Category: Marketing Automation

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Social media is one of the best ways to amplify your brand and the great content you’re creating. But it isn’t enough to just post content to social whenever you feel like it – posting at some times performs better than others.

So, what are the best times to post on each social media channel in 2022? We surveyed over 300 social media marketers in the United States and got the answer.

The Best Times to Post on Social Media (Across All Industries)
The Best Times to Post on Instagram
The Best Times to Post on Facebook
The Best Times to Post on Twitter
The Best Times to Post on LinkedIn
The Best Times to Post on Pinterest
The Best Times to Post on TikTok
The Best Times to Post on YouTube
Creating an Effective Posting Schedule

Before we get into the specifics for each platform, it’s important to note that for our survey, we asked respondents to answer in their current time zone – with 38% of respondents located in the Eastern time zone. Keep this in mind as you review the information and see how that is applicable to your brand.

Best Time to Post on Instagram
In 2022, Instagram has surpassed 2 billion monthly users, with most of its base accessing the platform via mobile.

On average, the best times to post on Instagram across industries are in the mid- to late afternoon, specifically between 6 and 9 p.m., 3 and 6 p.m., and 9 and 12 p.m.
The best day to post on Instagram is Saturdays. The worst is on Mondays. However, when comparing B2C and B2B brands, the former report Saturdays as the best day while the latter say it’s Friday.
The worst times to post are:

6 a.m. to 9 a.m.
9 p.m. to 12 a.m.
12 p.m. to 3 p.m.

One industry that reports a lot of success in the 12-3 p.m. time frame is manufacturing and materials, with 50% surveyed saying it’s the best time to post.

Best Time to Post on Facebook
When it comes to best times to post, marketers report almost identical numbers on Facebook as they do on Instagram.

On average, the best times to post on Facebook across industries are in the mid- to late afternoon, specifically between 6 and 9 p.m., 3 and 6 p.m., and 9 and 12 p.m.
The best day to post on Instagram is Saturdays. The worst is on Mondays.
The worst times to post are:

6 a.m. to 9 a.m.
9 p.m. to 12 a.m.
12 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Industries that have more success posting early morning are agriculture, food, and beverage brands, with 50% choosing 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. as the best time to post on Facebook. In addition, 100% of marketers surveyed from travel and hospitality brands also chose this time frame.

Best Time to Post on Twitter
This text-based social media platform is known to draw early morning users who use the app to get their news and night owls looking to share their late-night thoughts.
However, the data suggests that the best time to reach users is the afternoon, between noon and 9 p.m.

27% of marketers surveyed say 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. is the best time to post on the platform, followed by 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., then noon to 3 p.m.
Unlike Instagram and Facebook, Friday is the best day to post on the platform.
Worst times? Early morning. Specifically 6 a.m. to 12 p.m.

Best Time to Post on LinkedIn
Roughly 28% of U.S. adults use LinkedIn to network and share their professional endeavors. It’s no surprise that it’s the only social platform to report a weekday as one of the top days to post.

Aim to post on LinkedIn between 6 – 9 p.m., 3 – 6 p.m., or 12 – 3 p.m.
The best day to post is Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays.
The lowest-performing days are Mondays and Fridays.

Best Time to Post on Pinterest

The best times to post on Pinterest are between 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
The second most popular time is noon to 3 p.m., selected by marketers surveyed in construction, financial services, agriculture, food and beverage, chemicals and metals, consumer product manufacturing, plus travel and hospitality.
22% of B2C brands say Sundays are the best days to post on Pinterest, compared to only 6% of B2B brands. Conversely, only 2% of B2C brands chose Mondays versus 13% of B2B brands.

Best Time to Post on YouTube
Over 80% of U.S. adults use YouTube and data from a 2021 Pew Research study suggests that its reach is growing. So, how can you get the best reach on the platform? Let’s dive in.

Post between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. (31%), 3 to 6 p.m., and noon to 3 p.m.
25% of marketers surveyed recommend posting on Saturdays while 23% say Friday is the best day to post.
Monday through Wednesday are the worst days to post on the platform, along with early mornings from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m.

The most popular time frame for advertising/marketing, electronics, and financial services brands is 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Best Time to Post on TikTok
Since 2020, TikTok has become the go-to short-form video platform for Gen-Z and Millennial consumers.

