What is the Best Time to Post on Twitter in 2020?

Twitter is a very fast-paced social media platform that demands you to think about more than just what you’re posting. Timing, in particular, is critical. But it can be tricky to know the best time to post on Twitter.

To get the most out of your Twitter social media strategy, you need to learn how to use timing to your advantage.

Identifying the right time to tweet is powerful knowledge.

It allows you to work smarter by focusing your efforts on a few quality posts strategically scattered throughout the day, rather than just going for sheer volume.

In this article, we’ll help you figure out the best times to post on Twitter, including strategies for you to figure out when is the right time to tweet for your business!

One thing is certain: thanks to an update to the Twitter algorithm, the timing of your tweets is more critical than ever before.

Users can now make their feed chronological instead of engagement- or popularity-based.

A chronological feed means Twitter users are seeing tweets as they happen. The longer it’s been since a tweet was posted, the less likely a user will see it.

You want to make sure you’re posting when the majority of your audience is on Twitter so that your posts are seen by as many people as possible.

This update was a big change for Twitter. Since 2016, feeds have been almost completely based on engagement, not chronology.

People reacted very positively to the new timeline setup, so it seems as though the chronological feature is here to stay.

We’re here to help you take advantage of this update with this guide.

Here are our top tips on timing your tweets to be seen by as many people as possible.

What is the Best Time to Post on Twitter Overall?

The short answer is: there isn’t one best time to post on Twitter.

Your audience, objective, and type of business will all affect the best times for you.

The long answer is that there are some general guidelines you can follow.

TrackMaven analyzed tweets from thousands of different brands and found that the overall best day to post on Twitter is Thursdays.

People tend to engage more during the middle of the workweek and less on weekends, when they’re busy with personal activities.

According to HubSpot, the best time frames to post on Twitter are 8-10 am and 6-9 pm, before people get to work in the morning and after they leave in the evening.

Hubspot also notes that if your goals are retweets or clickthroughs, the best times to post on Twitter are noon or 5-6 pm.

This is likely from people hopping on Twitter as they start their lunch break or wind down their workday.

All of these times are time-zone neutral, so you’ll need to think about the specific time zone for your audience when posting.

What this boils down to is that people often use Twitter before and after work and during their lunch break. If you aim for times, you’re likely to reach a large amount of Twitter users.

4 Strategies to Find the Best Time to Post on Twitter for Your Brand

Patterns in Twitter usage are helpful as a starting point for timing your tweets.

Ultimately, though, the best time to post on Twitter will depend on the unique habits of your followers.

Here are four strategies you can use to figure out the best time for your business to tweet.

1. Consider Your Business Type

Twitter timing varies between B2B and B2C businesses.

For B2B businesses, the best time to post on Twitter is weekdays during standard business hours, according to Hootsuite.

More specifically, 9 am to 4 pm on Mondays and Thursdays are the best, particularly during lunchtime from 11 am to 1 pm.

B2C companies see a less dramatic difference between days of the week than B2B companies.

Consumers can do their shopping and product research during off-hours or days, but businesses are mainly operating during standard business hours.

Even for B2C companies, though, weekdays tend to be better for posting.

In the chart above, there is a spike on Sundays in the data for 2019 because the study included Super Bowl Sunday. Since this spike is unusual, Tuesdays are the overall best day for B2C companies.

The best time overall for B2C companies is during lunchtime, 12 to 1 pm.

Adjust your Twitter posting strategy depending on the type of company you have, and you’ll be more likely to reach your target customers on the platform.

2. Know Your Audience

When you’re timing your posts, think about a typical day for your audience and when they would most likely have downtime to scroll through their Twitter feed.

If your audience is stay-at-home parents, for example, then your best time to post on Twitter will be different than if you are aiming at teenagers or engineers.

Stay-at-home parents don’t have set break times the way an engineer would, so their Twitter schedule might be a bit more erratic. Teenagers go to school from the morning to the afternoon, so they’re most likely to be on Twitter at these hours.

You know your audience best. Think about their habits and schedules and use that information to help your Twitter posting strategy.

3. Track Engagement and Impressions

The only way to really know what is the best time to post on Twitter for your company is to look at your own data.

Check when your most engaging tweets were posted to find the best times for future posts.

You can track impressions, profile visits, numbers of tweets, and more from your Twitter analytics dashboard.

Twitter’s native analytics won’t directly tell you the best times to tweet.

What they will tell you is which of your posts have the most impressions and engagement.

You can take that information and track the timing manually. Look at when your most popular tweets were posted and see if there’s a pattern.

There are also external tools you can use to figure out the best time to post on Twitter.

Tweriod, for example, pulls information from your tweets and your followers’ tweets and suggests the best days and times for you to post.

Twitter analytic tools make it easy to see when your tweets perform best so you can plan the timing for your future tweets.

4. Use a Scheduling Tool

Scheduling tools allow you to make your tweets ahead of time and schedule them to be automatically posted at the day and time of your choice.

With automatic scheduling, you’re able to experiment with different tweet times without the hassle of manual posting. And with Hootsuite Autoscheduler you can finally tick “finding the best time for my company’s tweets” off your to-do list.

Scheduling tools also take the stress out of remembering to post regularly.

Posting between one and three times a day is the ideal amount for maximizing engagement. With scheduling tools, you can set up multiple tweets per day in advance.

After a few weeks of experimenting with different times, you can go back to your data and see what times sparked the most engagement from your followers.

Then keep using your scheduling tools to post regularly at peak times.

Maximize Visibility by Timing Your Tweets

Thanks to the re-introduction of chronological timelines, timing your tweets is more important in 2020 than ever before.

You want to make sure you send out tweets when the maximum amount of people will see them, and that means figuring out when most of your followers are online.

Use the tips and trends in this guide to schedule posts during popular times of day for your audience.

Track the engagement and impressions of each tweet to refine your timing even further.

Over time, you’ll see when your particular audience is most active and nail down the best time to post on Twitter for your business.