You’ve spent countless hours creating content with the hope that you’ll get higher levels of engagement and click-throughs to your website when you post on social media. But did you forget one important thing: understanding the best time to post on social media for increased engagement.
Far too often, we hear from clients who are frustrated that they put so much hard work into creating compelling content for social only to receive just a few likes or follows. This, of course, often leads to them believing that social media just doesn’t work. But it does!
Social media marketing is an important element of content marketing and a highly effective way to reach new audiences and drive more qualified leads to your website. More often than not, it’s not as much about the content being posted but when it’s being posted.
If you don’t see the success you’d like on social media, have you checked if lower engagement has to do with posting time?
The time when you post influences how your content performs on social media, and there is a best time to post on social media, and it varies for every platform and every audience.
Let’s look at exactly what you need to know about the best time to post on social media.
The Importance of Understanding the Best Time to Post on Social Media
But as more people are joining social media platforms, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to rise above all the noise and be seen. Often, three things influence the reach of your social content: Content freshness, posting time, and social media algorithms.
Adam Mosseri, Head of Product at Instagram, mentioned in his blog that posting time is one of the signals Instagram’s algorithms use to rank posts.
And when we looked at Twitter’s blog, we found that “recency” is one of the ranking factors.
So, as the social media platforms tell us, you can achieve higher engagement on social media if you post at the right time.
When Is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?
The simple answer to this question is when your audience is online or has the highest chance of seeing your posts.
This is why it can be difficult to find success on social media. There is no single standard time that works for all. That’s why you’ll see a lot of variations and estimates.
There are some general guidelines everyone can use when it comes to posting on social media. Based on data collected, the overall best time to post on social media is on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 10 AM.
If we break the overall times out by social media platform, here are the best times:
- The best time to post on Facebook is 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
- The best time to post on Instagram is 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM on Wednesdays.
- The best time to post on Twitter is 8:00 AM on Mondays and Thursdays.
- The best time to post on LinkedIn is 9:00 AM on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
- The best time to post on Pinterest is 8:00 PM to 11:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays.
But, to understand the best time to post on social media for your business, you have to understand your audience.
To give you the best information, we looked at information from some of the most popular social media scheduling tools: Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Buffer, and HubSpot. Here’s what we found:
The Best Time to Post on Instagram
According to Sprout Social’s Instagram Global Engagement data, the best time to post on Instagram is Monday through Friday at 11 AM CT.
Hootsuite’s data echoed similar timings. According to their data, Wednesdays and 11 AM are the best combination. For the Hootsuite’s social media team, anytime between 8 AM-12 PM or 4-5 PM, PST works best.
A few things to remember about Instagram users:
- 63% of American users check Instagram at least once a day
- 42% of American users check Instagram several times per day
- Instagram use went up to an average of 30 minutes per day in 2020
To catch your audience on Instagram, use these times as a guide and then monitor when your audience has the most interaction using analytics.
Best Time to Post on LinkedIn
Looking at the graph below, we’ll notice that Tuesdays through Thursdays from 9 AM to noon have the highest engagement, as per Sprout Social’s data.
According to Hootsuite, the best time to post on LinkedIn is 9:00 AM on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Best time to Post on Twitter
The best time to post on Twitter coincides with that of Instagram. According to Hootsuite analysis, the best time to post on Twitter is 8 AM on Monday and Thursday.
And if we look at additional data, we notice similar results; 6 AM to 9 AM during weekdays.
Most Twitter users tend to scroll during their downtimes during the day. That includes during early morning hours and daytime breaks.
Tweeting during business hours in the UK and East Coast of the US has the best results in terms of clicks and engagement.
Best time to Post on Facebook
Unlike other social media platforms, the best time to post on Facebook doesn’t look symmetrical or predictable.
Facebook being the most used social media platform among the public and businesses, it is no surprise that we see round-the-clock engagement.
So what are the best days and times to post on Facebook?
Sprout Social says the best days are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between 9 AM to 1 PM.
Hootsuite analysis data suggest that the best time to post on Facebook is Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 AM to 12 PM.
These times are driven by the fact that most people are checking Facebook early in the morning to catch up on what happened after they went to bed and during their lunch breaks. This is the best time to catch your audience with new content!
Best Time to Post on Pinterest
If you are a B2B or B2C using Pinterest to drive traffic and SEO, here is what we found for the best times to post.
According to HubSpot data, the best times to post on Pinterest is between 8 pm to 11 pm. And from 2 pm to 4:00 am.
This is most likely because the majority of Pinterest’s audience are women, and because Pinterest is a browsable platform, they tend to spend more time there late on the weekends.
If you aren’t using Pinterest as a platform in your social media strategy, click HERE to find out why you might want to reconsider that.
Diving Deeper Into How to Find the Best Time Post on Social Media for Your Audience?
To give your brand followers a personalized experience, you need to post based on how your audience uses social media. If done right, your audience and followers will have a higher chance of engaging with your social media posts.
Follow these tips to know what is the best time to post on social media for your business:
Start with an Educated Guess
The data we provided above gives you a starting point for determining when the best time to post is. If you don’t know the best time to post, start by following the timings mentioned above.
Follow this routine and stick with the schedule for the next few weeks so you can gather meaningful and actionable insights.
Once that period is over, collect the data and start with new timing and see how your audience responds to the change.
Are they engaging more? Are you getting more new visitors and followers after changing your timings?
Follow this approach to refine audience engagement data and determine what works best for your social media accounts.
Use Social Media Analytics Tools
It’s not possible to manually track and measure audience engagement data. That’s why you should use social media analytics tools.
If you have a Facebook Business or Instagram Creator account, you’re eligible to use their free analytics.
Here’s a glimpse of Instagram Analytics that shows you the most active times.
There are also many paid tools that you can use to help track your social media data. For example, if you use a scheduling tool like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Buffer, they have analytic tools built into their platforms to help you analyze engagement.
Our team at VirTasktic uses a tool called SmarterQueue for posting all of our social media content and that for our clients. It has robust analytics features that allow us to monitor all the data, including engagement on each platform by the hour:
So now you know that there is no one universal time to post on social media, but you should have some good parameters to follow to adjust your posting schedule, keeping in mind that:
The best time to post on social media for your brand is as unique as your audience and different for each channel.
But with the right data, you can optimize your posting schedule to drive better results and improve your social media ROI.
Don’t forget to experiment and change your schedule from time to time as your follower count grows. That’s the only way to know when is the best time to post on social media.
Need some additional help with your social media or looking to get it off your plate altogether? Let our team at VirTasktic help you with everything from creating compelling and engaging social media content to posting it at the right time for increased engagement. Click HERE to learn more.
