The best time to post on social media — and how to find your own
General posting-time patterns for Instagram, LinkedIn, X, TikTok and Facebook, and a simple four-week test to find the times that work for your audience.
By The Postreo team
“What's the best time to post?” is one of the most searched questions in social media, and the honest answer is that it depends on your audience. Industry studies publish different “best times” every year because they measure different audiences. The patterns below are a reasonable starting point; your own data is the only thing that can tell you what works for you.
Why posting time matters
Most feeds are ranked rather than chronological, but early engagement still matters: a post that gets likes, comments and shares in its first hour is more likely to be shown to more people. Posting when your followers are actually scrolling gives each post a better first hour.
General patterns by network
These are broad tendencies that show up repeatedly, not rules. Treat them as hypotheses to test, in your audience's local time.
LinkedIn follows the working week. Weekday mornings and lunchtimes, roughly Tuesday to Thursday, tend to do well; evenings and weekends are usually quieter. B2B audiences often check LinkedIn at the start of the working day.
Instagram use is spread throughout the day, with common peaks in the morning, at lunch and in the evening. Consumer brands often see strong evenings and weekends; business audiences behave more like LinkedIn.
Facebook audiences tend to be active from morning through early afternoon on weekdays. Local businesses and community pages can see good results in the evening, when people browse at home.
X (Twitter)
X moves fast and skews toward news, so weekday mornings tend to be strongest, and posts have a short lifespan. If your audience follows live events or news, posting when the conversation is happening matters more than any fixed time.
TikTok
TikTok is less sensitive to timing because its feed recommends videos to people who don't follow you, and a video can gain views days after posting. Evenings are popular, but consistency and the first few seconds of the video matter far more than the hour.
How to find your own best time to post
A simple four-week test will tell you more than any industry report.
- Check where your audience is. If most of your followers are in one time zone, plan in that zone, not yours.
- Pick three time slots per network to compare — for example, morning, lunchtime and evening.
- Rotate posts through those slots for four weeks, keeping the type of content as similar as possible so you're testing the time, not the topic.
- Compare engagement rate (engagements divided by impressions or reach), not raw likes. A post that reached more people will naturally get more likes.
- Keep the winning slots, then test new slots against them next month.
Mistakes to avoid when choosing posting times
- Using someone else's “best time” chart as a rule. Their audience isn't yours.
- Forgetting time zones. 9am for you can be the middle of the night for your followers.
- Judging a time slot on one post. One great or terrible post says more about the content than the time.
- Posting at peak times only. Very busy hours are also when there's the most competition in the feed.
- Obsessing over the minute. A great post at a decent time beats a mediocre post at the perfect time.
Tracking post performance in Postreo
Postreo schedules posts to more than 30 networks from one calendar, in the time zone you set for your workspace, so a post planned for 9am goes out at 9am where your audience is. The analytics dashboard brings impressions, reach, likes and saves for every post and channel into one place and ranks your top posts, which makes comparing time slots during a test straightforward.
Frequently asked questions
Is there one best time to post on all social media?
No. Each network is used differently and each audience has its own habits. Weekday mornings are a common safe starting point, but test before you commit.
Does posting time matter on TikTok?
Less than on other networks. TikTok shows videos to people based on interest rather than timing, and videos can keep gaining views for days. Posting consistently matters more than posting at a particular hour.
How often should I change my posting schedule?
Review it every month or two. Audiences shift with seasons, holidays and changes to the networks themselves, so a schedule that worked last year may not be best now.