Wondering the best time to post on LinkedIn?
With the optimal posting frequency on LinkedIn being only once per day, you need that one precious post to count!
Help is at hand. We’ll dive into some general ideas on when to post on LinkedIn.
Plus, you’ll learn how to find out when your own audience is online.
Best Time to Post on LinkedIn 2024
The best times to post on LinkedIn are Tuesdays and Thursdays between 9 a.m.–noon, and Wednesdays between 9 a.m.–2 p.m.
LinkedIn is where professional people hang out. So, it’s no surprise to learn that people are most active on LinkedIn during business hours and days.
These are peak times for engagement. For example, any time between 8am and 2pm Monday to Friday is going to get good results.
But once it’s past 8pm, people switch off.
And while you might catch a few early birds, don’t bother to post before 4am or you won’t get much engagement.
Note: The times here and in the sections below are in Central Time Zone (CST).
LinkedIn engagement chart courtesy of SproutSocial.
Best Days to Post on LinkedIn
The best days to post on LinkedIn are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
The worst day to post on LinkedIn is Sunday. Saturday is second worst.
While Monday is the start of the working week, it isn’t a great day for posting either. The Monday effect and all that! And Friday’s a bit slower as well.
Best Times on LinkedIn Each Day
At a glance, the best times to post on LinkedIn for each day reflect the standard working week.
For example, work hours Monday to Friday see the best interaction. Aim for between 9am and 4pm.
While you have several good hours, the best time to post on LinkedIn on Friday is 10am.
Also, think about the commute. Bored commuters often turn to their phones for something to do. So, there’s some action between 6am-9am weekdays and, to a lesser degree, between 5pm and 8pm.
When it comes to the best times of day for weekends, there really aren’t any. It’s often best to wait for the weekdays to come around.
But if you must, the best time to post to LinkedIn on Saturday is 9 to 10am CST.
Snapshot of Who Should Post When
There are a few ideas about who should post when by the kind of niche you are in. For example:
- B2B (business to business): best before work starts, during lunch hour and the commute home.
- B2C (business to consumer): outside business hours and during lunch breaks.
There are some good tips for certain industries too.
For example, software and media companies see good results early in the morning. That’s because people tend to check the latest news and updates.
Healthcare niches find that around 10am until about 2pm can see the best results. Education niches see similar patterns.
3 Ways to Find your own Best Time for LI
Unlike some platforms, LinkedIn’s analytics are quite limited. That means it doesn’t provide much data on the best time to post.
But you can carry out some experiments to test what your audience responds to and use this to decide.
Another option is to use Google Analytics to look for patterns.
The third option will make quick work of finding your best days and times! It’s the only scheduler I’ve found that gives you this data: Missinglettr.
All three of these methods are outlined below. But first, you need data!
Haven’t posted much yet? Here’s one way to gather data that you can then analyze in your method of choice:
1 | Choose four time slots.
Using the generic information about LinkedIn, choose four time slots:
- Aim for one early morning, pre-commute.
- Go for another just before or around lunchtime.
- Pick a third that is late in the day or the evening commute.
- Try one after working hours to test the common ‘best practices’ advice.
2 | Post content daily for a month.
Use any third-party scheduling tool that lets you post to LinkedIn. Or you can post manually right on LinkedIn.
Here are the steps:
1 | Create your time slots for each day, then start publishing content.
You don’t need to publish something for each slot, each day. But try to publish once per weekday so you have some data to work with.
2 | The next week on the same day, pick a different slot.
3 | Keep doing this for a month to see what happens.
3 | Analyze with one of the 3 methods below.
Once you have a month’s worth of data, it’s time to analyze.
1 | How to use LinkedIn analytics to find your best time
If you don’t have Google Analytics or Missinglettr, you can start here.
Look at LinkedIn’s analytics and see what posts got the most reactions. Then compare them to when you posted. This will give you an idea of when your audience is most engaged.
If you post via a LinkedIn Company Page, you have the new analytics dashboard. When you’re on your page, you’ll find it like this:
First you’ll see Visitor metrics.
Here you can see which days your page got the most views. Look for patterns. You might be able to determine which are your best days to post.
Under the ‘Updates’ section of Analytics, you can see data for each post.
This includes impressions, clicks, CTR, reactions and shares.
Finally, the third option under Analytics is ‘Followers’.
This tells you who started following you and when.
Does this line up with particular posts?
There’s also a section beside Analytics called Activity (see screenshot below).
This gives you more information about things like:
- Reactions
- Shares
- Comments
- Mentions
These can help you fine-tune what kind of engagement you got when.
For example, did you see the most comments on the late afternoon post?
