Wondering the best time to post on Twitter?
You’ve only got a tiny sliver of time to grab someone’s attention with your tweet.
Why? The average Twitter user session is just over 3 minutes!
Yep, that’s super short compared to other social media sites.
How do you get seen? Well, the content is a big one. But when you post is super important.
Let’s dive into when is the best time to post on Twitter to make the most of those three minutes.
Why Posting Time Matters
We all know that Twitter is fast-moving.
Once you have a few followers, it can be like the ticker tape on a TV news channel. There’s this constantly changing flow of tweets.
Let’s put it into some context about tweet numbers. There are:
- 500 million tweets a day.
- 347,222 tweets per minute.
- 5787 tweets per second.
- 330 million monthly active users.
- 145 million daily active users.
Kind of sounds like there’s no chance you can get your stuff seen, right?
Wrong!
The key is to know when the best time to post on Twitter is.
Then fine-tune that for your own audience.
When Is the Best Time to Tweet?
Ask lots of people when the best time to tweet on Twitter is, and they’ll say there is no best time.
That’s not strictly true. There are windows when Twitter users are more active.
When is Twitter most active?
The most popular time to tweet is between noon and 1pm local time. At the other end of things, it is quietest from 3am to 4am.
You’ll find the most activity on Twitter from 11am until 1pm each day. Note that this is a worldwide average, so it could vary if you’re trying to reach a specific time zone.
By time zone, the most popular times to tweet are:
- 8am-9am Pacific time
- 12pm-1pm Mountain time
- 12pm-1pm Central time
- 12pm-1pm Eastern time
- 8pm-9pm Eastern European time
- 4pm-5pm Central European time
- 8am-9am Hong Kong time
- 10am-11am Australia time
These stats are according to a study of 4.8 million tweets from Buffer. Do remember that while most tweeps are active during these popular times, it also means you have more competition – so keep reading.
When does Twitter see most engagement?
These are the times that see the most engagement, from a study by Sprout Social:
- Best days: Wednesday and Friday
- Worst day: Saturday
- Best time: 9am Wednesday and Friday (CST)
This info is reflected on their chart below, in Central Standard Time (CST). But this represents averages of their 20,000 customers. Please continue reading to learn how to find your own best times to tweet.
Image credit: Sprout Social.
What Are the Best Times for Different Types of Engagement?
With every tweet, you should have some ideas about you want it to achieve.
Do you want likes? Retweets? Clicks?
Are you mentioning someone and want to grab their attention?
Another helpful part of planning your time to post is to look when certain types of engagement do best.
Because Twitter is so heavily monitored, we have some interesting facts. Here’s a few about timing:
- The most engagement on average comes between 2am and 3am.
- Engagement drops off during work hours of 9am to 5pm.
- You get more favorites and retweets with evening and late at night tweets.
- You often see more engagement at the opposite of the best times to tweet (maybe because fewer people are tweeting!).
- Time zones play a big part, so look for those peak times for the time zone best matching your audience.
- The best click-through rate (CTR) happens between 1pm and 3pm Mondays and Thursdays. If you want to send people to your website, tweet then.
- The worst time for any kind of engagement is after 8pm weekdays or after 3pm Fridays.
- You can boost all of your stats by including images, which increasing click-throughs by 36% and website visits by 31%. Learn more about Twitter images.
Snapshot of Who Should Post When
Another approach to thinking about when to post to Twitter is by industry.
Who your audience is and what you tweet about plays a part. For example, there’s a difference between B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) blogs and businesses.
The following times are figured in Central Standard Time zone:
- B2B best time to tweet: 9am to 4pm Monday to Thursday, especially between 11am and 1pm.
- B2B most retweets: 5pm weekdays.
- B2B best CTR: 6pm weekdays.
- B2C best time to tweet: 12pm to 1pm with Tuesdays being the best day.
- B2C best engagement: weekends.
Or a few examples by industry (also CST):
- Education: best day Saturday, worst day Sunday, best time 5pm-6pm Saturday.
- Tech: best day Tuesday and Wednesday, worst day Sunday, best time 9am Tuesday.
- Health: best day Wednesday, worst day Sunday, best times 8am to 2pm Wednesday.
- Finance: best day Tuesday, worst day Saturday, best times 1-5am Tuesday, 2pm Sunday.
- Recreation: best day Friday, worst days Saturday and Sunday, best time 9am Friday.
How to Use Twitter Analytics to Find your Best Days
So those are some general ideas about when’s best to post on Twitter.
But how about finding out some data for your audience?
To start with, you can use the Twitter analytics to find out some basic data about your account. Go to the ‘more’ option at the bottom of the menu and you can access it there.
There isn’t as much data here as with Facebook or Instagram. But you can see a pattern of your recent tweets and see if certain days saw more engagement.
There’s also information on the engagements, link clicks, and retweets here.
