When is the best time to post on social media for digital marketing? It's a question we often hear from many clients that many businesses are curious about. 

In this post, we'll walk through some of the research around when your audience is most likely to engage with you on the major platforms so that you can better plan your content.

Instagram

When do users engage most with Instagram, and what is the best time to do your marketing there? We wanted to find out, so we analyzed 6 million posts across our network of more than 9 million consumers and found some interesting insights: If you want to make an impression on your brand's followers, this information is for you.

Monday at 3 pm is the peak time for engagement. Most interactions occur between 12 pm-4 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST).

Instagram users are most likely to engage with posts with fewer than ten hashtags, so keep that in mind when creating brand awareness. Posts with 11 or more hashtags see a 1% drop in total engagements per hashtag used compared to those with ten hashtags or fewer.

Twitter

Twitter is a real-time platform for those who want to get social or post business content. People share news and information, interact with others, share their thoughts and opinions, and discover what's happening worldwide. There are more tweets posted on weekdays than on weekends. This is true for both weekday mornings and evenings as well as nighttime.

Facebook

On Facebook, users are online most often between 2 am and 10 pm Eastern Time. Other peak times include 9 pm, 1 pm, and 5 pm, Eastern Time, each day of the week, except Sunday, when most people are sleeping off their hangovers from Saturday night's party fun.

Pinterest

The most popular days on Pinterest are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, with Wednesday being by far the busiest day of the week for pinners. The same goes for the time of day. Five pm eastern time is also by far the most popular hour to post on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter, but when it comes to Pinterest, almost no one posts then because there aren't many users online then.

It's important to remember that each social media platform has its audience and content, as you can see from these tips. The best time to post on a network may not necessarily be ideal for another platform. In other words, you should always consider your target audience's unique properties when adjusting your posting strategy based on what we outlined above.