The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn in 2019
With all the walk-and-talk videos and anecdotal status updates flooding LinkedIn nowadays, the professional social networking site isn’t just a platform for connecting with your colleagues anymore -- it’s a place where companies can build a brand.
After Microsoft bought LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in 2016, LinkedIn released a new native video feature, a trending stories section, and a more robust analytics tool to help brands engage larger audiences for a longer amount of time. In fact, LinkedIn has 303 million monthly active users today, which is only 23 million users shy of Twitter’s monthly active user count.
Just like on every other social media network, attracting an engaged audience on LinkedIn requires you to craft compelling content. But if you don’t post your content at the right time, most of your followers will never see your updates. So how do you figure out the optimal post time for your specific audience?
The best way to determine your brand’s ideal post time on LinkedIn is by testing and uncovering the exact time and days your content generates the most engagement. However, if you don’t have enough resources or time to conduct your own tests, Sprout Social, a social media management platform with over 25,000 customers, has you covered.
Best Time to Post on LinkedIn
On average, the best time to post on LinkedIn is between 3 PM and 5 PM CDT on Wednesdays. Other high engagement times on the platform are between 8 AM and 10 AM CDT on Tuesdays, 10 AM and 12 PM CDT on Wednesdays, and 1 PM and 3 PM CDT on Thursdays.
Last year, they analyzed their customer data to see what time and day their customers’ social media posts generated the most engagement. And after examining their aggregate engagement data on LinkedIn, Sprout Social pinpointed the days and times — in Central Daylight Time (CDT) — that could generate the most engagement on the platform for your brand:
During the time periods above, people are usually getting ready for work, just starting their day, taking an afternoon break, or going home, so it makes sense that engagement on LinkedIn is high then.
If you want to know the best days to post on LinkedIn, the data in the snippet above suggests that the best day to post on LinkedIn is Wednesday. Other days of high engagement are Tuesday and Thursday. On the flip side, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday are usually the days with the lowest engagement.
Most people use LinkedIn during the middle of the week because that’s when they’re the most productive. On the other hand, people usually don’t use LinkedIn on the weekends or on Mondays because they take a break from work on the weekends, and Mondays are, well, Mondays.
Timing Is Everything
If you post content to LinkedIn when the majority of your audience isn’t online, will you receive the amount of views and engagement you were hoping for? Probably not. So remember, if you want to build a brand on LinkedIn, it’s crucial to find out when your specific audience prefers to surf the site. Because if you do, you’ll nail the timing of your posts almost every single time you want to update your followers on the platform.