The optimum time to post to reach your target audience is determined by your specific audience’s activity inside each app. Some of this information may be found in the analytics tools of the various social applications, but you must also experiment and test to determine when your postings create the best reaction.
Several factors can play a role in this, including when your users are most active, when they are most responsive to your messaging, what other information is being uploaded at any one moment, the precise content that you’re providing, algorithm sorting, and so on.
There is no one perfect time for all businesses to post to any social app – but if you’re organizing your strategy and wondering when you should be scheduling, this annual report from the team at Sprout Social can provide assistance for your planning and trials, to help you find the right times and cadences for your strategy.
The Sprout Social team has established the periods when users are most engaged and active inside each of the main applications based on usage information gained from Sprout’s 30,000+ clients.
Based on this, posting around these times might help you reach a larger audience – but, as always, trial and testing are required; this isn’t a definitive recommendation for when your business will experience the greatest results.
With that in mind, here are the most recent findings from Sprout’s Best Times to Post study.
(Also, keep in mind that all times are in CST, but the relative insights, based on frequent usage, will most likely apply to your local time zone as well.)
The best times to post on Facebook, according to Sprout, are Mondays through Fridays at 3 a.m., and Tuesdays between 10 a.m. and noon. Why at 3 a.m.? Well, there’s probably a lot less competition at that time, and posting during these downtimes might be the first engagement spark you need to reach more people throughout the day.
Facebook is also utilized by individuals all around the world in various time zones, so there may be more engagement from other places, which might assist to jumpstart your post activity. Early mornings and between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. on weekdays appear to be the busiest times on Facebook, so this might also be a good time to try as well.
According to the Sprout team, the optimum days to publish are Tuesdays through Fridays, with Saturdays being avoided entirely. Maybe fewer people check in on weekends, or maybe Facebook emphasizes material from friends and family more on weekends, but engagement rates on Saturday and Sunday are low overall.
According to Sprout, the best times to post on Instagram are Mondays at 11 a.m., Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., and Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. So, it appears that mid-morning is the Instagram sweet spot, which might be useful information for your planning and increasing your Instagram interaction.
The study does not indicate whether this applies to Stories or ordinary feed posts, although it seems probable that this applies to feed postings in particular. However, it may be worthwhile to try Stories along similar lines to see what kind of results you get.
Sprout claims that the greatest days for IG activity are Tuesdays and Wednesdays, with Sundays being the worst.
According to Sprout’s data, the greatest times to tweet are Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 9 a.m. Perhaps this is related to how people use Twitter to stay up to date on the latest news. If the majority of Sprout’s subscribers use social media for business, it stands to reason that the majority of them are on Twitter around 9 a.m. every day.
In any case, Sprout’s findings show that between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., individuals are more actively digesting tweets, which might help drive their thoughts.
Tuesday and Wednesday are the ideal days to tweet, whereas Sunday should be avoided.
Finally, according to Sprout’s research, the optimum time to publish on LinkedIn is Tuesday between 10 a.m. and noon. Weekdays between 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. appear to have rather high LinkedIn activity generally, so there may be a few possibilities there, and it may be worth experimenting with different posting patterns to see what works and what doesn’t.
The greatest days to publish to LinkedIn are Wednesday and Thursday, while the weekends, predictably, see significantly less LinkedIn activity.
Final Thoughts
Again, these observations are not intended to be prescriptive; they do not state that “you must publish at these times to see the highest engagement in each app.” This is based on a sample pool of tens of thousands of people, and posting during certain time periods may help you see increased interaction and response to your posts.
However, it is unique to each company and audience, and you will need to test and experiment to figure out what works best.
Nevertheless, they may be a decent reference, and it may be worth adjusting your posting method in accordance with this data to see if your numbers improve.
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