The best times to post are 6 to 9 p.m., 3 to 6 p.m., and 12 to 3 p.m.
For B2B brands, Saturdays and Thursdays are the best days to post. For B2C brands, it’s Saturdays and Sundays.
Although transportation and financial services brands seem to find success in posting between 6 to 9 a.m., most marketers don’t recommend it.
The worst day to post on TikTok is Tuesday, followed by Monday, then Thursday.

Creating an Effective Posting Schedule
Although each social network sees its engagement increase at specific hours and days of the week, you’ll still have to tailor your approach to your audience.
Use this data as a guide if you don’t have enough data yet. Once you start posting regularly and have collected data, review it to determine when your audience is most active on the platform and what posting schedule they respond to the most.
You may find that certain content types work better when posted at certain times. For instance, your videos may perform well when posting in the morning while your images may do better in the late afternoon.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in 2017, but was updated for comprehensiveness.

In April, BeReal – a social media app that hosts many Gen Z users, saw 315% YoY daily download growth. Meanwhile, another popular Gen Z app called Poparazzi is seeing 96,100 downloads per month (just from the Apple App Store.).
And, these apps – which both encourage “authentic” photo-sharing, come a few years after VSCO – another image-sharing app – went viral (particularly among Gen Z demographics).
Haven’t heard of any of these apps? Don’t panic.
Ultimately, we haven’t written much about them for a reason: Because these apps aim to offer safe spaces for users to share their most authentic selves, we don’t really think there’s a place for brands or marketing on them just yet.
So, why are we discussing them now?
At this point, we’ve continued to watch as multiple apps that encourage minimal filtering, authenticity, and unedited content go viral with an influx of Gen Z users. And although marketers might not be a great fit for many of these apps, the trends themselves ultimately bring up themes about Gen Z that marketers will need to know as the group reaches full buying power.
In this post, we’ll discuss some of the newer social platforms used by Gen Z, if you should even be on them, and what to do to continue reaching this group in alternative areas of the web.

3 Newer Social Media Platforms With Large Gen Z Audiences
BeReal.
BeReal. has a perfect 5-star rating in the Apple Store with over 20,000 reviews. The app aims to fight materialism, social media insecurity, and false narratives users of Instagram or other social media platforms might run into by forcing users to publish a photo within a certain time limit and with minimal editing tools each day.
When you create an account on the app, you’re asked to enable your notifications, permit both front and back cameras, and create a username.
Each day at a random time, BeReal will send a notification saying you have 2 minutes to take a photo exactly where you are. You’ll open the app to a camera screen with a ticking timer at the top.
When you press the capture button, the camera will take a picture of what your back camera is facing and a picture of you (or whatever your front camera is facing). You can then add a caption and a location, but you cannot remove either of the images captured or add filters.

Once your image is published either with the “Only Friends” or “Discovery” privacy settings, you’ll either see it in a feed with all of your friends’ photos taken at that relative time – or see it on a public Discovery feed with photos from all other users taken at that same relative time.

After publishing, you can edit your captions or post the photo after the 2-minute time period (if you want to wait til you’re in a more aesthetically pleasing location), but then, the app will show that your photo was published late and/or that your caption was edited for added user transparency.

Does BeReal. have brand potential?
At the moment, BeReal. is quite interesting for consumers and demonstrates a lot of the things Gen Z enjoys on one platform.
Here’s what our very own Gen Z social media manager, Kelsi Yamada says about it:
“It’s almost like a game. You get one notification per day, and can mentally check off a box after you’ve posted. It allows users to connect on one common thing at one time, which is what allowed games like Wordle to absolutely blow up.”
Yamada adds, “In addition to wanting more authenticity on social, I think Gen Z is attracted to these unique ways of connecting and being ‘in’ on the action of getting the notification, getting their post in, and seeing what everyone else posted. It’s a fun thing to look forward to, and there’s an instant gratification element to it, too, since your friends will post within the same 2-minute time window.”
Despite how interesting the platform is for users, we’ll still need to watch it for a bit more time before determining if it will ever be a great place for brands.
From browsing the app, it looks like there are minimal options for marketing offered by the platform itself – which makes sense due to the platform’s authentic, consumer-facing mission. While you could hypothetically create an account for yourself and use your BeReal images to chronicle work at your brand, this could come off as advertorial or over-promotional if done too often.  
However, BeReal. is still worth knowing about and even exploring to get insight into the minds and day-to-day lives of Gen Z.
Poparazzi
Another platform that’s been discussed in the news lately is Poparazzi. A social media app where your friends build your profile. With Poparazzi, you get to create a username and follow your friends or contacts. But, you can’t edit or manipulate your profile or the pictures on it either way.
The platform which aims to discourage selfies, relies on your friends (those who have permission, of course) to post images of you – similarly to how paparazzi photographers capture and publish photos of celebrities. Additionally, as a user, you are also encouraged and able to post pictures of your friends right back.

