The Best Time to Post on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. So, when are the best times to post on social media? That depends on the audience you’re trying to target (who they are and where they are located), the networks you’re using, your goals, and the kind of content you share. There are numerous tools out there to help you find the best time to Tweet, such as Hootsuite’s AutoSchedule which chooses a time based on when your Tweets have performed the best. Know your audience. Bonus: Download a free guide that reveals how to increase social media engagement with better audience research, sharper customer targeting, and Hootsuite’s easy-to-use social media software. But despite the non-chronological functionality of the News Feed, our social marketing team has discovered publishing times that do indeed yield a higher amount of Likes, comments, shares, and click-throughs: The best time to post on Facebook is between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. All three report the hours of 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays are optimal posting times for Facebook. And if you are a B2C organization, you may find that posts published on the weekends do better, where here at Hootsuite, as a B2B company, we get the best results from weekday working hours. With Hootsuite’s scheduling capabilities and built-in analytics tool, you can easily find the best time to post on social media.
Timing is everything on social media. You only want to send messages when people are around to see them. And a larger audience means more opportunities to boost engagement, drive traffic, and gain potential new followers and customers.
So, when are the best times to post on social media?
That depends on the audience you’re trying to target (who they are and where they are located), the networks you’re using, your goals, and the kind of content you share. But while there is no perfect time to post, there are resources that can help you find the optimal times.
The best time to post on Twitter
Despite Twitter’s move to only a quasi-chronological timeline, the average half-life of a Tweet isn’t long. According to an analysis by Wiselytics, it’s only 24 minutes, nearly four times shorter than the 90-minute half-life of a Facebook post.
“For Facebook, a post reaches 75 percent of its potential engagement in five hours. A median Tweet reaches this 75 percent mark in less than three hours,” Wiselytics says.
This relatively small window of opportunity for engagement means your Tweets need to get out in front of as many eyeballs as possible—when the largest portion of your target audience is using Twitter.
Knowing when that is will take a bit of trial and error (more on that later), but to get you started, here’s what @Hootsuite’s own data suggests based on an analysis of over 40,000 tweets:
- The best time to post on Twitter is at 3 p.m. Monday to Friday.
“As a B2B organization, we find the best times to Tweet are between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays, with the highest amount of clicks and Retweets occurring at 3 p.m.,” explains Hootsuite social media marketing specialist Amanda Wood.
But again, this will differ depending on your audience, location, and content strategy. The Huffington Post, for example, says 5 p.m., 12 p.m., and 6 p.m., are the best times for Retweets, while 12 p.m. and 6 p.m. also deliver higher click-through rates. Kissmetrics says weekdays at 5 p.m. are most effective, and Hubspot came to the same conclusion as we did: 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Monday to Friday is best.
You should use these times as a starting point, test different posting schedules and measure the results. Here are three things to consider as you go about finding the best time to post:
1. Location matters. If you are trying to reach a global audience, create a Twitter handle for each region and use a social media management tool to run them all from the same platform. Be sure to create social media reports to track when you get the most engagement for each Twitter handle.
2. Use the right tool. There are numerous tools out there to help you find the best time to Tweet, such as Hootsuite’s AutoSchedule which chooses a time based on when your Tweets have performed the best. You can AutoSchedule from both the dashboard and the Hootlet extension.
3. Know your audience. How old are they? Where do…
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