What is the best time to post on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube & LinkedIn?
What is the best time to post on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube & LinkedIn?
I’ve experimented with this a lot over the last 12 months to try and identify if there really is a “best time” to post on social media to drive engagement.
After posting over 1000 videos on TikTok I can tell you there is no ‘best time’.
I can say the same about LinkedIn after writing 400 posts and the same on Instagram & YouTube after posting over 400 videos.
You’ll often see people say things like “post your LinkedIn content between 10 - 11am on a Tuesday for maximum exposure” or “the best time to post on TikTok is at 9pm” but honestly I’ve not found any of that to be true.
Here’s my top 10 performing TikTok videos along with when they were posted:
Friday, 7.09pm 11m views
Monday, 7.58am 3.4m views
Thursday, 1.21pm 2.2m views
Wednesday, 7.29pm 1.9m views
Friday, 8.41am 1.9m views
Tuesday, 2.47pm 1.8m views
Saturday, 8.10pm 1.2m views
Saturday, 10.22pm 903k views
Monday, 4.01pm 891k views
Monday, 9.40am 776k views
Some of the above where posted in the morning, some mid afternoon, some in the evening, some during the week and some at weekends.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t see any real pattern there in terms of ‘best time to post’.
My Instagram and YouTube follow a similar random pattern.
LinkedIn, whilst it doesn’t allow me to pull the exact time of a post, I can just tell that posting time isn’t really a much a factor when it comes down to how much “exposure” a post will get.
My Posting Principles
Whilst I don’t really worry anymore about what time is best to post. I do follow some basic principles, which are pretty much just common sense.
The way TikTok, Instagram and YouTube work and the ability to have your content pushed out to people who don’t follow you, posting time doesn’t really matter at all, but I do align my content to different times.
For example, I’m not going to post a serious “how to write your CV” type post at 10pm on a Friday night because whilst people will still see it, they’re way less likely to want to engage with that type of content at the end of a tough week. So I’d post something a bit more light hearted.
LinkedIn is a little different, in that it’s your followers/connections that are going to be served your content first.
So I have that in mind when I post.
Most of my audience will likely be sat at a computer Monday to Friday from 9 - 5. So that’s typically when I’ll post.
They’ll sometimes scroll LinkedIn in the evening, so I’ll occassionally post then, but not very often.
As I say a lot of it is common sense.
So it really doesn’t matter what time you post, what is important is that you post consistently, no matter what time it is.
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