TL;DR
– Post on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays between 8-10 AM for maximum guaranteed reach
– Avoid weekends and Monday mornings when engagement is historically lower
– Test different time slots to identify optimal times based on your specific audience
– Analyze LinkedIn Analytics to understand when followers are most active
– Schedule posts in advance with tools like Buffer or Hootsuite for consistency
“When to post on LinkedIn” is among the most frequently asked questions by people starting or refining their posting strategy on the network.
This is completely legitimate: by posting at the wrong times, you risk being invisible in your prospects’ news feed and missing out on great business opportunities.
Like most other algorithms, your posts will be boosted by LinkedIn if they manage to generate a good engagement rate in the shortest possible time.
After an hour of longevity, consider your post obsolete in the eyes of the algorithm if it hasn’t generated enough reactions to go viral. The question of timing is therefore crucial in your social media strategy.
Spoiler alert: there is no universal answer. But there is good news:
By building LinkedIn prospecting scenarios that include personal branding and social selling, LaGrowthMachine has identified best practices.
What days to post on LinkedIn? How often and at what time to publish your posts? How to adapt your posting strategy?
Become a LinkedIn posting pro in under 6 minutes.
What days to post on LinkedIn?
This is the million-dollar question. If you hit the mark with every post on the platform, you will optimize:
- The visibility of your content
- Your ranking by the LinkedIn algorithm
- Your conversion rate
Unfortunately, there is no secret sauce. At least, not a universal one. And this unfortunately applies to all social networks: the only recipe that works every time is the one you create yourself.
Trust only your statistics
The important thing is to understand your audience. Without knowing when your prospects and clients are present on the platform, you risk struggling to stand out.
Therefore, you need to know your professional audience’s habits to perform at your best.
To determine them, pay attention to your profile statistics. Monitor particularly:
- the number of impressions on your posts
- the number of reactions they generated
- other metrics (InMails received, number of followers, number of profile visitors…)
For example, at LaGrowthMachine, we found that the best days to post on LinkedIn for B2B are Tuesdays and Thursdays, ideally in the late morning.
Like all social networks, the higher your scores, the more successful your LinkedIn posts have been. Logical. Align your posting schedule with your users’ and everything will go well.
If you lack statistics, you can also rely on the general rule.
The general rule for the best days to post on LinkedIn
Overall, marketing professionals agree on these points:
- The best posting days are between Tuesday and Thursday
- You should avoid posting on Saturdays and Sundays
Unlike other social networks, LinkedIn users’ typical pattern is based on their professional habits. First and foremost, don’t forget that this networking giant is primarily a B2B social network.
Therefore, you should adjust your posting schedule according to the usual work rhythm.
This way, you’ll avoid Monday mornings, when everyone is swamped.
Same rule for Friday afternoons, when most workers are eager to wrap up their tasks and leave for the weekend.
However, this should be taken with a grain of salt.
A prime example is this post that generated over 1M impressions and 2K followers in a few weeks.
It was published on a Saturday evening:
Similarly, for B2B prospecting, it’s better to schedule your outreach actions during business hours.
Generally, at LaGrowthMachine, we schedule our Growth Hacking campaigns on LinkedIn between 10 AM and 5 PM, every day of the week. Here are our results for cold outreach:
In these two campaigns, more than one in three people responded to our solicitations. But the great advantage is that we sent 361 and 37 messages respectively, completely automated… in just a few clicks. This is a considerable time saving and 135 leads showed interest in what we offered!
What time to post on LinkedIn?
Just like the ideal day, the perfect time to post on LinkedIn is a myth.
However, fortunately, there are times that are more suitable than others.
Think about all the times you’ve picked up your smartphone to check your feed. If you’re not completely addicted to the social network, chances are your habits align with your work hours.
Therefore, you should post when the most professionals are connected:
- Early morning: we advise posting before 8:30 AM. LinkedIn users are still at home, or in transit. They take the opportunity to scroll through their news feed before starting work. This is an effective way to stay updated on the industry and start the day with fresh ideas.
