The Best Times To Post On TikTok, According To Industry Research

Forbes

8 hours ago

The best time to post on TikTok might surprise you.
The best time to post on TikTok might surprise you. If you're looking for a specific day and time right away, the answer varies but typically Tuesday and Wednesday late afternoons work best. It's important because that is when, according to Sprout Social, you will see the most engagement. As for the content you post, it depends on your followers and the content itself in most cases. Gamers, for example, should target weekends, and those in the fashion industry (surprisingly) should post late in the day.
Optimal Posting Days And Times For TikTok
The best day and time to post on TikTok is Wednesday at 4 p.m. Many people are just getting out of school or they are done with work. Those estimates are based on several social media management companies that track engagement at specific times and days of the week including HootSuite, Sprout Social and Buffer.
Beyond that, Tuesdays are best late afternoon before 5 p.m., according to all three social media firms. SocialPilot, another scheduling app, extended the timeframe to later in the day on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (more like 7 p.m. or 8 p.m.). Since engagement is so important in determining how many people you reach, the day and time you post are critically important, especially since you are putting the effort in to creating the content in the first place. The time to post does not depend on the timezone you are in — 4 p.m. in the timezone you are in works. Weekends work best for gamers and photographers, according to SocialPilot.
Monday is another day to consider posting on TikTok, especially to achieve high engagement. The best time to post, according to Sprout Social, is anytime between noon and 5 p.m. Monday is a good day for doctors, artists, insurance companies and non-profit organizations, according to SocialPilot data.
According to another social media management company called SocialBu, the best days to post are earlier in the week. That's because people tend to check social media for insights related to their job, so Mondays are when we're all just getting started. SocialBu also suggests sticking to late afternoon posting. Other timeframes to consider posting on Mondays include 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. according to Buffer.
Tuesday is the best day of the week to post according to social media management companies, along with Wednesday. And, it's best to stick with late in the day posting times of around 4 p.m. but not after 5 p.m.
SocialPilot crunched the numbers and determined that lawyers, schools and real estate agents will have the most success posting on Tuesdays (and Wednesdays or Thursdays as well). On Tuesdays, it is best to stick with afternoon posting and in some cases before 4 p.m. for the highest engagement levels.
For great engagement on Wednesday, focus on the afternoon time slots. For example, one of the best times to post throughout the entire week is 4 p.m. on a Wednesday. Call it the midweek blahs, when people are trying to get through the week and looking for something to hold their attention.
According to the Sprout Social study mentioned above, which has a more comprehensive list of times that work on each day of the week, the entire afternoon from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. is ideal. A similar report by Buffer (noted above) lists the same times for Wednesday, and these are the apps that should know. Buffer is a social media scheduler that makes it easy to choose time slots for posting.
According to the same reports by Sprout Social and Buffer, the best timeframe to post on Thursday is from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Buffer mentions the exact time of 5 p.m., based on their study of engagement at that time. That same report notes that videos posted at 1 p.m. also performed well, along with the 3 p.m. time slot.
Sprout Social mentions that the timeslot of afternoon seems to work, and according to them, Thursday is the second best day to post of the entire week: 'Our data shows Thursdays, especially late afternoon hours, are the second-best days to post on TikTok.' The SocialBu report lists dramatically different times on Thursday: 12 p.m., 7 p.m., and 9 p.m. The social media managers Sprout Social and Buffer are using data from users.
Friday is not the best day to post during the week. The time slots are roughly the same though, falling between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. According to Sprout Social: 'With only moderate engagement on the app throughout the day, the only above-average hour of engagement on TikTok is 5 p.m. Users are already winding down and kicking off their weekend activities.'
Buffer picked a specific time on Friday at 4 p.m., followed by 2 p.m. and 6p.m. An important note here is that Friday is likely the day when people are not fishing for videos related to their jobs, school-work or college classes. It is also a less popular day for engagement because it's nearly the weekend and the mid-week blahs are mostly over.
