments to add these to your site can help make your website more interactive and help get you some return back from the time you’ve spent creating your account on LinkedIn.

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The post 9 Ways to add LinkedIn to Your Company Website appeared first on 220 Marketing Group.