When Is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?

by Tony Moran | Last updated Aug 12, 2024 | Digital Marketing

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Read Time: 10 min read

Summary: To boost social media engagement, it's best to post on weekdays between 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. or when most of your audience is online. Discover the general best times to post on popular social media platforms and how to determine when your followers are most likely to engage with your posts in this guide.

The peak times to post on social media vary based on your business, the platforms you use, and your target audience. However, there are general times when you’re more likely to see responses from your audience. On average, here are the best times to post to social media platforms if you want higher engagement.

Best times to post on social media: Weekdays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Worst days to post on social media: Saturdays and Sundays

Typically, people use social media most during work hours. On many platforms, there’s often higher engagement on posts midmorning and in the afternoons. This may feel counterintuitive to B2C businesses who are posting when their followers have free time.

But does the timing of social media posts really matter? Yes, just maybe not in the way you think. These generalized rules will only get your social media strategy so far. What’s more effective is finding a specific answer to when the best time to post on social media is for your audience—based on when they’re online, which platforms they use, and what type of content they prefer to consume.

All of these suggested times can serve as a starting point for developing a stronger social media posting schedule, but they should be adjusted as you gather data about your followers’ behaviors.

Best Time to Post on Facebook

Best times to post on Facebook: Weekdays from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m., Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
Worst day to post on Facebook: Sunday

With about three billion active users, Facebook is the most used platform in the world, and a staggering 79% of those users check Facebook every day.

Industry type plays a large role in determining the best posting times for Facebook. B2B social media marketing may work well in the afternoons, when your audience is taking a break from work or is done for the day. On the other hand, B2C marketing can capture audiences in the mornings before the work day and during lunch.

Here are a few tips to increase your engagement on Facebook besides posting times:

Make your images eye-catching
Include a compelling call-to-action in the caption
Ask questions that your audience has to answer in comments

Best Time to Post on Instagram

Best times to post on Instagram: Weekdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Saturday around 10 a.m.
Worst day to post on Instagram: Sunday

Though not as widely used as Facebook, Instagram still has an enormous reach, with over two billion active daily users. As a popular influencer marketing platform, marketing on Instagram is best for brands that rely on images of their products or companies who want to show real people using their service.

When scheduling your Instagram posts, keep in mind that brand accounts often receive the most attention in the mornings, while personal accounts typically see higher engagement in the evenings. Additionally, the prime time to post on Instagram can vary based on your product categories. For example, popular activities like house hunting, shopping, and watching Instagram Reels tend to be done later in the day.

Beyond posting at the right time on Instagram, this is how you can boost engagement on the platform:

Add targeted, trending hashtags that are relevant to your brand/niche
Use brand color schemes for visuals
Include emojis in your caption to give your posts personality
Leverage Stories stickers (polls, quizzes, questions, sliders, etc.) for more interactions

Best Time to Post on LinkedIn

Best times to post on LinkedIn: Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Worst days to post on LinkedIn: Sundays and Saturdays

With over one billion members around the world, LinkedIn is a social media platform that focuses on professional networking and connecting businesses to their audiences. And part of having a well-defined LinkedIn marketing strategy is knowing when to post on the platform.

Since LinkedIn content is geared around employment and career growth, your audience’s business hours will matter when deciding the best days and times to post on LinkedIn. Post in the mornings and during lunch breaks, and avoid weekends when users are less likely to be in office or interested in work-related content. When marketing with LinkedIn, it’s also important to post regularly and consistently. LinkedIn pages that post every week have around five times more followers and grow seven times faster than those that post only once every month.

You can increase engagement on LinkedIn by following these additional tactics:

Include a mix of content types—from long-form industry advice to quick tips
Add photos and videos to text-heavy posts
Use LinkedIn Polls to start conversations with followers and gather follower insights

Best Time to Post on Pinterest

Best times to post on Pinterest: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Worst days to post on Pinterest: Sundays and Mondays

Pinterest is a popular platform for users to find and collect visual content and inspiration for a wide range of subjects, including DIY projects, recipes, home decor, fashion, and more. Using Pinterest for your business can help you spot emerging trends, increase your brand’s authority, and drive online sales.

