Best times to post on each social network: how to find yours

Search for 'best time to post' and you will find dozens of charts with confident answers: a weekday, an hour, sometimes a colour-coded heatmap. They are tempting because they promise a shortcut. The problem is that none of them were built from your audience. This guide shows you why those charts mislead, and how to find your own best times with a small experiment you can run in a few weeks.

Why generic posting-time charts mislead

A chart of 'best times' is an average across millions of accounts that have nothing in common with yours. Averages hide exactly the differences that matter to you.

• Your audience has its own rhythm. Nurses on night shifts, students, founders and retail customers are online at very different moments. An average blends them into a time that suits none of them.
• Time zones shift everything. A chart built on one country's clock is wrong for an audience spread across several. If your followers live in Douala, Paris and Montreal, 'morning' means three different things.
• Feeds are not chronological. Most networks rank posts by predicted interest, so a post can keep finding readers for hours or days. Timing still matters, mostly because early reactions help a post get shown to more people, but it is one factor among many.
• The charts rarely say how they were measured. Reach, likes, clicks and comments can each produce a different 'best time'. Without knowing the metric, you can't know what the advice optimises for.

The best time to post is a property of your audience, not of the network. You find it by testing, not by reading a chart.

Start with hypotheses, not answers

Instead of copying a time, write down what you believe about your audience and treat it as something to test. Each network suggests a few reasonable starting points, but hold them loosely.

• [LinkedIn](/networks/linkedin): a professional audience that often reads around the working day. Test early morning, lunch and the end of the workday in your audience's time zone.
• [Instagram](/networks/instagram) and TikTok: mostly leisure scrolling. Test evenings and weekends against weekday lunch breaks.
• X, Threads and Bluesky: conversations move with the news. If you comment on events in your field, posting while the topic is fresh can matter more than the hour on the clock.
• [Google Business Profile](/networks/google-business-profile): people searching for a local business. Think about when customers decide to visit or call: before a weekend, before opening hours, before a seasonal peak.
• Telegram channels: subscribers usually get a notification. Avoid times when a notification would be unwelcome, and test whether your readers respond better at the start or the end of their day.

Run a simple posting-time experiment

You don't need statistics software. You need a plan you can stick to for a few weeks and the discipline to change one thing at a time.

1. Pick two or three candidate slots per network. For example, a morning slot and an evening slot. More than three and you will need far more posts before any pattern appears.
2. Rotate the slots fairly. Spread similar posts across the slots over several weeks, so that no slot gets all your strongest ideas.
3. Keep the content comparable. Compare like with like: similar formats, similar length, similar topics. A carousel at 8:00 against a plain text post at 18:00 tells you about formats, not about time.
4. Change one variable at a time. If you test time, don't also change your hashtags, your hook style or your posting frequency in the same weeks.
5. Collect enough posts. One great post in a slot proves very little. Wait until each slot has several posts before drawing conclusions, and expect some noise.
6. Write down outside events. A holiday, a big news story or a post that was shared by someone with a large following can distort a week. Note it so you can discount it later.

Which metrics to read

The metric you choose decides the answer you get, so decide before you look at the results.

• Engagement rate, not raw likes. A post seen by more people will usually collect more reactions. Divide interactions by impressions (or by followers, if impressions aren't available) to compare posts fairly. The engagement rate calculator does this for you.
• Reach and impressions tell you whether the network showed your post to many people. Useful, but a slot with high reach and little interaction is not a good slot.
• Comments usually signal a stronger interest than a quick reaction, and conversations tend to help a post travel further.
• Saves and shares show that people found the post useful enough to keep or pass on. On visual networks they are often the most honest signal of value.
• Clicks or visits, if your goal is traffic, calls or bookings. For a local business profile, direction requests and calls matter more than likes.

Pick one main metric per network and one or two supporting ones. Then compare the average for each slot, not the single best post.

Audiences in several time zones

If you serve people in more than one country, first find out where most of the people you want to reach actually are. Your network's own audience statistics, where available, are a good start. Then choose one of three approaches.

• Serve the main audience. Post in the time zone where most of your target readers live, and accept that the others will see your posts later in the feed.
• Find the overlap. Look for hours that fall within reasonable waking time in all your main zones, for example late morning in Europe and early morning in the Americas.
• Alternate. Rotate your slots between zones across the week, and measure each zone's response separately.

Consistency beats perfect timing

Timing is worth testing, but it is rarely the main reason a post works or fails. A clear idea, a strong first line and a regular rhythm usually matter more. An account that posts at a decent time every week builds an audience that expects it. An account that waits for the perfect hour often posts less.

So treat your best slots as a schedule to keep, not a magic number. Once you have two or three slots per network that work, commit to them, and spend your energy on the content. If you publish the same idea on several networks, adapt it for each one rather than copying it; our guide to repurposing one post for LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok and X shows how.

How ProPost helps you find and keep your best times

When you know your slots, set them once per channel. New posts then take the next free slot in your queue, and you can drag any post to another time on the calendar if something changes. You decide what gets published, and when.

A four-week plan to find your times

1. Week 1: write down your hypotheses for each network you use, and choose two or three slots per network, with the time zone.
2. Weeks 2 and 3: post on a steady rhythm, rotating similar content across the slots. Note any unusual events.
3. Week 4: compare the average engagement rate per slot. Keep the best slot, drop the weakest, and test one new candidate in its place.
4. Every month after: check again. Audiences change with seasons, jobs and life, and your best time will move with them.