Once your profile’s created by your friends, it’s easy to find and follow it via the app’s search and contact matching functions. Profiles look very similar to Instagram’s layout, but they’ll contain one feed with photos – called Pops – of you, and one feed of Pops you’ve taken of others.
Does Poparazzi have brand potential?
While this is an interesting social media app, you don’t need to rush to it yet. While you could hypothetically ask fans to Pop influencers, experts affiliated with your brand, or one of your products or store locations, but this might be considered annoying rather than clever on an app like this.
Additionally, despite thousands of positive Apple Store reviews and downloads, Poparazzi isn’t available for Android – meaning millions of people can’t access it yet. While swiping through Poparazzi, or even making your own personal account, could help you get some great insights on the daily lives of Gen Z, there’s no need to pivot your marketing strategy over to this app.
VSCO
In 2019 and 2020, millions of people began posting photos on VSCO instead of Instagram. The low-pressure app, which still claims to be a photo-sharing and editing tool, evolved into an unexpected form of social media with Gen Z usage.
VSCOprovides a low-pressure sharing experience primarily because it allows users to publish images with no caption, like or comment capabilities. All you see when a photo is published is the image, a follow button, the date, and the name of the filter used on the photo.
With no fear of negative conversation, criticism, low like-counts, many users felt VSCO allowed them to explore a creative or more personal side of themselves that they couldn’t show on other mainstream platforms.
Does VSCO have brand potential?
While everyone was buzzing about it years ago, it seems you don’t hear about the platform as much anymore as Gen Z has begun to move on to the next one.
But, the same no-comment, no-text features that made VSCO interesting has also stagnated it’s growth and caused some members of Gen Z to put attention back on Instagram.
My Gen Z sister, Tess, who joined VSCO early on, says the app is “still a thing”, but it’s stayed “more photo editing-focused rather than becoming an actual social media channel.” She adds that the lack of captions, which initially interested her caused VSCO to lose out against social media competitors.
“With Instagram, you give feedback and VSCO lacks that,” she adds.
What Gen Z Social Media Preferences Mean for Marketers
As a marketer who’s probably auditing which platforms will be most effective for you as they evolve daily, we can safely say you don’t need to rush on to any of these yet – even if you are marketing to Gen Z.
However, there are a few themes that you need to recognize if Gen Z will be a future or upcoming audience target.
1. Gen Z craves realness over brand promotion online.
Unlike millennials who struggle with FOMO, material concerns, and can be persuaded to buy products due to brand loyalty, high-budget marketing campaigns, and other factors, Gen Z wants to engage in authentic interactions.
“Social media is like a second language to Gen Z. We grew up with the Internet and social media has pretty much become a primary way of connecting or keeping up with friends,” says Yamada. “Because of that, Gen Z is also great at spotting when a brand is trying too hard, being inauthentic, or just doesn’t get it. I feel like I see a lot of brands fall flat when they try to copy trending content.”
“I would advise brands to either completely commit to going with trends if they fit the brand, or just letting go of the pressure of following trends altogether if it isn’t the right fit.”
Although your marketing campaigns might not a good fit for BeReal, Poparazzi, or other authentic or community-led platforms, you can still leverage the generation’s craving for authenticity to grow a fanbase in this target.
Why? Because this craving for authenticity, realness, and transparency sticks with Gen Z in their product discovery and purchasing behaviors.
While many millennials grew up in long lines waiting for the launch of iPhones, Xbox 360s, or major store brand grand openings, Gen Z members are more likely to research a product, consider word of mouth recommendations, and look at how it compares to cheaper competitors before making large purchases.
Tactics like having customers share reviews or testimonials on social platforms, opening your brand up to honest unboxing or review videos, and offering the most up to date and transparent content about your brand or offerings, as well as your mission, can help Gen Z to realize your brand is worth considering.
2. Gen Z wants new, niche, and more personal experiences.
If you go on TikTok and see hundreds of ads for new, gimmicky products, you might actually be shocked by the subhead above. But, many data points back this up
As Gen Z began to reach buying power in the teens and early 20s, research suggested that they’d be more niche, thrifty, and creative. Today, their interest in less mainstream, but more creative and transparent apps like BeReal, Poparazzi, VSCO, and the rise of TikTok prove these theories.
Even before these platforms came to fruition, we saw Gen Z begin to embrace their personal and creative sides with fake Instagram accounts (or Finstas) that aimed to show another side of them to just a few close friends rather than public followers.
3. Gen Z will almost always experiment with new digital platforms.
Gen Z is the most hyper-connected generation yet – aside from Gen Alpa which will likely beat them in a decade or so. Because of this, when a new social media platform launches or gets even slight popularity, they might try it just to stay in the know.
However, their eagerness in new social media platforms doesn’t mean that every app will become TikTok. And, unfortunately, most brands can’t easily exist or thrive on every single app.
Even on the HubSpot Blog, we take time to think about and strongly vet the opportunities a social app or new platform can provide to brands before we give our time to writing about them.
Ultimately, we’re writing about these apps not because we think everyone should use them, but because they signify shifts from generation to generation. And, while you might not be able to leverage these channels in your marketing campaign, you can leverage authenticity, creative features, transparency, and maybe even the sense of trust that Gen Z is craving from companies (like these platform owners) today.
Which Gen Z Platforms (If Any) are Right for You?
As marketers or business owners, you should vet the opportunities, audiences, and consumer behaviors from platform to platform to determine which social media channels you really need to spend time on. But, you can still take time to learn about the platforms you aren’t going to use by asking yourself:

