Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2023

With over 4.2 billion users worldwide, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table if you’re not using social media to reach your target audience. By creating great content and posting consistently on social media, your brand attracts high-quality leads, leading to better chances of conversion and business success. 

However, this might not be so if you don’t know when to post, as posting at specific times guarantees better visibility, engagement, and conversion.

This article discusses the best times to post on social media in 2023, especially on the most popular social media platforms. You’d also get valuable tips on how to find the best time to publish your posts.   

When to Post on Social Media in 2023

According to Sprout Social, the best time to post on social media in 2023 is between Tuesdays and Thursdays, from 9:00 a.m. to noon. Hootsuite has a similar report, pointing out 9:00 a.m. on Mondays as the best time to post on social media. However, HubSpot has an entirely different result, as it identified Fridays from 6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. as the best times to post on social media.

Many other platforms have different times when you should post on social media to get the highest visibility, engagement, and conversions. However, when to post on social media depends mainly on your target audience. You must have a holistic understanding of your target audience to know when they’re busy, sleeping, or free to roam through social media. The best time to post is when they’re free and going through social media, as that is when they have the most time to engage with your posts.  

Beyond understanding your target audience, you must also test-post at different times and monitor which posts get the most visibility and engagement and at what times. This gives you a real-life clue on the best times your target audience is always free to engage with your posts. However, if you’re new to your business and have yet to understand your target audience, these best times to post on different social media platforms will give you a good direction.

Best Times to Post on Different Social Media Platforms

Best Times to Post on Facebook

According to Sprout Social, the best time to post on Facebook is between Mondays and Thursdays, from 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Hootsuite reported 10:00 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays as the best times to post on Facebook.

Facebook had approximately 2.98 billion active users in the first quarter of 2023, making it one of the best social media platforms to get engagement for your posts. Getting your posting time right on Facebook is vital to your social media strategy, as the more visibility your posts get, the higher your chances of acquiring quality leads and turning them into buying customers.

Best Times to Post on Instagram

The best time to post on Instagram is between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. As Fridays usher in the weekend, your customers or target audience are looking for exciting things and places to spice up their weekends. And what better platform to check than Instagram?

Instagram has over 1 billion active users and is one of the go-to platforms for visuals. If you identify when your target audience is most active on Instagram, and you have visually appealing and valuable posts, then you’re sure to milk the high visibility on the platform for your business.

Best Times to Post on Twitter

The best times to post on Twitter are 9:00 a.m. to noon and 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. any day except Sundays. Twitter is arguably the best social media platform for trending news and the latest information. In fact, most brands leverage it to announce breaking news, as people’s first instinct upon hearing trendy information is to visit Twitter for details. One of the industries that comes to mind here is the sports journalism industry. People now get real-time information on Twitter on game time, scores, and other in-game reports without visiting any other website or platform.

Twitter has over 368 million monthly active users. It is a great platform to meet industry experts and have amazing interactions that could be helpful for your business.

Best Times to Post on LinkedIn

The best times to post on LinkedIn are between 10:00 AM to noon and 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM on Mondays to Thursdays. Weekends aren’t great for posting on LinkedIn as most people see the platform as an official place to make work-related connections and interactions. That means people are most active on LinkedIn during normal business hours.

According to LinkedIn, it has 930 million members in more than 200 countries and territories worldwide. That gives you a wide range of users to target when making your LinkedIn posts. However, it also means you have to be conscious of the time zone of your target audience, as not to make posts when they’re probably sleeping at night.  

Best Times to Post on TikTok

The best times to post on TikTok are from noon to 9:00 p.m. from Wednesdays to Sundays. The vibrant short-form video platform has around 71% of its users as Gen Zs and Millennials, who are mostly active on the platform after school hours. Weekends are the most productive periods on TikTok for businesses, as their posts get more visibility during these periods.

With over 1 billion monthly active users, a solid TikTok social media strategy promises amazing returns for a brand that knows the best time to reach its target audience.

Best Times to Post on YouTube

The best times to post on YouTube are between noon and 9:00 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. With its 2.1 billion monthly active users, YouTube offers brands a huge opportunity to attract high-quality leads and convert them into buying customers in no time.

Because of its unique features, people are most active on YouTube on weekends, especially between Fridays and Saturdays.

Tips for Finding Your Best Time to Post on Social Media

Here are some tips to help you find the best time to post on social media:

Understand Your Target Audience’s Routines

To know the best time to post on any social media platform, you must first understand your target audience’s daily routine. You can do this by creating a buyer’s persona that represents your ideal customer. This gives you insight into their lives, from their demographics to their needs, pain points, preferences, daily activities, and search queries, making it easy to figure out their most active social media times.

Study Your Best Posts.

Another way to identify the best time to post on a social media platform is to study your best-performing posts.

Leveraging data from a social media platform’s periodic reports or using an excellent analytics tool like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, Google Analytics, HubSpot, etc., you can study your best-performing posts and replicate them. You just have to look at the time and day you made the posts and the rate of engagement they attracted within the first few hours you posted. The ones with common metrics give you a clue as to when your target audience is most active on social media.

Study Your Competitors

What time do your core competitors make their posts? Check their feeds regularly for a period of time, and you’ll find the answer. You can also study their best-performing posts to know the time and day they were made.

Analytics tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, HubSpot, etc. enable you to comprehensively study your competitors, allowing you to understand what works for them and what you are or aren’t doing right.

Post in Your Audience’s Time Zone, Not Yours

If your target audience is in a different region, chances are they have a different time zone from you. This means you can make a post at your convenience, and it would attract zero visibility because your target audience is probably sleeping or busy with work. Therefore, you must understand your audience’s time zone and schedule your posts to be published when they’re most active on social media.

Conclusion

The internet never sleeps. That’s right, but your target audience sleeps. To make posts that get the needed visibility, engagement, and conversions, you must understand when your target audience can see them. Hopefully, this article has given you insights on the best times to post on social media platforms in 2023, helping your business achieve much-needed success.