As the pandemic has caused a shift in how we all use social media, the best time to post has become more concentrated and focused. Here is some help in finding the best time to post.
Over 30,000 social media posts were analyzed to see if certain days and times universally get more engagement than others. Here’s a quick summary of what we found:
The best time to post on social media is 10:00 AM on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
The most effective time to post on Facebook is 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
According to research, the best time to post on Instagram is 11:00 AM on Wednesdays.
Monday and Thursday mornings at 8:00 AM are the best times to post on Twitter.
The most effective time to post on LinkedIn is 9:00 AM on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
The most effective time to post on TikTok is 7:00 PM on Thursdays.
But what do these times mean?
These are some good times to start posting on social media if you don’t have much data to work with. However, as your account grows, you should adjust your posting schedule to better fit your audience’s behavior, which may be different from the general population.
We will show you how to find your own best times to post, similar to the way Hootsuite’s social media team does it. Continue reading to find out how to find the best times to post for your specific audience, industry, and time zones.
Is There a Best Time to Post on Social Media?
If you want your content to be seen by more people, post it when your followers are most likely to be online. This is because algorithms that control what users see in their newsfeeds (particularly on Facebook and Instagram) take “recency” into account when determining what to display.
There is no one definitive answer to the question of when the best time to post on social media is. Studies have been done on this topic, but the most accurate way to determine when to post is to look at your own data about your followers.
The best time to post according to our research is a good starting point for new accounts who haven’t built an audience yet and don’t have anyone to test on.
It’s very easy to figure out the best time to post on your social media channels if you have the right tools.
Hootsuite’s social media team did some research and found the best time to post on each social media platform they use to reach their audience of around 8 million followers. Then they put together a guide to help others find the best time for them to post on each social platform.
How to Find the Best Time to Post on Social Media
Look at when your audience is most active online
The algorithms of many social media platforms prioritize recency because people are generally interested in what is new, especially given how frequently people check their feeds.
One of the easiest ways to take advantage of both the Facebook and Instagram algorithms is to post when your followers are likely to be online. By predicting when your followers are likely to be browsing their feeds, you can ensure that your content will be seen by them.
Although Twitter and LinkedIn do not share information about audience activity with users, it is still important to research their priorities and behaviors.
There are many ways to find out when your followers are online. Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature is one example. This feature provides a heatmap of the hours and days your followers are active.
Social marketers can better plan their content by using data on the best times to post across social media platforms. However, as platforms evolve and brands and consumers begin to use social media in different ways, there are opportunities to innovate interactions all the time. New content formats or trends may help you reach your audience in unexpected ways or even discover new segments or personas you hadn’t considered before.
More Tips for Content Scheduling and Social Strategies
- Building your social media marketing strategy for 2022
- How to craft an effective social media content strategy
- 20 social media ideas to keep your brand’s feed fresh
- Creating a 30-day social media plan
It is a good idea to post during times when your audience is most engaged, but you can also find times when your specific audience is active but your competitors are not by doing a detailed analysis of your audience. Sprout Social is a tool that can help you do this.
Sprout’s tools like post tagging and cross-channel reporting help you analyze how different factors like networks or types of media influenced your social success.
Sprout’s ViralPost algorithm uses the same types of data that they’ve looked at across all our customer accounts to determine the best time for you to post. The ViralPost algorithmically determines the results for their Optimal Send Times feature, which is a publishing option on their Professional and Advanced plans.
The Optimal Send Times feature uses your publishing history to identify the specific times when your audience is most engaged. ViralPost® also periodically updates and refines this information to save you the trouble of having to do repeated analyses yourself.
Would you like to see how it works? Register for a free 30-day trial of Sprout Social.
If you’re looking for more of their findings from this year’s study of their customer data, see what they learned about the best times to post across ten industries on these networks:
The Best Time to Post on Twitter
The most ideal days to post on Twitter are Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 9 a.m.
Best days to post on Twitter: Tuesdays and Wednesdays
Worst days to post on Twitter: Sundays
Twitter has been a popular platform for real-time conversations and news updates. In 2021, this trend continued with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Brands that want to join in on trending topics need to be responsive, but also aware of how their participation might align with their values.
