The Best Times to Post on Social Media for Your Small Business

As a small business owner trying to do it all, you probably put a lot of time and energy into brainstorming, capturing, editing, creating, and posting content for your social media pages. Naturally, you want that effort to pay off—you want people to actually see and engage with what you share. If you’ve ever wondered whether the timing of your posts plays a role in that success, the short answer is yes. But here’s the thing: timing isn’t everything.

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What Affects the Best Time to Post?

Before we get into when the “best” time to post is, you should know upfront that it depends on several different factors, including:

• Platform – The ideal posting time will vary across different social media outlets like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, X, Threads, and others. For example, LinkedIn users are primarily working professionals, so it’s not surprising that they’re typically most active during weekday mornings and lunch hours. On the other hand, TikTok users may scroll later in the day or in the evening.

• Industry – When a post is most likely to perform best can be affected by the industry of your business as well. A restaurant may see the most engagement right before lunch and dinner mealtimes, while a fitness studio might get better results posting in the early mornings or evenings when members are planning their workouts.

• Day of the Week – Engagement can fluctuate dramatically between weekdays and weekends, as well as earlier in the work week and later in the work week.

• Type of Content – What kind of content are you posting? Is it a funny, lighthearted video that’s easily digestible and a quick watch? Is it a long-form educational post that requires more brain power, or perhaps a link to an article that would require your audience to take several minutes to read? Consider how the nature of the content you’re posting could influence the time at which it would be best received.

• Audience Behavior – Most importantly, your ideal post timing depends on your target client’s habits. Think about your specific ideal client or customer. What are they doing at 9am on a Wednesday? What about 2 pm on a Friday? Or 8pm on a Sunday? Where are they? Are they commuting, or in a meeting, or picking kids up from school, or making dinner, or watching TV? Are they on their phones? And if so, are they on social media? To some extent, knowing the “right time” to post has to fundamentally start with knowing exactly who your target audience is, inside and out. If your social media following is reflective of your target audience, your platform analytics and insights can help you see when your followers are most active.

  
  

Quality Content Matters More Than Timing

Timing can help maximize reach, but it can’t fix bad content. If the quality of your content is poor, no “ideal posting window” will magically make it perform well. The reverse is also true: excellent content will perform well even if it’s not posted at the “perfect” time.

Your content has so many potential responsibilities to fulfill; it needs to speak to your ideal client, answer their questions about your business, address their objections to buying from or working with you, educate/entertain/engage them, and more. If it’s not doing any of those things—if it’s not providing value to your intended audience, it really won’t make a difference what time it’s posted.

So, think of timing as a fine-tuning tool, not the foundation of your strategy. Is it one factor to be considered when posting? Yes. But it’s not the be-all and end-all of social media success.

Best Times to Post According to Social Media Researchers

Keep in mind that if there were a single perfect time to post, everyone would be posting at that exact time and winning at social media. While there’s no universal answer, several prominent social media companies have invested in the research necessary to analyze millions of posts and identify general times that work best for most users. These reports can be a helpful starting point, but they should guide—not dictate—your strategy. Here’s what they say:

• Sprout Social reported that the overall best posting windows are Mondays through Thursdays between 10 am and 1pm, with slight variations by platform.

• SocialPilot concluded that the best timeframes are during mid-week days (Wednesday and Thursday) in the mornings (7 am to 9 am), early afternoons (1 pm to 3 pm), and in the evenings (7 pm to 9 pm). They give more specific recommendations for each day of the week and each platform.

• Hootsuite found that the overall best time to post is 8am on Wednesdays, though they provide an ideal day and time for each specific platform.

Times You Might Want to Avoid Posting

Possibly just as important as knowing when to post is knowing when not to post. And I mean this in more ways than one. Firstly: there are certainly days of the week and times of the day when your audience is least likely to engage with your social media posts. Again, this is dependent on your specific clientele or customer base, but use common sense and consider if your audience:

• Figuratively or literally checks out early on Friday afternoons in the summer

• Spends a lot of time focused elsewhere and off their phones during significant holidays or holiday weekends with loved ones

• Is dead asleep during the middle of the night and would never see a 2am post that would be buried by the time they wake up

  
  

Secondly: there are always a few times a year when something monumental happens that is bigger than you, your business, and your industry, such as:

• Major elections

• Natural disasters in your area

• The unexpected deaths of significant public figures

  
  

These and other newsworthy events can and do take over social media feeds. If you post during these times, the best-case scenario is that your content will be overshadowed by the relevant news, thereby weakening its performance. The worst-case scenario is that your content is seen as insensitive or tasteless to the goings-on. I tend to advise clients to avoid posting altogether for that day and a few days surrounding it. Use your best judgment.

Tools to Help You Optimize Social Media Post Timing

Many social media scheduling platforms provide recommended posting windows based on your past performance and engagement data. Examples include Meta Business Suite, Later, Buffer, Hootsuite, SocialPilot, and Sprout Social (all vary in cost and features). These tools can save time and give you helpful insights, but remember: you don’t have to follow their suggestions to the minute. They’re tools, not rules.

The Real Secret to Post Timing: Test and Learn

At the end of the day, the best times to post will be unique to your audience and your business. So, if you can do some experimenting and review your social media insights, over time, you’ll be able to look for patterns that indicate when your content performs best.

And if you want to take the guesswork out of it, let’s chat! At Evergreen Marketing, I can analyze your audience’s habits and schedule your content for maximum engagement—so you can focus on running your business. Send me an email to schedule your complimentary discovery call today.