Why is our target audience interested or not at all interested in this platform?
What does it have that other platforms don’t?
Is there a way we can embrace their needs or preferences in our products, offerings, or campaigns (even if they don’t launch on this social media channel)?

Remember, you can learn a great deal from both platforms you do use (like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or even TikTok) — as well as the platforms you decide not to publish on.  

According to Hubspot Blog Research on content and media planning, 14% of media planners currently leverage non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Conversations surrounding NFTs and Web3 have risen in the past year and continue to pique marketers’ interest. In this article, we’ll cover what NFTs are, how brands are using it, and if it’s worth the investment.

So, how exactly do they work? Well, when an NFT is created, also known as “minted,” it can represent tangible items like art and clothing and non-tangibles like music, videos, and images.
For instance, Twitter’s founder, Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9 million in 2021. Who determines the value of the item in question? The community. Unlike real-world or cryptocurrency, an NFT’s value is speculative.
What makes NFTs so popular is that they represent the decentralization of power from the few to the many. This is particularly valuable for creators who have historically relied on third-party platforms like Spotify, YouTube, and Instagram to share their content and gain from it.
NFTs put the power back in the hands of the community by letting them decide what’s popular and incentivizing them to support what they like.
They’re so popular in fact that Open Sea’s Alex Atallah, the cofounder of the largest NFT marketplace, recently shared on Twitter that there are more NFTs on the platform than there were internet pages in 2010.

1/ There are now more NFTs on OpenSea than there were websites on the internet in 2010.Very soon, NFTs will outnumber websites, maybe even webpages. This growth has major implications for how we should index NFTs… — Alex Atallah | OpenSea (@xanderatallah)
March 9, 2022

For context, the platform houses over 250 million searchable NFTs. In 2010, there were roughly 200 million websites.
Let’s see what this means from a marketing perspective.
How Brands Use NFTs for Marketing [+ Examples]
Lomit Patel, senior vice president of growth at Together Labs, recently shared on LinkedIn that he believes NFTs are doing today what social media did in 2010 – drastically improve their potential for brand awareness and audience reach.

NFTs are disrupting the current marketing landscape and prompting brands to find innovative ways to incentivize their audience to engage.
“We’re moving to a market-based society where everything is going to be ownable, priceable, traceable — everything — and NFTs is just a fancy way to do that and create the marketplace around it,” said HubSpot’s CMO Kipp Bodnar on an episode of the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.
Because it’s so new, it’s a way to build buzz around your brand.
Let’s look at one brand that’s already doing this: Norwegian Cruise Line.
To celebrate the launch of Norwegian Prima Class, a new class of vessels, the brand collaborated with an artist to create six NFT art pieces. Each piece has been put up for auction, with the first starting at $2,500 and the proceeds will be donated to Teach For America.

