Do you want to know the best time to post on social media?

You’re in luck because today you’re going to get an answer!

Here at Source Group, we post over 1000 posts a week for our clients who expect engagement.

And one of the best ways to maximize your chances for engagement is to post when your audience is actually logged in on social media.

In this post, we’ll take a look at the best times to post on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn backed by research from Sprouts Social’s 20,000 client case study.

Also at the end, we’ll give you two ways to uncover your best time to post based on your specific audience.

Ready to dive in?

Great!

Let’s start first by unpacking what it means to post at the best time.

What Does It Mean to Post At The Best Time?

The best time to post is the time and day where you have the max amount of active followers online.

How many active followers you have at any given time or day will depend on two things:

• The location or time zone of the bulk of your audience.
• The way of life of your audience.

These two things will influence when your followers will actually be online

Alright, let’s look at the general best times to post on social media.

The Best Time To Post On Instagram

• The best day to post on Instagram: Wednesday
• The worst day to post on Instagram: Sunday
• The best time to post on Instagram: Wednesday at 11 a.m. and Friday between 10 a.m. – 11 a.m.

Interesting right?

Digging even deeper, Instagram tends to have steady engagement Monday – Friday between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m.

But early mornings, before 6 a.m., and late nights, after 9 p.m., is where usage begins to drop.

This makes sense.

Unless Instagram users are vampires, we wouldn’t expect engagement to be extremely high in the wee hours of the morning and night.

Usage of the platforms also trends lower on weekends as users are out and about.

In short, stick to posting mid-day during the week if posting on Instagram.

The Best Time To Post on Facebook

• The best day to post on Facebook: Wednesday
• The worst day to post on Facebook: Sunday
• The best time to post on Facebook: Wednesday at 11 a.m. and between 1-2 p.m.

Facebook’s best time to post mirror’s Instagram quite a bit. Does that surprise anyone?

Both Facebook and Instagram claim Wednesday at 11 a.m. as the best day and time to post.

Although anytime between Tuesday and Thursday between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. is considered safe.

Facebook’s usage, also like Instagram’s, trends lower on weekends.

Therefore, unless you have content that is specific to the weekend, we’d suggest posting it during the week.

Also, try not to post before 7 a.m. or after 5 p.m. as these times generally see the lowest engagement throughout the week.

The Best Time To Post On Twitter

• The best day to post on Twitter: Wednesday and Thursday
• The worst day to post on Twitter: Saturday
• The best time to post on Twitter: Wednesday and Friday at 9 a.m.

In general, Monday through Friday between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. are great times to post on Twitter.

As with previous platforms, engagement, and usage drop in the early morning, before 4 a.m., and in the late-night, after 10 p.m., on Twitter.

Specifically for Twitter, engagement does peak in the morning between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m.

This is likely due to Twitter being looked at as a news platform and users checking it as one of their first morning activities.

The Best Time To Post On LinkedIn

• The best day to post on LinkedIn: Wednesday and Friday
• The worst day to post on LinkedIn: Sunday
• The best time to post on LinkedIn: Wednesday between 8-10 a.m. and 12 p.m., Thursday at 9 a.m. and 1-2 p.m., and Friday at 9 a.m.

LinkedIn is historically known as a platform catered to business professionals. Therefore, it’s no surprise that the workweek has the best engagement on LinkedIn.

Generally, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Tuesday through Friday is a safe time to post to get engagement.

Monday is the one day of the workweek that gets less than desirable usage and engagement.

This makes sense as Monday is typically the busiest day for the platform’s core demographic, business professionals.

How To Find Your Own Best Time To Post On Social Media

The research we went over today is a great starting place for the best times to post.

However, it’s even better to look at your own data to determine an optimal time to post that is based on your audience.

Here’s a relatively unknown way for you to check your own stats to see when most of your followers are on Instagram:

1. Head over to Creator Studio by Facebook, a platform that gives you an in-depth look at your audience.
2. Click Insights and then Audience.
3. Then go down to “When Your Followers are on Instagram” and choose Day & Hour.

…and voila! Your own custom day & hour chart to see exactly when your followers are online.

Alternatively, you can use a social media scheduling tool that has the feature built-in. Platforms such as:

• Hootsuite

• Sprout Social

• Zoho Social

…all have a feature that will automatically schedule your content based on the time you are likely to get the most engagement taking the burden off of you to aggregate the data yourself.

These tools also offer comprehensive reports on your audience and post-performance that will show you the best times if you’d like to dig into the data yourself.

Quick Recap

Well, there you have it, the best time to post on social media. As a recap, we learned the following:

• The best time to post on Instagram: Wednesday at 11 a.m. and Friday between 10 a.m. – 11 a.m.
• The best time to post on Facebook: Wednesday at 11 a.m. and between 1-2 p.m.
• The best time to post on Twitter: Wednesday and Friday at 9 a.m.
• The best time to post on LinkedIn: Wednesday between 8–10 a.m. and 12 p.m., Thursday at 9 a.m. and 1- 2 p.m., and Friday at 9 a.m.

Don’t forget, you can also find your own best time to post on social media by looking at your data in Creator Studio.

Or, by using a social media scheduling platform such as Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Zoho Social to post at the best times for you.

Moreover, if you need more help with your social media management and marketing, we’ve got you covered. As one of the leading digital marketing agencies today, we’re always happy to help businesses like yours grow their social media presence.