But overall, the stats are pretty limited. There’s not a chart of your engaging times, or even where your followers reside.
So Twitter itself doesn’t give us a lot of help on best time to tweet.
Using Tools to Find the Best Time to Post
While Twitter may not have the best built-in analytics, there are some dedicated tools for the job.
Twitter analytics from Tweriod
Oops! Tweriod seems to have shut down. If you can’t find them at Tweriod.com, scroll past this section to learn about Followerwonk and Missinglettr.
Tweroid is a free tool (that does have an upgrade option) that finds the best time to tweet from your own account.
It analyzes the data and looks at the last 1000 followers on your account.
It then offers times and days when best to tweet.
It breaks the information down to weekends, weekdays, Sundays, and Mondays.
Plus, it shows activity by the hours for the four different time frames.
Twitter stats from Followerwonk
Followerwonk is another free tool with an upgrade plan.
It assesses data from your account – or someone else’s.
It provides the most active hours for your account’s followers.
Plus, there’s a graph on your account’s most active hours. Match these up to be sure you’re tweeting when your followers are active.
There’s even a ton of extra data, to help understand your audience. Or spy on the competition!
Twitter analytics from Missinglettr
The scheduler I use to tweet also gives good information on when to post. It’s Missinglettr.
The reason I use and love this tool is that it was created specifically for bloggers! It automatically creates custom tweets with images every time I publish a blog post.
And, they just added fabulous analytics!
Because it’s designed for bloggers, they show you where and when your clicks are coming from.
I mean, when followers are online tweeting and mentioning you is lovely but I want clicks!
Below, you can see the handy graph that shows the data based on clicks.
This is a great way to get up to date information for your own account.
If you’re a marketer of any kind, I think you’ll find this useful! I’m an affiliate for Missinglettr and may earn a referral fee if you purchase a plan.
Finding the Best Time to Post on Twitter
Because Twitter is so fast-moving, it can seem impossible to find the best time to post.
But there’s more information out there than you might think!
By using your account, third party tools, and a few general tips, you can create a schedule.
Then you can use analytics on Twitter to see what’s working, and tweak it from there.
Like to take it all in visually? Check out the infographic from QuickSprout below. Pin it as a reminder!
Now look at your Twitter stats – what post did best for you and when did you post it?
Remember, you can find your own account’s best time to tweet easily with Missinglettr.
Share in a comment your best time to post on Twitter!
Kozmo Bates says
Thanks for this article. It’s helpful.
I don’t understand the best times to tweet by timezone.
8am-9am Pacific time
12pm-1pm Mountain time
12pm-1pm Central time
12pm-1pm Eastern time
Why is Pacific time 4 hours ahead of Mountain time though only an hour time zone difference? And why are Mountain, Central, and Eastern times all the same?
Is this based on patterns of engagement for tweet targets within each time zone and they happen to vary this much? If that’s the case, as I’m on the west coast, I guess I’d tweet at 8am for Pacific time targets, 9am for Eastern time targets, 10am for Central zone targets, and 11am for Mountain. Is that right?
thanks again
Louise Myers says
It’s pretty confusing, so kudos for figuring it out! I’m going to clarify that section and add charts. These are actually the “most popular” times to tweet. So there are more people active at these times. It could also mean your tweets will get drowned out in a sea of tweets, so be sure to read the next section on finding your own best times to tweet.
Tovia Behanu says
I find it confusing between the best time for ‘engagement’ versus things like “retweets, favorites and click-through” which are contrasted in the article. Are those three things not considered ‘engagement?’ What is ‘engagement’ then?
I just want the public to go read articles on my website. When should I tweet so that people will most likely click on a link I include, taking them to my site, AND ALSO retweet to let others know about it so I can grow my followers?
Louise Myers says
Engagement includes all 3, but they don’t all rise and fall at the same times. That’s why I say, “With every tweet, you should have some idea about you want it to achieve.”
The best click-through rate (CTR) happens between 1pm and 3pm Mondays and Thursdays. If you want to send people to your website, tweet then.
Remember that these are averages. And the feed moves rapidly, so tweet often!
Tovia says
Thank you! On a related note, I read someone say they send a group of 5 tweets out, four times a day (6 hours apart) giving them 20 (5×4) tweets daily. Does that make sense as a strategy?
Louise Myers says
I don’t understand the point of sending 4 at a time, uness they know that’s exactly when their followers are on Twitter. I’d love to hear if they found that more effective than spacing them out, which seems like it would catch more followers.
anonymous says
Thanks for putting up this article. However, you mention many clock times, but barely any time zones. I have no idea in which time zone you live, therefore I dont have any reference, which makes half of the article you wrote kind of useless.
Louise Myers says
I’m sorry if you found it unclear. Most of the info in the article is based on CST, as noted, except the times called out as other time zones.
Your best info will come from the section “Using tools to find the best time to post” since that data will be pulled from your own account’s followers.