Send us an email
Send us an email
Search the Blog
Written by Mary Keutelian
Published on May 8, 2023
Reading time 10 minutes
Share
As one of the fastest-growing entertainment platforms, TikTok showed it’s a powerhouse in the digital space. And with more and more businesses joining the platform, it’s important to know when is the best time to post on TikTok. With over 1 billion active users worldwide, we know that it’s one of the more popular platforms to date.
It’s important to understand how posting on TikTok at the right times can be a huge benefit to your TikTok marketing strategy. Users on average spend 23.5 hours per month on the platform, meaning there is an opportunity to engage with a consistent audience. Keep an eye out for emerging trends or subcultures on the platform and test your own content.
Learn how to identify your best times to post globally on TikTok with a free trial of Sprout Social and test our ViralPost® feature.
Start a free Sprout Social trial
Disclaimer: Data from Sprout Social include users from various plan types, industries and locations. All time frames are recorded globally, meaning you should be able to publish with the times provided in any timezone and see positive engagement results. Number of engagements represents total engagements a brand received on the specific channel during that hour time frame. Industry-specific data includes mid- to high-level engagement times. We recommend testing with your own accounts to find the most optimal send times.
As the youngest digital platform on this list, TikTok has grown significantly and made waves in half as many years as the others on this list. With the app now amassing over 1 billion active global users who spend nearly 20 hours on the app every month, TikTok has competitive staying power.
The best times to post on TikTok are Tuesdays from 2 to 6 p.m., Wednesdays from 2 to 5 p.m. and Thursdays from 3 to 5 p.m. Afternoons are when the highest engagements are on the platform; users are looking to fill their afternoon entertainment boost. However, generally, mid-morning through the afternoon (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.) on Tuesdays through Thursdays see higher engagement on the app.
With future market trends changing quickly, it’s important to understand how trends start, evolve and influence. Once you understand how these forces, moments or signals work, you can better create a TikTok trend strategy to implement rather than participating reactively.
There’s no definitive answer to what the best times to post on TikTok are, and we can only offer insight with the data we have. Industry is just one factor that plays into the success of your social posts. Consider as well as your target audience, business goals and the content itself.
Use this industry level-data to help inform your publishing calendar, and test your own optimal send times with social experiments.
The consumer goods industry covers a large portfolio of products, ranging from packaged food and beverages to clothing and accessories and everything in between. While the US was facing inflation at nearly 8.5%, US consumers spent 18% more in March 2022 than they did two years prior. After two years into the pandemic, consumers were ready to spend similar to their pre-pandemic habits and more in 2022.
For consumer goods businesses on TikTok, only very few days see any engagement. Optimal engagement for consumer goods on TikTok is Tuesdays from 3 to 5 p.m. and Wednesdays at 3 p.m.
Very few hours throughout the days see any engagement either. Be cautious if you’re a consumer goods business, but also be sure to test your own best times to post.
As consumers crave some semblance of pre-pandemic life, businesses can also sense it. While hospitality businesses see higher engagement on other social platforms, there is limited concentrated engagement and optimal posting times on TikTok.
The best times to post on TikTok for the hospitality industry are Thursdays at 2 p.m. and Fridays at 9 a.m. There are moderately light engagements Thursdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., which would still be ideal times to post. Essentially late evening hours when people were looking to engage with hospitality brands.
Engagement in the media and entertainment industry peaks on TikTok. Media businesses can expect consistently high engagement nearly every day between 6 and 11 a.m. Major global events, political upheavals and business news have a relevant impact on media impressions on all platforms, including TikTok.
News travels quickly, and the best times to post on TikTok for the media and entertainment industry are Mondays at 8 a.m., Tuesdays from 5 to 9 a.m., Wednesdays from 6 to 8 a.m., Thursdays from 8 to 11 a.m., Fridays at 9 a.m., and Sundays from 6 to 8 a.m.
Our data for the best times to post on TikTok for nonprofits shows concentrated engagement in midweek afternoons that can extend into the early evening hours.
The best times to post on TikTok for nonprofit organizations are Tuesdays from 3 to 5 p.m., however, there’s almost as much engagement three hours prior and after. Wednesdays see some near-peak engagement between 1 and 6 p.m.
However, even with the audience engagement seen in the heatmap above, all businesses need to test their own best times to post. Whether it’s through social testing or using Sprout’s Optimal Send Times feature, find what times work best for your organization on TikTok.
