These Are the Best Times for Your Business to Post on Social Media
Posted on December 20, 2024 | Updated on December 20, 2024
Most small business owners want to up their social media game but may feel uncertain about when are the best times to post on social media. You may have spent a lot of time and research figuring out your target audience and their pain points. Knowing what to post is different from the best time to post on social media.
While there are some general rules of thumb about posting on various social media platforms, the times are going to be highly unique to each business model.
Why Does Timing Matter?
Social media engagement pushes your content to the top of people’s feeds. You can build a relationship with your followers and increase brand name recognition. Around 60% of consumers use Facebook for customer service. The best time on social media is when the most people are on the platform browsing.
You must post at the right time or there is little point in putting anything on your page. But you also have to add the elements that cause people to share, like and comment on your posts. On Facebook, videos get 400% more engagement than text-only posts.
The right post at the right time can drive traffic to your site and help you find new customers.
Generic Best Times to Post on Social Media
Although there isn’t a single best time for every business to post on social media, there are some rules of thumb you can use to guide you until you have enough statistics to analyze your best response times on various platforms.
Smartphone users spend 217 billion hours on mobile apps, meaning these rules of thumb are just that. You may find your target audience is on different social platforms at different times. You can also segment your followers, providing different content at various intervals, depending on user preferences.
Various social media scheduling platforms give a range of times that are best to post within. The times listed below come from a combination of advice from sites such as Buffer, Sprout Social, CoSchedule and SocialPilot. All times are based on Eastern Standard Time.
The best times to post on Facebook seem to be from noon until around 3 p.m. and again in the evening from 6 to 9. Some companies choose to post from 10 a.m. to noon to ensure they hit the ideal window when the most people will be online.
People will sometimes check the social media giant while on lunch or work breaks and again at the end of the day, making the times listed above the best ones in general. Try to post on a Friday and Saturday for the most traction. Most experts state that Sundays lack user engagement.
X
X–formerly Twitter– is a faster-paced platform where people absorb quick information and move on. Because of that, weekday mornings seem to get the most traction, according to various social media scheduling platforms.
Mondays and Wednesdays are the most active times with the standard 9 a.m. start time being a good time to post plus relevant shares and posts throughout the day to keep your company in people’s feeds.
TikTok
The best times to post on TikTok vary based on the industry you’re in and the day of the week. For example, e-commerce stores should post weekdays between 1 and 3 p.m. or from 6 to 9 p.m. Fashion and beauty followers engage best on Thursdays and Fridays in the afternoon.
Influencer Marketing Hub looked at around 100,000 TikToks and found the best times in general to post were:
- Mondays: Noon and 4 p.m.
- Tuesdays: 4 a.m., 8 a.m., 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.
- Wednesdays: 1 and 2 p.m.
- Thursdays: 5 a.m., 3 p.m. and 6 p.m.
- Fridays: 1 and 11 a.m., 7 and 9 p.m.
- Saturdays: 5 p.m.
- Sundays: 1 and 2 a.m., 1, 2 and 10 p.m.
With the times all over the place, it’s safe to say that your best TikTok engagement times are likely quite dependent on your specific audience.
LinkedIn is more of a professional platform. People are most likely to check it in the early morning while commuting to work or before starting their day. Posting between 7 and 9 a.m. on weekdays is a good rule of thumb for this platform. Some people do check the platform during their lunch breaks as well, so posting around midday works for some engagement.
Sprout Social states that Tuesdays and Thursdays are the best days for posting on the social media site. Likely, people are quite busy on Mondays, in meetings on Wednesdays and wrapping up the work week on Fridays.
Instagram is a bit more dependent upon your buyers’ browsing habits. Typically, weekdays are best for posting and before noon. Social Pilot studied over 50,000 Instagram accounts and averaged the times getting the most traction.
The best time to post was 7 to 9 a.m. on weekdays. Researchers found posts going live at those times got the most likes and discussion. However, Instagram pages also come with a built-in optimal time check tool that relates specifically to your audience and their habits.
A deeper dive into specific times showed the optimal range was:
- Monday: 11 a.m. and 1 a.m.
- Tuesday: 11 a.m. and 1 a.m.
- Wednesday: 9 a.m., 2 p.m. and 9 p.m.
- Thursday 7 a.m., 2 p.m. and 9 p.m.
- Friday: 7 a.m., noon, 1 p.m., 8 p.m. and 9 p.m.
- Saturday: 12 p.m. and 3 p.m.
- Sunday: 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Similar to TikTok, the numbers are all over the place and may vary, depending on your industry.
Figuring Your Business’s Best Times to Post
Although knowing the general times when people are most active on various social media platforms is helpful, mileage varies greatly based on each audience. Pay attention to how well your content performs based on the number of likes, shares and comments. Are people clicking from the platform and visiting your website?
- Use tools each social media platform provides to see when your followers are most active.
- Pay attention to successful competitors and when they post, as their audience is likely similar.
- Tap into tools through social media scheduling platforms.
Pay attention to your analytics and don’t be scared to think outside the box. If you aren’t getting the engagement you’d like, can you try posting at a non-recommended time and seeing what happens?
Repeat Successes
Knowing the analytics behind each platform is crucial to learning the best times to post, which days see the most traffic and the types of content your followers respond to. Some sites offer more insight than others, but you can learn from each one by digging into the details and taking notes on what you notice. If you post something that gets a ton of engagement or goes viral, repeat the day, time and type of post for future social media marketing success.
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About The Author
Cooper Adwin is the Assistant Editor of Designerly Magazine. With several years of experience as a social media manager for a design company, Cooper particularly enjoys focusing on social and design news and topics that help brands create a seamless social media presence. Outside of Designerly, you can find Cooper playing D&D with friends or curled up with his cat and a good book.