Image Source
In a press release, the brand shared that they chose to celebrate the launch using NFTs because it’s cutting-edge technology, which reflects how they approach their products and services.
By doing this, Norwegian leveraged the buzz surrounding NFTs (basically newsjacking) to create buzz surrounding its launch.
NFTs also allow brands to better incentivize their audience through exclusive content and shift the focus to community building.
In March 2022, beverage company Anheuser-Busch hosted an #NFTBeerFest event at its flagship brewery reserved for holders of specific NFTs from Budweiser, its child company.

Just kicked off #NFTBeerFest! Are you here? Let us know below 👇 pic.twitter.com/Rxm3aaSOhN — Bud Light (@budlight)
March 27, 2022

Those who bought either a Budweiser Heritage Can NFT or Royalty Collection NFT reportedly enjoyed free beer, tours, giveaways, and performances at the event.
Having access to exclusive content is exactly the sort of incentive that marketers can leverage. They already do so through gated, premium offers, this is just another version of it.
“In the future, really understanding incentives is going to be a marketer’s core skillset to acquire customers,” said HubSpot’s SVP of Marketing Kieran Flanagan on an episode of the Marketing Against the Grain podcast.
(Check out this roundup for a detailed list of how brands have leveraged NFTs.)

Cons of Using NFTs
The biggest drawback of minting and using NFTs is the environmental impact.
You may be thinking, “It’s a digital asset, how does that affect the environment?” Well, the creation of an NFT consumes a great deal of energy (electricity) – depending on how complex it is – and can emit devastating amounts of greenhouse gas emissions.
Some creators are finding more sustainably conscious and less energy-intensive ways of minting NFTs. However, there is still limited data to validate these efforts.
Another con of using NFTs is that there’s still so much we don’t know. Similar to cryptocurrency, it’s subject to a lot of volatility as it is not regulated by any particular entity.
In addition, they don’t hold specific value, leaving you at risk to lose your entire investment.
From a marketing perspective, many consumers are still confused and skeptical about it, making it difficult to entice them. This is usually what happens with any new technology – early adopters face the brunt of the impact while late adopters learn from their predecessors’ mistakes.
Are NFTs Worth Your Marketing Investment?
NFTs can be a difficult sell to brands because they’re risky. It’s unclear what the future holds and it’s a bit too early to judge their impact on a large scale.
What we do know is that many of those who do use it have seen a lot of success.
In fact, 39% of those who use NFTs say they have the best ROI of any channel in their media mix, according to HubSpot Blog Research.
For many marketers, it’s still an undiscovered territory, with 16% surveyed saying they plan to use NFTs for the first time in 2022.
“How you think about acquiring customers and the cost of doing that is greatly changed when you’re using different incentives through tokens to build your business,” said Flanagan.
He adds that through Web3 and NFTs, brands get more trackable incentives. So, whether this holds value will depend on the brand and goals.
However, one thing is for sure: It’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.

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Last Updated on May 8, 2022 by Rakesh GuptaBig Idea or Enduring Question: How can you automatically delete open tasks related to opportunity and quote(s) when an opportunity is marked as closed lost?  Objectives: After reading this blog post, the reader will be able to: Understand @InvocableMethod and InvocableVariable Annotation
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Hello, There’s so many CRM’s and I’m having hard time determining which is best for my needs. Any help would be great: I’m leaning towards Hubspot at the moment, but I know there’s tons of platforms I haven’t looked into. Myself and a partner are doing cold calls and adding prospects from those calls to email campaigns. It’s a small operation, but we’re planning to increase our volume of cold calls. So we want a system that is user friendly and doesn’t slow us down, but we also need great email follow-up tools. I’ll summarize our main needs: Easy to add contacts quickly, write notes, and schedule follow-up The ability to create emails that I can attach pictures, embed video (I haven’t done this before, seems to be difficult), and attach files to (files being the least important). Easy to build email campaigns. Easy and quick to add and remove prospects from different automated campaigns. This is less important, but is nice to have: aesthetic and professional pre-built email templates (one thing I like about Hubspot) I’m really hoping someone here has some experience with a platform that can do all of these things. Any help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks! submitted by /u/Spy-der [link] [comments]