The recommended posting times on Pinterest can vary based on your industry. Those in health and wellness, food, and travel tend to be more successful in the evenings, while beauty searches usually happen in the mornings.

You can also increase your Pinterest engagement in these ways:

Make pins clean, clear, and concise with images of varying sizes
Post Idea Pins with audio, video, images, and text for multi-step tutorials
Weave relevant keywords into your pin descriptions to help users discover your content

Best Time to Post on TikTok

Best times to post on TikTok: Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., Thursdays from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
Worst day to post on TikTok: Sunday

Despite being the newest platform on this list, TikTok’s short-form videos and fast-moving trends have quickly attracted over one billion active monthly users. With people spending an average of 95 minutes a day on the platform, many major industries have taken to TikTok to solidify their brand image and target younger audiences.

Since the platform operates in frequent trend cycles, capitalizing on the best TikTok posting times is critical if you want to maximize your TikTok marketing efforts. Just know that it can take up to 24 hours to see optimal engagement on TikTok.

Below are more best practices to see better engagement on your TikTok videos:

Use current trends and popular sounds—all while still staying authentic to your brand
Post more often to avoid fading into the background of your audience’s For You Pages
Create Stitches with other content creators to promote your content in ways that feel natural to your product/services

Best Time to Post on X (Formerly Twitter)

Best times to post on Twitter: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays from 9 a.m. to noon
Worst day to post on Twitter: Sunday

X—previously known as Twitter—is the top platform for breaking news and journalistic efforts. With 41.5 million monetizable daily active users (users who are able to see ads) who spend an average of 31 minutes a day on the platform, X provides a huge opportunity to engage with your audience in real time.

Instead of following a set social media schedule, many brands use X as part of their customer service strategy, allowing people to ask questions about the company or receive speedy responses about their issues. Because of its news-driven nature, Twitter’s algorithm favors recent content, so regardless of what time you post on X, you need to be doing so regularly.

Here are a few additional opportunities for boosting engagement on Twitter:

Have a mix of media, including text, videos, photos, and GIFs
Keep your videos short (6-16 seconds) and make them automatically loop
Use popular hashtags on relevant content for trending topics

Best Time to Post on YouTube

Best times to post on YouTube: Weekdays from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., weekends from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Worst day to post on YouTube: Tuesday

More than just a social media platform, YouTube is the second-most visited website in the entire world, just behind Google. YouTube allows people to post and watch content on any subject, leading to its use as a search engine.

Typically, afternoons are the optimal times for engagement on YouTube, but the topic of the video can affect when watchers are most likely to engage. People tend to consume videos on education, entertainment, cooking, how-tos, and product reviews when they’re off work or out of school. However, they’re more likely to engage with health, wellness, and fitness content in the mornings as they prepare for the day.

The YouTube algorithm needs time to process your content before including your videos in relevant search results, so aim to upload your videos two to three hours before your audiences’ target viewing time.

To boost engagement on YouTube, you might also:

Respond to comments and engage with other creators on the platform
Create YouTube Shorts to supplement your long-form content
Design custom YouTube thumbnails

Finding your peak social media posting times can involve many strategies, including tracking your social media metrics, using management tools, conducting competitive analyses, and more.

Know Your Audience

To better understand when your audience is most likely to be active on a given platform, investigate your target audience’s demographics (including their ages, gender distributions, daily routines, and time zones) with social media monitoring tools, market research, and direct feedback from your consumers (like reviews and comments). If you’re trying to reach a wider audience that lives across multiple time zones, create separate handles for those time zones and schedule your posts accordingly.

