What Are the Best Times to Post on Social Media for Maximum Engagement?

​@JamesLambert Hi there! This can be a bit of a trick question. Is it the day/time that is causing content to perform, or not perform? Or is it the type of content (video vs. image, etc)? 

I have a few questions to start.

1. What industry vertical are you in? 
2. Do you have an analytics tool, such as Sprout, to help know what content is performing?
3. What kind of content are you posting?
4. Is it only Facebook, Instagram and Twitter? And are you posting the exact same thing at the exact same times for each platform?
5. Have you reviewed Sprout’s Social Media Benchmark Report? This is their 2024 report (I don’t believe the 2025 has been released yet) - https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-benchmarks-by-industry/. 

I know off-times that I like that most people don't post are late around 9 pm and early on Sunday and later in the afternoon on Saturday. We see a nice uptick during those times. 

Thanks for the thoughtful response! You raise some great points. It’s true that content type (video vs. image) could play a big role in performance, and I’ll definitely keep that in mind. As for your questions:

• My industry vertical is [insert your industry].
• I’ve been using basic analytics tools on the platforms themselves, but I’m open to trying something like Sprout to get deeper insights.
• I post a mix of content, including images, videos, and even some text-based posts.
• Currently, I’m posting on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but not always at the same time or with the exact same content for each platform.

I’ll definitely check out Sprout’s Social Media Benchmark Report. It sounds like it could provide some useful insights to fine-tune my posting strategy.

Is this a genuine reply, or was AI used to generate it? “My industry vertical is [insert your industry].”

If you are using AI to generate your social posts, without editing them or proof-reading them, that may be why they aren’t performing well.

The Sprout Social Best Times to post report is out for 2025 now! This year there are regional reports available, I’ve linked them all below.

North America:

• Are you posting on social at the right time? Data-driven insights for optimal engagement

UK:

• UK social media marketers: optimise your reach with our new best times to post guide

Australia:

• Australian social media marketers: enhance your strategy with our best times to post insights

We honestly just go with what Sprout tells us! But for our audience, it’s usually towards the end of the work day. We’re very much a 9-5 team, so we try to keep it within work hours so we can monitor engagement, but sometimes we have to do it after work and keep an eye on things. 

​@Laura Porcincula posted this last week. It covers these asks pretty well!

• Are you posting on social at the right time? Data-driven insights for optimal engagement

Does anyone else have a different approach to this? With the prevalence of algorithms, particularly on Reels and TikTok, “best time to post” is no longer as big a deal? With LinkedIn the performance tends to be long tail too, with content bubbling along well after it was posted.

It tends to be more content style/theme and duration that impacts more than time posted?

LinkedIn told me “there is no bad day/time to post” because it’s all about what happens within first 24 hours of posting. 

For B2B I find that mornings Tuesday thru Thursday works best - but it is really all about the content. And sometimes we do weekend posts and they perform well too!

​@Heather Hernandez LinkedIn is wild, I get things popping up that were posted 2/3 weeks ago and see page content have much more of a long tail than other channels. We post across the week and weekends because of that. 

I agree ​@thematthorne ~ this is why we are not using time-sensitive language like “tomorrow” or “recently” in our posts.