- At noon: post around noon. This way, you’ll more easily appear in the feeds of people taking their lunch break. For many of us, this is the perfect time to reply to messages or interact with others.
- Late afternoon: around 5:30 PM, to appear in the feeds of those returning from work. It’s the same concept as in the morning. Commute time is ideal to ensure you don’t miss out on important news or messages.
Now that you have this information in mind, don’t lose sight of the fact that working hours vary considerably from one sector to another and from one hierarchical level to another.
For example:
- Marketing, communication, or advertising agencies start their days later and finish later than most B2B companies.
- CEOs have little time to spend on LinkedIn during the day, but much more in the evening.
- Some executives finish their days late and check LinkedIn before going to bed, sometimes around midnight.
We repeat it again: like any strategy implemented on social networks, it is essential to form your own opinion by analyzing your results and observing those of your competitors.
What is the posting frequency on LinkedIn?
This is another topic that particularly interests professional content creators and agencies.
We’ll disappoint you again, but the only acceptable frequency is the one… that suits you.
To be more precise, the LinkedIn algorithm favors those who post regularly over those who post erratically.
When we talk about regularity, we’re not asking you to post every hour, far from it.
However, it should be taken into account that the more users post on the professional social network, the shorter the lifespan of a post.
Here’s what we tend to advise to reach a large audience:
- An ideal frequency is between 2 to 3 posts per week. This allows you to implement an adapted content strategy. Favor the TOFU-MOFU-BOFU method for posting, which we detail in this article.
- Prefer regularity over quantity. If you don’t have enough content ideas, it’s better to post once a week, same day, same time, than sporadically.
- To be as visible as possible, post every day. Your engagement rate will likely be lower, but you will benefit from increased visibility due to your omnipresence.
How to define your own posting rhythm on LinkedIn?
As you’ve understood, the success of your social media strategy on the platform largely depends on your ability to determine the best time and day to post to reach the maximum number of professionals.
Rather than relying on external studies, it’s better to base your decisions on the following three elements:
A/B Testing
We’ve already detailed this above, but there’s no miracle solution for determining the ideal times for posting on LinkedIn.
Let’s imagine your gut feeling tells you to post every Wednesday morning:
- Implement a series of posts over several weeks, all published on Wednesday at the same time.
- In the following weeks, change your habits by posting in the afternoon.
- The next month, try posting on Thursday or Tuesday.
- At the end of each test, export your profile or company page statistics.
- Compare them with those from the previous and subsequent phases.
This is a long-term effort, but it’s essential to accurately determine the best targeting. This also applies to all social networks.
Your competitors’ habits
Take some time to analyze your competitors’ results. They operate in the same industry and, by definition, target the same prospects as you.
If you notice that their engagement rate is consistently higher than yours or that their growth is much faster, ask yourself the right questions.
Your smartphone notifications
This is a somewhat simplistic, but effective, source of information.
The more LinkedIn notifications you receive within a specific time frame, the more it means your target audience is connected at that precise moment.
Don’t miss out on these easy-to-decipher signals.
Scheduling tools
Once you’ve managed to determine the best time and day to post on LinkedIn, it’s best to stick to it.
Unfortunately, schedules and a demanding work rhythm can quickly wear down your consistency.
As we’ve seen, consistency is inherent to your success on the B2B social network. Using a scheduling tool like Hootsuite or Buffer is an excellent way to avoid shooting yourself in the foot.
By automating the publication of your content (posts, articles, or videos), you’ll save valuable time and easily maintain your posting frequency.
Conclusion
There’s no magic recipe on LinkedIn. Post and analyze before developing a method that works for you.
Just like sending emails, the best times to post depend considerably on your audience’s activity and your industry.
Remember to monitor your competitors for useful initial insights and leverage all data sources that can help you establish your own posting rhythm.
Once you’ve determined your ideal frequency, you should easily gain reach.
Take the opportunity to improve your copywriting and optimize your communication plan with some expert tips.