The best time to post on social media (and your own)
General best-time studies are a starting point, not an answer. How to find the best time to post for your own audience, platform by platform.
On this page
Search for "best time to post on Instagram" and you'll find a different answer on every site. That's not because everyone is wrong. It's because the best time depends on who your followers are, where they live and what they do all day.
Why general studies disagree
Big "best time" studies average millions of posts from thousands of brands in many countries and industries. The result is a reasonable starting point, but your audience isn't an average.
- A cafe's followers check their phones before work and at lunch.
- A B2B software company's followers are on LinkedIn on weekday mornings.
- A gym's followers scroll late in the evening.
- If most of your followers live in another time zone, "9am" means something else.
A simple way to find your own best time
- Start with a sensible guess. Weekday mornings and lunchtimes in your followers' time zone are safe for most businesses. Evenings often work for consumer brands.
- Post at different times for two to four weeks. Keep the content similar so you're testing the time, not the topic.
- Compare reach, not only likes. Reach tells you how many people saw the post. Likes also depend on how good the post was.
- Look per platform. The best time on LinkedIn is rarely the best time on Instagram or TikTok.
- Repeat every few months. Audiences change, and so do platforms.
What matters more than the exact minute
Timing helps, but it won't save a weak post. These usually matter more:
- The first line or first second. It decides whether people stop scrolling.
- The format. Short videos and carousels often reach more people than a single photo.
- Writing for each platform. The same caption everywhere tends to underperform on all of them.
- Replying to comments early. Platforms show posts to more people when a conversation starts.
- Posting regularly. A steady rhythm beats a perfect time once a month.
How Feedlio helps
Feedlio posts each platform at its own time from a single post, and its analytics show how every post did, so you can see which days and times reached the most people. When you plan with Feedlio's AI, or ask Claude or ChatGPT connected to Feedlio "When should I post this?", you get suggested times for each platform, based on your own results where there are enough of them.
