With the short shelf life of social media posts, it’s important to know when your audience is engaging online. Enticing content is great, but if your audience isn’t on social to see your posts, your efforts are fruitless.

There certainly isn’t a “one size fits all” when it comes to when to post on social. But there is some great data out there to give you a starting point. After a few weeks or months after posting regularly, you can pull data on when your audience is the most active on social and adjust your scheduled posts accordingly.

Keep in mind that the following times reflect the time zone that an audience resides in. It’s common for brands to have audiences in multiple time zones so it’s smart to post at each audience’s peak time when they’re active on social.

Each social platform has a different audience so the ideal times are specific to each channel. Obviously, with so many platforms that you need to be active on, all with different peak post times, your social media posting strategy can get a little complicated. That’s when the right post scheduling tool comes in handy. We like HootSuite and Sprout Social. If time is still an issue, many brands contract social media agencies like Rossman Media.

Gathering the data to find the best times to post on social can be tedious. Luckily, we like to be a social media marketing resource so we’ve done all the heavy lifting for you and in this post, we will cover the best times to post on each social channel. 

Best Time to Post on Facebook

Facebook is one of the most used social platforms with 1.8 billion daily active users last year. Because of Facebook’s ability to drive high quality leads, posting at the right times is crucial.

• The best days to post on Facebook are Wednesday, Thursday and Friday
• The worst day to post on Facebook is Saturday
• The best time to post a video on Facebook is between 12 pm and 1 pm as most users are on lunch during this time and can interact with video
• Posting between noon and 2 pm on weekdays is the peak activity time
• On the weekends, early morning and late evening are the worst times to post

Best Time to Post on Instagram

Before researching hashtags and coming up with punchy captions, it’s important to know when your audience is active on Instagram. 

• The best time of day to post on Instagram is between 10 am and 3 pm
• The best day to post on Instagram is Tuesday
• The worst day to post on Instagram is Sunday
• The best day to post on IGTV is Wednesday at 8 pm
• The best time to go live on Instagram is Monday through Friday at 12 pm

Best Time to Post on TikTok

To grow your audience on TikTok and score maximum engagement, it’s key to know when the best times are to post on this short-form video platform. TikTok has become a bit of a cultural phenomenon and offers a lot of opportunities for brands to publish viral content.

• The best days to post on TikTok are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday
• Sunday is the worst day to post on TikTok
• There are 3 times that are best to post on TikTok: Tuesdays at 8 am, Thursdays at 11 pm and Fridays at 4 am

Best Time to Post on Twitter

Tweets show up in feeds in reverse chronological order and have a very short shelf life. Because of this, it’s extra important to know when your target audience is active on the platform.

• The best time to post on Twitter is at 9 am on the weekdays
• The best day to post on Twitter is Wednesday
• The peak engagement times on Twitter are on Wednesdays at noon and after 5 pm
• Friday after 3 pm and weekends are the worst days to post on Twitter

Best Time to Post on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the most popular professional social platform. Because of this, behaviors on the platform are a little different as it tends to be acceptable to surf LinkedIn during normal work hours.

• The best time to post on LinkedIn is between 9 am and 5 pm
• Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to post on LinkedIn
• Sunday is the worst day to post on LinkedIn

Best Time to Post on Pinterest

This visually driven platform offers a lot of opportunities for brands to get noticed. In order for your pin to be seen, your posts should go up when your audience is the most active.

• The best days to post on Pinterest are Friday and Saturday
• The worst time to post on Pinterest is weekdays between 5 pm and 7 pm
• The best times to post on Pinterest are between 8 pm and 11 pm
• Pinterest user activity peaks on Fridays at 9 pm

Best Time to Post on YouTube

Creating videos for YouTube takes more time than posts on other social platforms. So you definitely want your hard work to be noticed and that starts with publishing on YouTube at the right times. However, it’s important to note that YouTube videos take a bit to get indexed. That means that ideal posting times are before the highest traffic times to give the video time to get indexed.



• The best days to publish on YouTube are Thursday and Friday
• The best time to post on YouTube is between 2 pm and 4 pm
• YouTube traffic is highest between 7 pm and 10 pm
• The worst days to post on YouTube is Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday 

Which time zone(s) does your target audience reside? Do you cater your posting schedule to meet the needs of these different time zones? We’d love to hear all about it in the comments below!