Introduction
Throughout 2020 and 2021, social media became more important than ever as a way for people to maintain instantaneous connections, discover new trends and hobbies, and stay current on current events.
To thrive in an unexpectedly rapid digital transformation, brands had to pivot, and social marketers had to fight burnout as the volume of social interactions and messaging demands increased. See our COVID-19 learnings and resources review for more information on the strategies brands used to respond to these changes.
With this in mind, it’s no surprise that our review of the best times to post on social media for 2021 revealed many significant changes in the data, with increased and varying engagement across platforms and industries. Both brands and their customers were constantly adapting their online operations, resulting in new patterns of interaction and engagement on social media. As many of us continue to refine and reimagine strategy for 2021, this data can assist marketers in understanding the current social landscape.
We collaborated closely with our data science team to review findings and trends in social media usage from Sprout Social’s 20,000+ customers over the past year and understand when their content was most and least frequently engaged with, broken down by platform and industry.
We’ve highlighted the best and worst times to post on each social platform, as well as the best and worst days to post overall. Use this data to help inform your publishing calendar’s scheduling, or continue reading for ideas on how to incorporate these findings into your analysis of your specific account’s peak engagement times.
Finally, if you want a quick reference of the best times to post globally across each network, download your copy by clicking the button below. In addition, the best times to post on social media in GMT are included in this quick reference guide.
Disclaimer: Sprout Social data includes users from a variety of plan types, industries, and locations. All time frames are captured in the Central Time Zone (CST). The number of engagements represents the total number of engagements received by a brand on a specific channel during that hour’s time frame. Mid- to high-level engagement times are included in industry-specific data.
When is the best time to tweet on Twitter?
- Wednesday 9 a.m.–3 p.m., Tuesday and Thursday 9–11 a.m, are the best times.
- Wednesday is the best day.
- Saturday is the worst day.
In 2020, many social media users’ first source of information on developing stories like COVID-19 and the US Presidential Elections was Twitter. As a result, the platform prioritized news and information accuracy, with dedicated trending topics discovery tabs dedicated to these ongoing stories.
Twitter’s peak engagement times remained high across all weekdays in 2020, with increased periods of high engagement continuing into the evenings. This could reflect the platform’s ongoing focus on developing news and updates, as well as its role as a source of entertainment via viral Tweets and memes.
While Twitter distinguished itself as a source for up-to-the-minute news in 2020, it is also a key place for customers to easily connect with brands via conversations and mentions. This means that having a customer care strategy in place is critical for the platform, as is moving beyond reacting to individual issues and toward proactively improving the overall customer experience through social listening and voice of customer data analysis.
Because of all of these areas of focus, brands can have multiple, and sometimes competing, priorities on Twitter. Examine the top times we discovered above to help you determine when you should prioritize publishing new content over devoting resources to customer support.
