The best times to post on social media in 2023

Reaching your audience takes precise planning and researching the best times to post on social media. Each platform needs strategic approaches to maximize how well your content does across all channels. But before you get started, here are some questions you should tackle first:

• What kind of audiences does each social media platform have? Audiences on LinkedIn are very different from Instagram audiences, for example. Clearly defining your audiences will help you dive deeper into your posting strategy.

• What time zone is my target market in? Audiences can vary depending on the timezone. It’s important to identify which times work best for the timezone your target audience is located in so that your time and energy can be allocated accordingly.

• When is the highest engagement during the day? During the week? Larger audiences don’t necessarily mean higher engagement. You have to keep track of when your audiences are active the most, while also keeping an eye on holidays, events, current trends, and key influencers to see what’s attracting the most engagement.

Keep in mind that there’s no perfect answer to the question of "When is the best time to post on social media" – there’s only good research and planning.

Luckily, we’ve done the work for you, looking at our own data. For the sake of simplicity, we will pull our focus toward US time zones for each of the platforms listed below.

Table of Contents

• Facebook

• Instagram

• Twitter

• LinkedIn

• YouTube

• TikTok

• Pinterest

• Snapchat

The best times to post on Facebook

Don’t forget that your posting strategy is just as important as your organic reach on Facebook. As these go hand in hand, always keep your organic strategy in mind when creating your posting strategy. 

Data reveals some very clear guidelines on when brands should post on Facebook (CST):

Emplifi also looked at when US Facebook users were online during the day, highlighting how most brand follower activity on Facebook tops out at 8am, and remains consistent until 6pm.

Timings like these are great to know where you stand by benchmarking your posts. The best way to figure out your competitive advantage for your brand or industry is to check your metrics on your Emplifi dashboard. 

Emplifi also features PrimeTime for better content scheduling and publishing decisions. By having a strong Facebook SEO posting strategy, you’ll be able to easily maximize your reach and engagement with smart publishing recommendations tailored to each of your Facebook pages' active audiences – especially useful if your business runs localized pages in different regions around the world.

The best times to post on Instagram 

Instagram is the top choice for influencers and content creators looking for brand collaborations, and although Facebook’s user base is larger, Instagram’s two billion-plus monthly active users are incredibly engaged. In fact, Emplifi’s social media benchmarks showed that brands saw a rate of 28.48 interactions per 1K impressions on their Instagram posts in 2022 — compared to 4.88 on their Facebook posts.

According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the best times to post on Instagram throughout the week are (CST):

The key is to build as much engagement as possible. And on Instagram, that means through likes, comments, views, and shares. This list includes some early mornings — which may come as a surprise — but users usually check first thing in the morning when starting their day. Mid to late afternoon is also a peak time, as people use Instagram as a work break, and their attention span may die down as the work day continues.  

If you're posting when your followers are most active, your content will pick up steam much faster, and Instagram will push it further up the feed, resulting in even more interactions. By knowing the best times to post on Instagram, you can create engaging Instagram captions to take your posting strategy to the next level. 

The best times to post on X/Twitter

Unlike some other platforms, Twitter is less about publishing at exactly the right time than it is about keeping up a healthy volume of tweets so that you stay on your audience’s Twitter newsfeed. Coschedule’s data reveals these as the best and worst times for businesses to post on Twitter:

It’s important to note that engagement can differ between B2B to B2C companies. Recurpost says the best time for B2B businesses to post on Twitter is during standard business hours (EST), between the hours of 9am and 4pm on Mondays and Thursdays, but especially during the hours of 11am to 1pm, which tends to be lunchtime for most users. However, as Recurpost clarifies, B2C companies don’t experience as much of an engagement difference as B2B companies between the different days and times of the week.

To create a powerful Twitter marketing strategy, you should always look at your own data to see the best posting times for your business.

The best times to post on LinkedIn 

With a growth rate of about 36% in 2022 and over 690 million members, LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network. The people using LinkedIn aren’t looking for fluff; they’re more interested in engaging conversations. 

With the nature of LinkedIn being a professional network, a lot of users surf the platform during work hours. Let’s take a look at the posting trends, according to Coschedule (target audience’s time zone):

Now that you know the best times to post on LinkedIn, you can attract the right audiences when they are most engaged.  

The best times to post on YouTube

When posting on YouTube, keep in mind that YouTube is under the Google umbrella. If you’re familiar with Google and SEO, you know that YouTube videos are indexed and ranked in Google searches.

Recurpost reports that YouTube users tend to enjoy watching videos on the weekends. It’s also important to note that when videos get uploaded to the platform, it takes a few hours to a day to gain traction, so videos need to be published before peak user times.

To get a good ranking for your YouTube video on Google search, posting earlier before the traffic, and YouTube engagement rate increases will give you that advantage.

The best times to post on TikTok 

As the app grows every day, brands are trying to find their voice on TikTok and determine the best ways to use TikTok for business. A 15-second video can gain a lot of traction for your brand as long as you post it at the right time. 

Influencer Marketing Hub released data pointing to a generalized approach you can take to TikTok posting until you have enough of your own data to make strategic posting decisions. These are the findings (EST):

Emplifi's social media benchmarks take a look at US and European TikTok followers online during the day. US followers remain steady on TikTok in the morning and then start to peak between the hours of 12pm-6pm PST. Though European followers also steadily increase during the day, user activity doesn’t tend to peak until 7pm-9pm CET. 

While it's important to monitor the best days and times to post on TikTok, there are also special occasions during the year where your brand's TikTok content can leverage holidays such as Christmas, Valentine's Day, or Halloween to optimize engagement. This is a great time to launch a new campaign, go LIVE, or simply ramp up your video content to reel in new customers. 

Here’s a tip – people have been reposting their TikTok videos on Instagram, so you can do the same to gain more reach and visibility. Check the best times to post on Instagram, mentioned earlier in this blog.

The best times to post on Pinterest 

Posting on Pinterest really depends on the type of pins you post, the boards you follow, and the types of audiences. Content quality is important for Pinterest’s algorithm since the platform uses Smart Feed, which was designed to create a more personalized feed for Pinterest users. 

To improve your Pinterest marketing strategy and to get your pins into more personalized Smart Feeds, Pinterest takes into account three things: image quality, meaningful descriptions, and consistent pinning to contribute to the Pinterest community. 

Coschedule’s data reveals (target audience’s time zone):

The best times to post on Snapchat

Snapchat is one of those nocturnal apps that keeps bedtime browsers entertained till they fall asleep. Other than personal use, Snapchat for business is great for marketing your business with short, quality content. So how can you get the most out of it? Let’s consult the data (EST).

The takeaway

Whatever your social media goals are, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for posting at the right time. It takes precise planning and research to get the results you need to improve your next campaign.

You have to create engaging content and organize your social media posting schedule to a T. Knowing the best times to post on social media can improve your content strategy and help you understand more about your audiences.