The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn

LinkedIn started in 2002 as a simple job-search website. It allowed those seeking jobs, especially fresh graduates, to post their resumes and look for suitable jobs relevant to their field. Gradually, it transformed into an amazing brand building platform that small as well as large businesses started using.

Whether you own a small business for which you want to raise brand awareness or a fresh graduate looking for a job - you must learn the art of using LinkedIn effectively. It is important to optimize the use of this platform to get the best results. This article will help you understand what is the best time and day to post something on LinkedIn and why.

 What Does the Data Say?

Different marketing agencies have tried to find out the best time and date to post on LinkedIn. There is always a difference of opinion between them but their statistics reveal more or less the same patterns.  According to a famous marketing website, Oberlo, the best time to post is between 10 AM to 11 AM from Tuesday to Thursday.

Another famous marketing website is Quintly. They suggest that it is ideal to post between different time frames on the same days as suggested by Oberlo. The ideal time according to their stats is either 7 - 8 AM or at 5-6 PM. Similarly, Hubspot found in their statistics that people can get the best results on Wednesdays from 10 am till afternoon. SproutSocial holds a slightly different opinion and adds Fridays 9 a.m. as well to their list of ideal times.

All these different websites have different yet similar opinions based on their data. If we rely on the data provided by these different platforms, we can come to a consensus to some extent between their opinions. 

All of them agree that the ideal time is at some point during their work hours from 10 A.M to 6 P.M, starting from Tuesday. One possible explanation for this is that during the first half of the office hours, people tend to browse through the network. This can be in the quest for some new research or to look for some new employees. Those seeking jobs too are active during these hours in the hope of finding some opportunity relevant to their field.

Some researchers also explain that the ideal time might be just before the office hours begin or right after the office hours end. This means either 7 A.M to 9 A.M or 6 P.M to 8 P.M. This is probably because many people have the habit of browsing through their LinkedIn feed while traveling to work or back home.

The Worst Times to Post

Having briefly looked at the best possible times, it is also important to beware of the worst times to post. It might be obvious that weekends are the worst days to post on LinkedIn because most people want to spend their weekend socializing with their friends and family. They are least concerned about work related issues on these days. Some of those seeking jobs might be active over the weekend as well, but most offices and businesses are closed so they rarely check their LinkedIn profiles.

What about Monday?

This may come as a surprise for many people, but Monday is one of the worst days to post on LinkedIn. This is because it is the first working day and people have more important tasks to begin their week. Stats show that there is rarely any engagement on Mondays because most businesses spend their Mondays catching up with work, planning for the week and scheduling their meetings.

What About the Late Hours?

It is also not a wise idea to post during late at night. Just like they do over the weekends, people usually avoid any work related stuff once they reach home. They switch to their personal social media accounts or just spend time with their family instead of scrolling through the LinkedIn feed. It is better for those who want to boost their online sales to spend more time on other platforms during these times.

So far, we have looked at the general guidelines about the best and worst times to post on LinkedIn.  Now let’s delve into some more details to learn how to make the best use of these times and how to improve your LinkedIn marketing strategy according to your needs. It should be understood that the best time to post is also subjective to an extent and it will vary as per people’s goals and motives behind using LinkedIn. It might be different for those seeking jobs and those trying to gather an audience for their product.

Finding the Time That Suits Your Individual Needs

To find out what time best suits you, it is necessary to analyze your data and set priorities. You must ask yourself why you are using LinkedIn and what you expect to get out from it. To make things easier for you, LinkedIn itself monitors your data and generates for you some valuable insights. These might help you understand many things including the best time that suits you. By using the analysis feature effectively, you can learn a lot and make the best use of this platform.

Experimenting with Different Times

You can carry out a simple experiment to understand what time suits your needs the best. Initially, you can start by posting during multiple timeframes and keeping an eye on people viewing your profile. You can select these time slots throughout the day while keeping in mind the general guidelines provided earlier. Ideally, you should do this for a month at least.

Post at different times during the day on different days. For instance, for the first few days, try posting early in the morning and late at night. Then for the next few days, try office hours. You can also try posting at odd times if you think your business is unique and can challenge the stats. Since posting at different times every day might not be an easy job, you can take the help of some scheduling tools available online.

Using an Automated Scheduling Tool

These scheduling and management tools will enable you to schedule your posts at your ease. You just need to choose your time, date and the desired post. These automated scheduling tools make it very easy to post at different times while you experiment with the time slots. Some of these tools also allow users to select multiple time slots for the entire month.

These tools will automatically keep publishing your posts every day and you will have to keep looking at the analysis only. Once you have tried various time slots for an entire month, you can analyze your LinkedIn data to find out the best and the worst times. This would lead you to the next step which is to assess the performance and make notes.

The Analytics Section

The LinkedIn Analytics section keeps a record of all your posts and allows you to explore the performance of different posts that you posted at different times. This section also has different filters to give you a better understanding of your audience. Another section, called the 'Updates' section, provides you insights about click-rates and many other engagement metrics for every post. 

For those who don’t know, the 'Analytics' section can be opened by clicking a button available at the top of your profile. It has three main categories – Visitors, Updates, and Followers. When you click on the “Updates” button, you will be redirected to your dashboard which also has three parts. The first will give you general data for the entire month and a detailed analysis of every single like, comment and reaction on all your posts.

Update Metrics Section

Next is the ‘Update Metrics’ section which gives an average of your engagements. It lets you choose the time period for which you want to generate the data and the type of engagement metric you want. After selecting the time period and the metrics, you will be able to get graphical representation to help you see the exact percentage of all your engagements. It reveals data about both the organic and sponsored posts on a particular day. As such, the Update Metrics section gives you deep insights to figure out the best day for posting.

Update Engagement Section

The final section that is called the ‘Update Engagement’ allows you to explore the data for each post individually. You can also use the time range filter for every individual post. You should keep in mind that you should not rely on the numbers alone. You should also explore the quality of likes to figure out whether the people you are reaching are your desired audience or not.

Maintain Your Own Record

Once you have completed all these steps, you will have a lot of data. It is best to note everything down in a Word file or Excel file. This way, you can keep a record of the best time to post. Furthermore, you can keep repeating this experiment after every few months to figure out if there is any change in the trend.

One drawback of the ‘Update Engagement’ section is that it does not reveal a fixed time. Hence you will have to keep a record of everything in a spreadsheet to analyze it later manually. It should be an easy task because you will already have an idea of what days are the best for posting. Maintaining a record will enable you to compare the average engagement at different times during the day.

Conclusion

To sum it up, in this article, you have learned the different steps that will enable you to figure out the best posting time that suits your individual needs. However, while posting at the best time and day may help you significantly, you must also consider many other factors that will help you achieve your desired goals on LinkedIn.