Scheduling social media posts can help grow your audience across platforms, and enlisting the help of a social media management tool can streamline that process. Tools like Sprout Social, Zoho Social, and HubSpot are great for creating content strategy, managing your online reputation, and forming and executing paid social media campaigns. For businesses, these tools really help you tailor your content and social media calendar so that you reach your audience at peak engagement times.

Consider Your Brand Type

Is your brand B2B or B2C? The type of brand you operate will impact the ideal times to post on social media.

“If you’re managing a B2B brand, the best time to post on social media is during the workweek, specifically in the mornings around 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and lunchtime. This is when professionals are likely to be active and engage with your content. For B2C brands, your audience is probably scrolling through their feeds during personal downtime. So, your golden hours are late mornings (10 a.m. to 12 p.m.) and early evenings (4 p.m. to 7 p.m.), with weekends, particularly Saturdays, being a hot spot for engagement.” – Hurrdat’s Social Media Director Allie Gritt

Analyze Your Competitors

Conduct a social media competitor analysis to see what other businesses in your industry are doing. Which of their posts have high engagement? When are those posts published? Observe patterns in engagement metrics like shares, comments, and likes to analyze what works best for them. Then tailor your strategy in a similar way while maintaining your brand’s unique identity.

Track Each Platform’s Trends

Recent posts often receive preferential treatment across social media platforms, which means you need to to be posting regularly and consistently on social media if you want to see strong results. But keeping an eye on each platform’s trending topics, hashtags, and sounds can help maximize your visibility and reach.

Social media monitoring involves the use of a tool to collect data on your key performance indicators like mentions, impressions, engagements, and so on. On the other hand, social listening is the process of interpreting this data to create insights that help you form a better social media marketing strategy. Popular social listening tools include Sprout Social, Hootsuite, and Brandwatch.

Try A/B Testing

A/B testing, or split testing, means creating multiple versions of a post that are distributed to different segments of your audience. By doing this, you can test which tactics are most effective at increasing social media engagement. To develop an A/B testing strategy for your social media campaigns, you can pull ideas from competitor content and your own posts (both successful and unsuccessful).

It’s not recommended to post on social media late at night in any time zone. Most people will be asleep or less engaged with social media late at night, and by the time they wake up, your post may not be recent enough to appear in their feeds, leading to reduced visibility for your content.

How often you should post on social media varies by the platform you’re using and how often those platforms update their algorithm and features. Generally, posting too often can overwhelm users’ feeds and get your content flagged as spam, which can harm your brand. However, not posting often enough will reduce your visibility and engagement. Research the optimal posting frequency for the platforms you’re using, test how often works best for your audience, and post consistently with that information in mind.

Looking to increase social media engagement on your brand’s platforms? Hurrdat Marketing offers a variety of social media marketing services that can help you expand your online presence. Contact us today to learn more!

Tony Moran

Author

Tony is a Content Strategist at Hurrdat, where he writes web-optimized content for companies in industries like self storage, banking, food services, insurance, healthcare, and the trades. Tony has years of experience with content marketing, having written blog copy, website content, workbooks, landing pages, and more for clients. He most enjoys strategizing content and conducting keyword research for these projects.

Tony lives in Omaha, NE, attended the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as a Philosophy major, and loves word play, fantasy fiction, and trivia contests.

Allie Gritt

Expert Contributor

Allie is the Social Media Director at Hurrdat, where she excels in crafting innovative social media strategies that drive engagement and results for clients. With a keen eye for trends and a passion for storytelling, Allie is a trusted guide in the ever-evolving world of social media marketing.

With a diverse background in content creation, community management, and influencer collaborations, Allie has partnered with a wide range of brands, from global industry leaders to local startups. Her projects have included viral social media campaigns, audience-focused content calendars, influencer partnerships, and much more.

Allie proudly calls Puyallup, WA, her home base and holds a master’s in marketing from Southern New Hampshire University. When she’s not busy masterminding the next big social media sensation, you’ll find her exploring the Pacific Northwest’s natural beauty, sipping on craft beer, and planning her next adventure.