New research: Best times to post on social

If you've always struggled to answer the question - when is the right time to post on social media, today I'm going to answer that for you.

According to new research commissioned by Hootsuite, the best times in quarter 4 of 2024 are:

Facebook - Saturday at 7am
X - Monday or Tuesday between 10am and 1pm
LinkedIn - Workdays 7am-8am
TikTok - Thursday at 3pm
Threads - Tuesday at 8am
Pinterest - Friday at midday
Instagram - Wednesday at 11am

They even went so far as to look at specific industries for some platforms. Nonprofit specific time recommendations are:

Facebook - Saturday between 6pm-9pm
LinkedIn - Monday at 8pm
X - Tuesday at 9pm

But there in lies the rub... is your audience typical or unique? Is your industry standard or niche?

The truth is the best way to determine the best time of day to post is with a deep ideal audience analysis. The more you know about your unique audience, the more you can tailor your content to suit them (and avoid crowded peak posting times). 

The next best answer is to test. Post at different times on your platforms across a month and record down the highest performers. Over time, patterns will emerge and you will see which times get highest reach and the most engagement.

Think about your audience's behaviours. If you're trying to reach me - a busy working mum - you can definitely get something in front of my eyes in the morning. But it will be briefly. If you need me to take action - like donate, buy something or fill out a form... it's not going to happen.

But you will get a better result from me in the early evening.

If you're ideal audience is a busy university student the morning would become the worst time to post. You'd have much better outcomes later into the evening when posting isn't as competitive.

While the above data from Hootsuite is super useful to see, it doesn't always tell the whole story. As we can see by narrowing the data by industry, there is no one right time to get engagement. 

But it can help give you some ideas to start testing for yourself. 

Happy posting,
Alecia