If you manage an X (Twitter) account for a website, business, or for personal reasons, you need to know if your followers are seeing and engaging with you. If you want to get the most out of social media and maximize engagement, knowing the best times of day to tweet is crucial.
Buffer, a popular social media management tool, released findings on the best times of day to tweet. The findings are based on X research, which used data collected from nearly 5 million tweets from 10,000 profiles over several years. All time zones are taken into account to see when tweets are most popular, the best times to get clicks, the best times for likes and retweets, and the best times for overall engagement.
CoSchedule, another popular social media management tool, also released its own findings on the best times of day to tweet, combining its own data with data from more than a dozen other sources, including Buffer. This research is not limited to X, but also includes the best times of Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and Instagram.
According to Buffer, no matter where you are in the world, the most popular times to tweet are:
- Between 12:00 noon and 1:00 p.m.
According to CoSchedule, the best times are:
- Between 12:00 noon and 3:00 pm (especially on weekdays).
- Around 5:00 pm (especially on weekdays).
Advice based on two sets of data: Tweet around noon/noon.
During this time, your tweets won't necessarily be seen as easily due to the higher number of tweets competing for attention. When tweet volume is lower, your tweets may have a better chance of being seen. According to Buffer, this was between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.
According to Buffer, when you post a tweet link to send your followers somewhere, you should aim for the following tweets:
- Between 2:00 am and 3:00 am
- The specific time is 12:00 noon
- 6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
According to CoSchedule, you should be tweeting:
- The specific time is 12:00 noon
- Around 3:00 p.m.
- 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Recommendations based on two sets of data: Tweet around noon and in the evening after get off work.
Midday may seem like a favorable time period, but don’t assume those low-tweet volume times won’t do you any good. Volume is expected to be lower in the early hours of the morning, which essentially maximizes the chances of your tweet being seen by people who are awake or about to wake up.
Getting as many likes and retweets as possible may be important to your brand or business. This means that, based on Buffer's data, you need to tweet:
- Between 9:00 pm and 10:00 pm (especially if your audience is primarily in the United States).
According to CoSchedule, you should be tweeting:
- Between 12:00 noon and 7:00 pm (exclusively for forwarding).
Advice based on two sets of data: conduct your own experiments within these timeframes. Try tweeting at noon, afternoon, early evening, and late at night to get likes and retweets (preferably without links in the tweet).
The data from Buffer and CoSchedule conflict in this regard, so the time frame in which you can engage via tweets is quite long. Buffer studied more than a million tweets from U.S. accounts and concluded that later in the evening is best for engagement. The results reported by CoSchedule are mixed based on the different sources it looks at.
Digital marketing guru Neil Patel says that tweeting at 5:00 pm results in the most retweets. Ell & Co. found that the best retweet results occurred between noon and 1:00 pm and between 6:00 pm and 7:00 pm. The Huffington Post says the most retweets occur between noon and 5:00 p.m.
Your best option is to tweet at specific times and track when engagement is highest.
If you just want your X followers to do anything — click, retweet, like or reply — Buffer’s data suggests sending your tweets:
- 2:00 am to 3:00 am
According to CoSchedule, you should be tweeting:
- The specific time is 12:00 noon
- Around 3:00 p.m.
- 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm
Advice based on two sets of data: do your own experiment. Track clicks and engagement for early morning tweets vs. tweets during peak daytime hours.
The two studies had conflicting data on clicks and engagement, with Buffer saying it was best at night and CoSchedule saying it was best during the day.
According to Buffer, the highest engagement time is in the middle of the night, between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am, when trading volume is lower. Clicks and engagement per tweet are at their lowest between traditional business hours of 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
CoSchedule found that retweets and click-through rates were maximized during the day. Social media superstar Dustin Stout also advises against tweeting at night, saying the worst time to tweet is between 8:00 pm and 9:00 am
If you're surprised to find that these findings vary depending on the source, you're not alone. Keep in mind that these numbers don't necessarily tell the whole story and have been averaged.
Buffer added a note stating that the number of followers on a specific account affects clicks and engagement. If so many tweets included in the dataset don't have that little engagement, looking at the median (the middle number of all the numbers) instead of the mean (the average of all the numbers) might give more accurate results. Content type, day of the week and even messaging play a big role here too. These were not taken into account in the study.
If you tweet within the timeframes derived from the two studies above, there's no guarantee you'll get the most clicks, retweets, likes, or new followers. Your results will vary based on what you post, who your followers are, their demographics, what they do, their location, your relationship with them, and more.
If the majority of your followers are 9-to-5 workers who live in the U.S. Eastern time zone, tweeting at 2:00 a.m. Eastern time on weekdays may not work for you. On the other hand, if you're targeting college students at X, tweeting late at night or early in the morning might lead to better results.
Keep the results of this study in mind and use them to test your X strategy. Do your research based on your brand and audience, and over time you'll uncover valuable information about your followers' tweeting habits.
