What Is The Best Time To Post On Twitter?

9 min readJun 14, 2021

The social media statistics of 2020 shows that 500 million tweets are sent per day.

Isn’t that overwhelming for you? How are you going to cut through the noise and get more engagement and clicks on your Twitter timeline?

Well, one of the factors that can help you to get maximum clicks and maximum engagement is — The best time to post.

Showing your witty and captivating content on Twitter while your audience is online is one way to boost your brand’s presence on Twitter.

However, Finding the best time to post on Twitter can be tricky business.

So in this article, we will go over how you can find the best time to post on Twitter by using:

The General best time to post on Twitter.
Digging into your own analytics to find the best time to post for your business.

Why Posting on the Right Time Matters?

It is because of the recent update in the Twitter algorithms, the chronological feed is back in the game again. Which makes the timing of your posts more crucial than ever.

Since 2016, Twitter has also been running its feeds, just like other social media platforms, on an engagement or popularity basis and not on reverse-chronology.

But now, citing users’ feedback, Twitter allows people to switch their feed from “top-ranked tweets” to “ Latest post tweets” in one click.

A reverse-chronological feed means Twitter users are seeing a tweet as they are being posted. But here’s the catch, as time passes more recent tweets would take the place on the top of the feed.

And that is why It is important for you to publish your tweet when the majority of your audience is online or schedule it for the right time.

So let’s jump on to find out the best time to post on Twitter that will work for you and help you achieve twitter marketing goals.

What is the average best time to post on Twitter?

Just like our recent studies on:

We found that there is no best universal time to post on Twitter either.

Different businesses have different audiences and so is their preference and time for the content. Still, you can leverage the general time guidelines to test and find the best time that works for your business.

Check out these stats from popular social media marketing companies suggesting when brands should post on Twitter.

Howsociable suggests that 9 to 10 am is the best time to post and also Friday is the best day to post on Twitter.
G2 learning hub also favors the 10 am to the noon time frame during weekdays, with Friday showing the most engagement at 3 PM.
Trackmaven favors Thursday as the best day to post on Twitter.
Hubspot claims the best time frame is between 8–10 am and 6–9 pm to share your content on Twitter.
Metricool put their bets on 3 to 4 PM.

Note- All the above times are in PST.

Key takeaways:

In a nutshell, based on all the data collected by multiple brands we can say that It is always safe to post your tweets during the:

Office commute times when people are traveling to work in the early morning or winding up their workday and coming back to home.
People are always checking their Twitter feed during downtime, so tweeting in lunch hours is also a good option.

One important key takeaway to keep in mind is that:

Weekends are the least favorite days to post anything on Twitter. The majority of your audience will be out, socializing with the real world or spending time with their families. So it is important to schedule your posts for weekdays mostly.

What is the best time to post on Twitter for engagement?

According to current twitter algorithms, as discussed above, tweet rankings do depend on engagement too.

When posting on Twitter, all the brands have one vision in mind, and that is, to generate engagement with their audience. The audience engages with your Twitter post by these 4 buttons :

Now creating an engaging Twitter post takes a considerable amount of effort. To stand out among all other brands’ tweets you make it creative, smart, and in harmony with your brand’s tone.

So after putting in all that effort, it would be demotivating if you could not get any engagement, just because it was posted at the time when your audience was not there for engagement.

So come forth the best time to tweet for getting engagement.

On average, tweets posted between 2 to 3 am receive the most engagement.
The least amount of engagement happens during the work hours i.e 9 to 5 pm.
The highest number of retweets and favorites happens between 8 pm and 11 pm.

Key Takeaways:

One fascinating observation here is that the best times to generate engagement on Twitter are quite inverse from the average most popular times. In a nutshell, we can say that:

Most interactions are happening on Twitter during the early morning or late in the evening. Users like to engage with social media after they wake up or right before they are going to sleep.
During workdays, people are too busy to look into their phones and engage with your brands’ content. So steer clear of the traditional work timings if you are looking for engagement.

