Editor’s note: Time zones in this article vary, so it’s best to apply insights to your own base (e.g. EST, GMT, or SGT) and adjust based on a typical work day for your audience.
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 time zone. It’s important to identify which times work best for the time zone 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 social media 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. The data here will help you consider key windows on each channel, but it’s important to utilize your own social media analytics to evaluate and consider historical engagement across your own accounts.
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, planning, and testing. According to Emplifi's social media benchmarks data, there’s a clear leader for which channels dominate engagement as Instagram and TikTok continue to exceed Facebook and X in overall paid and organic post interactions per 1,000 impressions.
Does that mean your entire strategy should center on those two channels? No, it really comes down to understanding where your audience lives, when they’re online, and what types of content work to grab their attention. We encourage you to use these suggested windows as guideposts for your own publishing, test against them, and see what works for your communities.
Table of Contents
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, and when possible, take inspiration from brand pages that do it well.
Industry data shared by Influencer Marketing Hub 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 a high percentage of brand follower activity on Facebook is consistent between 9am and 6pm (PDT).
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 the metrics on your unified analytics dashboard to understand the best ways to reach your audience.
Some social media management tools also feature AI and automated insights to support better content scheduling and publishing decisions. By having a strong Facebook SEO posting strategy, you’ll be able to easily maximize your social media engagement and reach 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 1.4 billion-plus monthly active users are incredibly engaged. In fact, Emplifi’s social media benchmarks showed that Instagram saw its best numbers in more than two years, improving 9% from Q3 to Q4 2023 in median brand post interactions (per 1,000 impressions).
According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the best times to post on Instagram throughout the week are (CST):
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. While zeroing in on the best times to post on Instagram, you can create engaging Instagram captions to take your posting strategy to the next level.
Instagram is also one of the most powerful channels for visually engaging content. Content types like Carousels and Reels outperform interactions of static images. That doesn’t mean your brand shouldn’t balance content, but do consider these variables when testing your best publishing windows.
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 data shows that the highest percentage of TikTok followers is online around 6pm (PDT) and – similar to Instagram Reels – users (in European time zones) favor afternoons overwhelmingly to other parts of the day.
While it's important to monitor the best days and times to post on TikTok, there are also times during the year when 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 X
Unlike some other platforms, X (formerly Twitter) is less about publishing at exactly the right time than it is about keeping up a healthy volume of posts so that you stay on your audience’s feed. Coschedule’s data reveals these as the best and worst times for businesses to post on X:
Recurpost says the best time for businesses to post on X 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 X 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 an expected growth rate of 22.3% from 2024 to 2028, and approaching 1 billion members globally during that span, 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’re 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. And interestingly, the channel doesn’t consider itself a social network, but does offer similar functionality through its Shorts content.
According to Emplifi data, the best day to post on YouTube is Monday, with engagement (average impressions) dropping across the week. Saturdays are definitely a window to avoid as a brand.
Recurpost reports that YouTube users – depending on geography – mostly enjoy watching videos in the late afternoon. 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 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 stream 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 until 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 this data shared by SOCi (EST).
The takeaway: Test and iterate to see what works for your audience
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.
For example, Emplifi data suggests that Instagram Reels and TikTok videos – the most engaged content types examined – are most effective sharing during Friday afternoons. These short-form videos are effectively modern-day television and, as a result, their peak engagement window is when you would expect people to be wrapping up their week.
Based on average impressions by day of the week (across European time zones), Instagram and TikTok videos surged engagement on Fridays, and more than 50% of average impressions for both content types came in the afternoon.
Naturally, this doesn’t mean that your overall best time to post for all social channels is going to be Friday afternoon. It just means that some of your publishing needs to align your audience’s mindset and interests with the content you use during a publishing window. As channels like TikTok become more than just short-form video escapes for these audiences, you need to pair when people are tapped in with what type of content is specifically capturing their engagement.
The key lesson is to create engaging content and organize your social media posting schedule to test and iterate. Knowing the best times to post on social media can improve your content strategy and help you identify actionable insights about your audience. Those insights are what make your overall social media strategy more impactful and improve the connection with those audiences.
