At the core of why you should post content to your LinkedIn feed and company page is so that your target audience sees it (brand recognition), thinks positively of you (establishment of subject-matter expertise) and ultimately contacts you for a new opportunity (lead generation).
I’m often asked what the best times are to post on LinkedIn for maximum impact and engagement and so I wanted to share some data and ideas.
Considering LinkedIn’s corporate-minded mix of business professionals, thought leaders, job seekers and company page curation, it’s no surprise that activity is much more concentrated around workdays.
- According to the data in this article,the best time to post to LinkedIn is on Wednesday between 9am and 10am, and at 12pm.
- Overall Wednesday is the best day to post on the platform, while the least engagement unsurprisingly occurs on Sundays and the least popular times to post are every day from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. in your local time zone (makes sense as that’s when people are winding down and sleeping).
- Commuting hours as well as lunchtime is when you have the most captive and engaged audience on LinkedIn.
- On balance, Tuesday to Friday, between 9am and 11am, looks to be the best time to post to LinkedIn, with good engagement between 12pm and 3pm, and also on Wednesdays and Thursdays.
- It is interesting that evening commute hours were not mentioned in this study as an ideal time to post to LinkedIn. I imagine this is because people are rushing to get home to their families or are just exhausted after a long day of work and want to decompress. Now it’s not a bad time to post – especially if you are within the golden window of Tuesday through Friday, but just be aware that to get the biggest bang for your buck you’ll want to post content in the morning.
- Please keep your time zones in mind – if you live in New York City and are trying to reach an audience in London or on the West Coast, you’ll want to post your content during their rush hours. You don’t have to stay up all night anymore to do this thanks to several social sharing platforms that enable you to time your posts such as Clearview Social and Hootsuite.
- Also, don’t forget to use hashtags – and better yet, the right hashtags – within your LinkedIn posts to reach an even wider audience. When used correctly, hashtags can be an effective way to grow your reach, promote engagement and get discovered. Online tools such as Ritetag and Hashtagify help you find the most relevant hashtag for a particular topic.
While there’s no magic, perfect time to post on LinkedIn, this data provides some good pointers as to when you should release your content for maximum impact, and what you might want to consider timing wise when planning out your social media marketing strategy.