How to find your best time to post on Twitter?

So now that we have gone over the basic timelines that you can use to strengthen your Twitter marketing strategy, it is time to find the best time to post specifically for your brand.

You can use two strategies to derive the best time suitable for posting to get more clicks and engagement.

Strategy 1 — Dig into your Twitter Analytics to find the best time to post.

Twitter Analytics gives you a complete overview of your Tweet impressions, profile visits, and other engagement factors.

Moreover, you can use Twitter analytics to track your progress over time and make new posting strategies along the way. To make it easier you can use free Twitter analytics tools to give you an overview of your Twitter profile.

Let’s get started

Go to the analytics section of your Twitter account to get a complete overview of the engagement your account got in the past month.

Under the “Tweets” section you get the complete information about your tweet activity. In the top right corner, you can choose how far back you want to see the activity data of your tweets.

You can also hover above the graph to see the tweet activity data for the time period that you have chosen. It will show you a quick look at the number of tweets you have sent and the organic and paid impressions you have on an individual day.

Moreover, you can see your top tweets and the impression, engagement, and engagement rates they are getting. Here you can easily figure what kind of content is working for you.

On the right side, you can see the graphical representation of the engagement rate, Clicks, Retweets, Likes, and replies.

Taking this much informative insights into the account will help you evaluate your best time to post on Twitter with ease. Now it is time to test the data you have collected.

Test out different posts timings using a Twitter scheduling tool

Unlike Facebook analytics, Twitter doesn’t directly tell you the best time to post. But still, as discussed above, it gives you enough insights to find out the best time by doing trial experiments.

Just breakdown your experiments over a period of one month. Each day of this month, post your tweets in the morning, noon, and evening at a specific set of times.
Now, this seems to be a tedious job and that is where a Twitter management tool such as SocialPilot comes to your aid.

SocialPilot lets you schedule your tweets way ahead and automatically posts them on the time and date that you have chosen.

So this automatic scheduling and posting tool helps you in experimenting with different time slots without any hassle. All you have to do is select multiple time slots for every day of a month and your created posts will be published on Twitter automatically.

After a month of experimenting with different time slots, you can go back and check your data to see which time and day generated you the most engagement.

I’d suggest organizing down your data, time and day, in a spreadsheet and later going back to it to compare what day brought you the best engagement. Make it your hero. There may be multiple days that bring you good engagement.

After that keep using the scheduling tool regularly to post on your peak times.

Strategy 2 — Tools to find the best time to post on Twitter

Even now if you don’t want to put your bets on the most popular time to post and also not in the mood to dig down into your Twitter analytics. These 3 tools will help you find the best time to get more exposure.

1. Tweriod

Tweriod is a very effective Twitter tool that helps you make the most of Twitter by letting you know the best time to tweet. Its easy-to-use interface gives it a unique edge. Tweriod’s free plan analyzes up to 1000 followers for you. It is very cost-effective and useful for single accounts.

2. Audiense

Audiense is a well-known platform for Twitter marketing. Besides providing solutions for influencer marketing, sponsorship, and social listening, its analytics feature tells you the best time to post on Twitter by analyzing your Twitter account.

3. Followerwonk

Followerwonk helps you to drive your Twitter marketing easily on the platform. You can analyze the best time to post on Twitter in one click and that too for free. Its free plan also gives you features like comparison with competitors, followers sorting, and engagement metrics.

Conclusion

So now you know how important it is to time your tweets — with new algorithm updates in play- when your audience is maximum on the platform.

Sending out your tweets on your brand’s peak times not only will help you engage with your audience but also gradually help you get in the eyes of other promising prospects — don’t forget about the engagement-based timeline.

Use the strategies given in this guide to help you find the best time.

Take inspiration from general popular time; Analyze your own statistics in twitter analytics; Use tools to find the best time and once you find a pattern, use Twitter Marketing Tools like SocialPilot to post on those best of all times for your brand.

Originally published at https://www.socialpilot.co.