“We find that time also works best on the weekends, but since we are a B2B [business-to-business] brand, our Instagram strategy is weekday-focused.” Instagram moved away from the reverse-chronological feed, but timing is still important. Finding the best time to post on Instagram—or any social network for that matter—is about knowing your audience, testing different times, and measuring results. Use engagement data from Facebook Page Insights or other measurement tools such as Hootsuite Analytics to determine what works best for you. If you’re a business-to-consumer (B2C) brand, you may find that tweeting when your followers aren’t working—before 9 a.m., at noon, and after 5 p.m. during the week—is best. Use the data as a starting point, test different posting schedules, and compare results. Here’s what the Hootsuite social team has learned about LinkedIn publishing. “The Hootsuite social team posts on the 45-minute mark because most brands are posting on the hour,” Wood says. Think your audience only engages with your content on the weekends when they are at home relaxing? How to find the best time to post on social media Know your audience How old are they? Now that you know how to find the best time to post, use Hootsuite to easily run tests, measure results, and schedule your content for optimal engagement.
When is the best time to post on social media?
Whenever your audience is most likely to see and engage with your great content. A well-timed post can lead to more likes, comments, shares, and click-throughs.
In this guide, we’ll tell you the best times to post—according to Hootsuite data. Our findings are based on years of testing on our own channels, as well as an analysis of over 400 million posts from Hootsuite users. We’ll also teach you how to use the data to inform your own publishing schedule.
Jump to the network of your choice or continue scrolling for all the tips and data.
The best time to post on Instagram
When people scroll through Instagram, they almost always do so on a mobile device. Does this mean off-work hours work best? After posting over 1,000 photos and videos throughout the day and night, the Hootsuite social marketing team found that…
- The best time to post on Instagram is from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. Monday to Friday.
“There’s no doubt our community scrolls through Instagram during their lunch hour,” Hootsuite social media team lead Amanda Wood explains. “We find that time also works best on the weekends, but since we are a B2B [business-to-business] brand, our Instagram strategy is weekday-focused.”
Instagram moved away from the reverse-chronological feed, but timing is still important. Instagram explains on their blog that posts are ordered “based on the likelihood you’ll be interested in the content, your relationship with the person posting and the timeliness of the post.” (Emphasis ours.)
To find the best posting schedule on Instagram, our own social team considered our audience and what their typical day looks like. Do they check Instagram as soon as they get up? On their way to work? At work?
We used those considerations to begin testing blocks of time and tracking when we received the most engagement.
Your results will likely be different—especially if your relationship with the audience is more business-to-consumer (B2C). In that case, you should test off-work hours like 7 p.m. during the week and various times throughout the weekend.
Finding the best time to post on Instagram—or any social network for that matter—is about knowing your audience, testing different times, and measuring results.
More on that later.
The best time to post on Facebook
Pew Research found that 71 percent of Facebook users visit the site every day—more than any other social network. People login from both their desktop and mobile devices (at work, home, and elsewhere), but mobile use is increasing. In fact, at least a quarter of Facebook users in 14 markets around the world are mobile-only users.
- The best time to post on Facebook is between 12 p.m. and 3 p.m. Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
- And on the weekends from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.
Despite the complex News Feed algorithm, our social team discovered those publishing times often see a higher number of likes, comments, shares, and click-throughs.
“For us, Tuesdays are a bit behind other weekdays in terms of Facebook engagement,” Wood explains. “But 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. is still the most effective window on that day.”
We see lower engagement on the weekends, but there is often a spike in click-throughs for posts published between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
There are a number of other studies out there that report Thursdays and Fridays from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. work well. And we see similar results for many industries in our analysis of Hootsuite userdata.
As always, you should test and track results for yourself. Use engagement data from Facebook Page Insights or other measurement tools such as Hootsuite Analytics to determine what works best for you.
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