A curious phenomena about TikTok is that the app tends to have less engagement on the weekend. Still, both Sprout Social and Buffer list afternoon time slots of 4 p.m., followed by 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. The Sprout Social report also mentions high engagement on posts from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., which breaks from the norm.
The big exception here is if you are posting gaming content. SocialBu lists Saturday as a good day to post for gamers and minions, during a timeframe that is fairly typical of the late-night gaming crowd — from 9 p.m. and after. That's because weekends are a more ideal time for competitive gaming when most people are not at work or in school, and it is also a way to relax after a long week at work.
Similar to Saturday, engagement will tend to be lower if you post on a Sunday. Weekends in general are when people are not looking for as much help with work or trying to fill in the empty space between classes at school and in college. The best time to post on Sunday is 8 a.m. or 5 p.m., according to Sprout Social. The report says: 'Sundays have less engagement throughout the day across most, if not all, social platforms. So, the best time to post on TikTok on Sundays is any time from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to see average engagement.'
Buffer echoes that timeframe, suggesting 4 p.m. or 5 p.m. as the best times for engagement. Buffer also lists 8 p.m. as an optimal time to post.
Tips To Reach Your Desired TikTok Audience
Other than posting on specific days and times of the week, the best way to engage an audience is to post relevant content for your followers. It's important to study your TikTok analytics to see when your followers engage with content and what excites them the most, according to TikTok itself.
Other tips to engage your audience include starting with a hook to grab attention, posting consistently to make sure your followers know you are serious about content, and to be authentic. It's also important to use trending hashtags (and choose trending topics). You will want to engage often in comments as well to make sure people know you are active, listening to your followers, and open to new ideas.
Bottom Line
In the final analysis, the companies that track engagement the best are the actual social media management firms, with Sprout Social being one of the best. Tuesday and Monday late afternoon are the best times to post as long as it's before 5 p.m. — according to data from Sprout Social, Buffer and others.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
When Is The Worst Time To Post On TikTok?
As you might expect, the worst times to post on TikTok are when people are asleep, according to a study of 10,000 TikTok posts. If you schedule posts for anytime between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. the engagement will be low.While Tuesdays and Wednesdays might be the best days to post, and late afternoon is when you will see the most engagement, the worst day to post is Sunday, according to SproutSocial research.
What Time Should You Post To TikTok On Holidays?
Another surprise has to do with holiday posting. Studies of TikTok posts reveal that engagement actually goes up during holidays when people have a lot more time on their hands. They are not at work or in school so they are scrolling through their feed even more. They have a lot more idle time.
Of course, this puts pressure on your posting schedule because no one likes to work on holidays. It means your TikTok strategy can really benefit from some planning. Decide what you want to post and have the content ready to go before the holiday arrives, and then post near the holiday or on the day itself.
It's also good to keep in mind that holiday shopping windows can impact engagement. This is good news and bad news. During Thanksgiving, for example, engagement will go up on Thanksgiving Day as people are thinking about shopping, but could go down on Black Friday in the morning as they do the actual shopping.
Is It Bad To Post Too Much On TikTok?
Experts differ on the topic of over-posting, but let's just say posting on TikTok is all about follower interest. If you post multiple times in a day and the engagement is very low, it means you are posting too much content. Your followers can't consume it all and stay engaged, especially given how many other people are posting.The best place to find advice on this topic is actually TikTok itself. There are quite a few helpful posts from TikTokkers who make a good case for posting relevant content but not posting too much. One tips video makes it clear that TikTok itself might be penalizing those who overpost. The algorithm knows all! A good guide here is to post three times a day and to make sure there's about two hours between posts.
That said, the experts also agree that posting too little is a problem. Consistency is key. When you post on a regular basis, the algorithms tends to reward you because you are spacing out the posts, making them relevant and timely, but trying to dump too many posts in a row.