In 2022, everyone was ready to get back to their pre-pandemic routines, and restaurants were ready with open doors. While online orders and delivery services may have become new offerings for some locations, the desire to draw patrons has not. Target audience and platform goals factor into ways businesses connect with their customers. Offering unique promotions or showcasing your menu in an attention-grabbing way on TikTok will keep your restaurant in mind for potential customers.
Restaurants and bars on LinkedIn see decent engagement at midday during the week. However, the peak engagement and best times to post on TikTok for restaurants and bars are Mondays at noon and 3 p.m., Tuesdays from 2 to 5 p.m. and Thursdays at 4 p.m.
Universities, higher education institutions and schools see some, but not much, engagement on TikTok according to our data. Keep in mind that some schools manage multiple social profiles (per college, athletics, etc.) to meet these needs and effectively target distinct audiences at the right time.
Schools and education don’t see many concentrated opportunities on TikTok; however, this shouldn’t prevent them from using the entertainment platform, since there’s an opportunity to engage with the next wave of students: Gen Z. The best times to post on TikTok for education and schools are generally Wednesdays at 7 a.m.
From highlighting student life to sharing school updates, a social media strategy for education needs to fulfill multiple functions. Are you looking to engage with students past, present and future? Are you looking to keep a pulse on sentiment and brand health?
Travel and tourism industries see some decent engagement on TikTok. As many travel restrictions continued to be lifted and the semblance of “normal” crept back into many peoples’ lives, travel and tourism businesses see an opportunity to capitalize on the suppressed desires to travel.
The best times to post on TikTok for travel and tourism businesses are Wednesdays from 3 to 5 p.m. And these peak hours see moderate engagement in the hours before and after those optimal times.
Social marketers can plan content more effectively when they’re armed with data. And as platforms evolve, how brands and consumers use social will evolve with them, or vice versa. Staying aware of new content formats and trends might help you reach your audience in unexpected ways, or even find new segments and personas you weren’t focusing on before.
While you may be ready to jump in and post at these provided peak engagement times as part of your strategy, consider pairing this data with your own social media data analysis. You may discover that your specific target audience is active near the peak times we’ve outlined or hours earlier.
A social media management tool like Sprout Social can help you drill into your analytics and develop tailored findings for your brand accounts across all networks, holistically and individually. Gain competitive insights by comparing your performance to your competitors, to find new opportunities for engagement.
With features like post tagging and cross-network reporting, you can separate different factors like post author or types of content, and drill down into how your posting time influenced your social success.
Sprout’s patented ViralPost® technology uses the same data we’ve used to look at all our customer accounts to determine the best time to post tailored for your account. ViralPost® algorithmically determines the results for our Optimal Send Times feature, a publishing option available in all plans. Our proprietary machine learning feature isn’t new, but we’re constantly learning and improving our product to help brands surface insights faster. Our goal is to help people who use our product work more effectively.
With Optimal Send Times, the specific times offered are based on when your audience engages the most using your publishing history. ViralPost® also continually updates and refines to save you time from doing repeated the analysis, and allowing you more time to craft great content.
Want to see it in action? Sign up for a free 30-day trial of Sprout Social or request a personalized demo and try it for yourself.
Start a free Sprout Social trial
If you’re looking for more of our findings from this year’s study of our customer data, see what we learned about the best times to post across eight industries on these networks:
We understand that these reports can raise questions about just where the data is coming from. That’s why we want to be clear about the data we pulled and how we got here.
Sprout Social’s Data Science team gathers this information by analyzing nearly 2 billion engagements across 400,000 social profiles across Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok.
Now’s the time to test your content calendar. Are you posting when your followers are most active? Start your free trial of Sprout Social and discover the best times to post on social media today.
Mary Keutelian
Mary is an SEO Strategist at Sprout Social. Apart from researching and editing Insights posts, she uses her spare time to sew, craft and bake cupcakes in large quantities.
Read all articles by Mary Keutelian
Subscribe to our newsletter for social resources
Join 70,000+ professionals and become a better social media marketer. Get social media resources and tips in your inbox weekly.
[Toolkit] Communications Toolkit to Safeguard Your Brand
Find Your Next Social Media Management Tool With This Scorecard
How to ladder up your brand’s social media maturity
3 Social media executives share what it takes to build a long-term career in social
Best times to post on LinkedIn in 2023
Best times to post on Instagram in 2023
Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2023
A complete guide to creating a social media calendar
Build and grow stronger relationships on social
Sprout Social helps you understand and reach your audience, engage your community and measure performance with the only all-in-one social media management platform built for connection.
© Copyright 2023 Sprout Social, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy | Terms | Disclosure Policy | Cookies | Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
Filter by