How to find your best time to post on social media
In shortThere is no single best time to post that works for everyone. Your best time depends on when your own followers are online and engaging. Find it by choosing one metric, posting similar content in a few different time windows for several weeks, and comparing the average result per post in each window.
By the Join Postly teamPublished Updated 6 min read
"What is the best time to post?" is a question nearly everyone who runs a social account asks at some point, and most answers online are a chart of days and hours. This guide doesn't include one, on purpose. Instead, it gives you a method you can run on your own accounts, and explains how to read the result without fooling yourself.
Is there one best time to post on social media?
No. The right time depends on who follows you, where they live, what they do all day and how each platform's feed ranks posts. A bakery whose customers check their phones before work and a gaming creator whose audience is online late at night will get different answers, and both can be right.
Feeds also aren't strictly chronological on most large platforms. A post can keep reaching people for hours or days after it goes out, which makes the exact minute matter less than the general window.
Why do generic best-time charts mislead?
Generic charts average many accounts together, so they describe an imaginary average audience rather than yours. They can be a starting point for what to test, but not an answer.
- Different audiences. A chart built mostly from large brands says little about a local business or a niche creator.
- Different time zones. "9 am" means nothing unless you know whose 9 am it is.
- Different goals. The best time for comments may not be the best time for link clicks.
- Circular data. If most people post at certain hours, those hours collect the most engagement in total, even if each post there competes with more posts.
Which metric should you judge a posting time by?
Pick the one metric that matches your goal, and use it per post, not as a total. Totals reward whichever window you posted in most often.
| Your goal | Metric to compare |
|---|---|
| Be seen by more people | Reach or views per post |
| Start conversations | Comments and replies per post |
| Get visits or sales | Link clicks per post (use a tracked link) |
| General interest | Engagements per post (likes, comments, shares) |
If your follower count is changing quickly, divide by followers at the time of posting, so a growing account doesn't make later posts look better just because more people follow you.
How do you test posting times, step by step?
Choose a few windows, post comparable content in each for a few weeks, and compare the average per post. Change only the time; keep everything else as similar as you can.
- Write down your current habit. When do you usually post now? That is your baseline window.
- Pick two or three windows to test. Use broad blocks such as early morning, lunchtime and evening, in your audience's time zone. Three-hour blocks are easier to compare than exact minutes.
- Rotate the windows. Spread each window across different weekdays, so one window doesn't get all the Mondays.
- Keep the content comparable. Don't put every Reel in the evening and every photo in the morning. Mix formats evenly across windows, or test one format at a time.
- Schedule the posts. Scheduling makes it practical to post at 7 am or 9 pm without being at your phone.
- Wait before you measure. Give each post the same amount of time, such as 48 hours or 7 days, before recording its result.
- Compare averages per window. A clear gap that holds across weeks is a result. A small gap is probably noise.
How many posts do you need before trusting a result?
More than feels necessary. With only one or two posts per window, the content of those posts decides the result, not the time. As a rule of thumb, aim for at least five posts per window before drawing any conclusion, and more if your results swing a lot from post to post.
Small accounts need more patience. When a typical post gets a handful of likes, the difference of one or two likes can look like a big percentage. Look for a pattern that repeats over several weeks rather than the single highest number.
How do time zones change the answer?
Your best time is in your audience's time zone, not yours. If most followers are in one country, plan around their local day. If they are spread across many, test windows that overlap the waking hours of your biggest groups.
- Check where your followers are. Instagram and Facebook show audience locations in their insights for professional accounts and Pages.
- Remember that daylight saving changes shift the clock on different dates in different countries.
- Make sure your scheduling tool and your analytics use the same time zone, or your results will be off by hours.
How does Join Postly show your best time to post?
Join Postly Analytics has a Best Time to Post heatmap built only from your own posts. It does not use industry averages, and no AI picks times for you; it shows when your posts got the most engagement, so you can decide.
- It covers your connected Facebook Pages and Instagram accounts and looks at posts published in the last 90 days.
- Engagement per post (likes or reactions, comments and shares) is averaged by weekday and three-hour block, in your own time zone.
- The top three blocks are highlighted. The heatmap appears once you have at least five published posts.
Because it can only measure times you have actually posted, a window you never use will never show up as a winner. Use the heatmap to confirm or rule out the windows you test with the method above, then schedule into the winners in Join Postly's calendar. The monthly Wrapped summary in Analytics also shows your best day and time for the period. See Join Postly Analytics for what else it measures.