Then this is maybe when people can do more than just read. That makes it a good time for those questions!
Lots of shares late at night? Then share your latest blog post at this time!
Check out on-post analytics.
One other way to see how a post does on LinkedIn is to look at the on-post analytics. These are available for posts made by your profile as well as your Company Page.
Click the Me icon at the top of your LinkedIn homepage.
Under MANAGE, click Posts & Activity.
Here you’ll find all of your posts. Each one has its own analytics pop-up.
Locate the specific post or article you’d like more details on. Then click the little icon at the bottom left of it.
The resulting popup (see screenshot below) doesn’t tell you when to post. But it does tell you where your audience is located. So, if you aren’t sure what time zone to base your posts on, you can go by people’s locations.
Did people on the east coast of the US see more of a post that you sent out just before lunch? Then maybe that’s a sweet spot.
Or do you get lots of views from Europe? Maybe adjust time settings to catch them during the workday.
You’ll have to check several of these popups to ensure your pattern.
2 | How to use Google Analytics to find your best time to post
LinkedIn analytics aren’t the best, especially to find best time to post.
But there is another tool that can help – Google Analytics.
With Google Analytics, there are a couple of ways to find information about traffic from LinkedIn to your site.
See traffic patterns.
The first way is to go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels > Social.
Here you will see the usual suspects like Pinterest and Facebook.
If you have had any traffic from LinkedIn, this will show on its own line.
You can then select it and see a pattern of traffic.
Hover the graph to see day, date, and number of sessions. I saw several peaks on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
Do a ‘best day’ and ‘best hour’ search.
Another way is to simply ask Google Analytics when the best day is.
Type in something like ‘best day LinkedIn’ and it will bring up a graph.
This will show you across a six-month period which day was best. You can also switch from sessions to pageviews for this search (sessions is the default).
If you get regular traffic, you can also search ‘best hour LinkedIn.’
This will show you the most popular hour for traffic from the site within the last 24 hours.
Repeat this search daily for a week or two to spot ‘best hour’ patterns.
3 | The easiest way to find your best time to post on LinkedIn
Had enough of the complications?
Let’s talk easy.
As I mentioned in the post on best time to post to Twitter, I love the Missinglettr scheduler.
The reason I use and love this tool is that it was created specifically for bloggers! It automatically creates custom social media posts with images every time I publish a blog post.
And, they just added fabulous analytics!
Believe it or not, when writing this article, I asked if they would add a feature that could separate out the stats for the different social platforms. And they enabled it just for me!
Because Missinglettr is designed for bloggers, they show you where and when your clicks are coming from. And they do this for LinkedIn too – no other tool I’ve found gives this kind of data for LI.
To see just your LinkedIn stats, go to the upper right corner and choose the appropriate LI account (you can add both personal profiles and company pages). Then click ‘Apply.’
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 to LinkedIn
Like all social platforms, there’s no way to guarantee a post will get the best reach based solely on posting time. But by having ideas about the best times to post, you can boost your chances.
Start testing your account and see what works.
Then use data to make better choices about when to post going forward.
Love to see a good visual to help out? Check out the infographic from QuickSprout below. Pin it for reference!
If you’re a LinkedIn user, when do you use it the most – and is your audience the same?
If you haven’t a clue, remember that Missinglettr will make it easy for you to determine when your audience actually clicks on your updates.
Tell us in a comment your best time to post to LinkedIn!
Then learn the best time to post on all social media.
Craig Zapatka says
Are these times American EST? Or what time zone are you referring to?
Louise Myers says
The key is to use the time zone where the biggest amount of your audience lives.
Pawan says
From my experience, there are no specific times at which posts on LinkedIn perform better. It all depends upon the type of connections you have. You have to make sure that the connections you make are relevant to you and your content. Only then will they interact, like, and comment on your posts.
Louise Myers says
You definitely want relevant connections. Then check your analytics as detailed above to see when you get best interaction. It does vary by account.
Christopher Sprague says
Thank you so much for posting these times! We will now adjust our posting schedule to better reach our audiences 🙂
Muhammad says
Linkedin is a very useful service. I have met many potential employers from this professional network. Another way to be in touch with your professional network is by using Linkedin Messenger.
Louise Myers says
Thanks for your input, Muhammad!
Sue says
I will definitely check the times. I do get many (more on LinkedIn than others) responses. I post my blogs in groups I belong to.
I appreciate the info Louise. Keep taking the beautiful pictures
Louise Myers says
LinkedIn groups are great! I’ll have to connect with you and see if you know of any that I might like, as I’ve been looking for some active entrepreneur groups. Thanks Sue!