The times when Twitter is most active have changed a lot from last year, with most activity now happening mid-morning and midday during the week. This may be because people are more interested in getting news and updates, or because they want to see funny tweets and memes.
Twitter is not only a source for breaking news and viral content, but also a platform that many brands use for customer care. This is because Twitter provides an opportunity for companies to build trust with their customers and proactively improve customer experience through social listening.
This means that brands should have different priorities depending on the time of day on Twitter. The times mentioned above are when new content should be the focus, but customer support or multiple Twitter accounts may be more important at other times.
The most effective time to tweet is 8 a.m. on Mondays and Thursdays, based on SproutSocial research.
The social team at Hootsuite found that their data showed similar results to what was found in the study, but on a broader scale. They found that the most active times on social media were weekdays at 6-9 AM PST.
The most important metric on Twitter according to Nick Martin, Social Engagement Specialist, is click-throughs. Hootsuite’s analytics show that tweeting during UK and East Coast office hours results in the best clicks and engagement.
Although he posts later on weekends, mornings are still the best time according to him.
Although Martin says that it is important to be aware that Twitter analytics that concentrate on the ‘optimal time to post’ can ignore people in other time zones, he believes that it is important to be mindful of this.
Martin states that it is important to continuously provide content, especially for brands with a global audience, as people from different parts of the world have different issues. He promises that they are working on providing helpful content that is also convenient for people in different time zones.
To appeal to Hootsuite’s international audience, Martin plans tweets for all hours of the day- not just the “best” hours- and also creates ad campaigns to promote posts targeting different time zones and countries.
Key Twitter statistics to keep in mind when posting:
- 42% of American users check Twitter at least once a day
- 25% of American users check Twitter several times a day
- People spent an average of 10 minutes 22 seconds per visit on Twitter in 2019
This is a list of Twitter statistics for 2022, including information on Twitter users, tweets, and more.
A tool helps you use data to experiment, by suggesting optimal times for new posts that your brand hasn’t tried before in the past 30 days.
Look at Your Top-Performing Posts From the Past
When you are creating content that you want to post on social media, it is a good idea to think about what your goals are for that content. once you have a goal in mind, you can use data to figure out when the best time to post that content is.
The first step is to take a look at your analytics tools, or social media reports, and zero in on your more successful posts for a given metric. The posts that did the best in terms of:
Awareness (i.e., posts that have high impressions)
Engagement (i.e., posts that earned impressive engagement rates)
Sales/Traffic (i.e., posts that attracted a lot of clicks)
Then, try to post content at those times. After looking at what times you posted successful content, try to post content at those times.
Best Times to Post on Social Media Overall
Choosing the right social media platform depends on your goals, content type, and audience. If you find that your engagement isn’t where you want it to be, take a look at your social media goals and overall KPIs. Additionally, knowing which days you get the most engagement can help you reach your goals.
The data shows that the best times to post on social media are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 9 or 10 a.m. This is true for most social platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
According to a study by CoSchedule, the best times to post on social media overall are Tuesdays through Thursdays at 9 a.m. or 10 a.m.
The best days to post on social media are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays.
Worst days to post on social media: Sundays
Although a quick stat exists for the best time to post on social media, there are more factors to consider than that. Each network sees different ranges of engagement at different times, and once industries are factored in, engagement varies even more. So while Tuesdays through Thursdays at 9 or 10 a.m. are generally the best times to post, there are more factors to consider before scheduling any posts.
How We Gathered the Data
We are aware that these reports might cause people to question the origin of the data. That is why we want to be clear about the data we collected and how we obtained it.
SproutSocial has their own data science team who can gather information from your customers. A Senior Data Scientist at Sprout, Joel Booth, explains to us how it all works.
Booth says that Sprout integrates with various social media platforms via their API, which allows the application to receive messages on behalf of the customers. This is how features such as Sprout’s Smart Inbox and Reports are powered.
If you want to find out if your content calendar is effective, now is the time to test it. See if you’re posting when your followers are most active by starting a free trial of Sprout Social. You can discover your best times to post on social media today.