Last year, TikTok broke the record of becoming people’s favorite non-gaming app to spend money on, with total expenditures exceeding $914 million in Q3 alone.
From tech giants like Apple to homegrown creator-led brands, everyone wants to get a piece of this pie. And the key to unlocking it? Making sure people see the content you’re uploading.
We already know that posting at certain times of the day and week can increase your engagement. Strategically timing your posts is an easy way to find the audience you often miss out on, as long as you know what those high engagement times are.
This is your exclusive playbook to the best time to post on TikTok in 2024.
What’s the Best Time to Post on TikTok Throughout the Week?
There are certain times throughout the week when it’s best to post on TikTok. Here is a quick overview of those ideal timeslots, based on research from our friends over at Influencer Marketing and Sprout Social.
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Some Additional Good-to-Know Information
Best Time to Post on TikTok on Monday (and What it Means)
The best times to post on TikTok on Monday are 6 AM, 10 AM, and 10 PM. People tend to check TikTok early in the morning when having their breakfast and once when they’re done with the first few tasks of the day. Then, after a long day of soldiering through the first day of the week, a lot of people tend to check it at 10 PM before going to bed.
Best Time to Post on TikTok on Tuesday (and What it Means)
The best times to post on TikTok on Tuesday are 2 AM, 4 AM, and 9 AM. TikTok users tend to stay up late at night scrolling, so posting fresh content can help you grab their attention at a time when fewer creators would post. A lot of people also start their early mornings by using TikTok before beginning their work around 9 AM.
Best Time to Post on TikTok on Wednesday (and What it Means)
The best times to post on TikTok on Wednesdays are 7 AM, 8 AM, and 11 PM. People enjoy going on the TikTok app first thing after they wake up or as they are having breakfast. Browsing through content before going to bed is a guilty pleasure for many, so you will see higher engagement rates around 11 PM.
Best Time to Post on TikTok on Thursday (and What it Means)
The best times to post on TikTok on Thursday are 9 AM, 12 AM, and 7 PM. People are likely to browse through the app just before starting their work, then again around noon when they take a break for lunch to scroll through their ‘for you’ page, and once more after they get off from work around 7 PM.
Best Time to Post on TikTok on Friday (and What it Means)
The best times to post on TikTok on Friday are 5 AM, 1 PM, and 3 PM. Just like all work days of the week, people enjoy waking up to new content on TikTok so posting around 5 AM can create traction for your posts. Lunch breaks are likely when people take some time to browse through the app again before the weekend anticipation kicks in around 3 PM.
Best Time to Post on TikTok on Saturday (and What it Means)
The best times to post on TikTok on Saturday are 11 AM, 7 PM, and 8 PM. Since it’s the weekend, people don’t tend to use TikTok till closer to noon around 11 AM. Following a relaxing day, they again browse the app in the evening around 7 PM or 8 PM while eating dinner.
Best Time to Post on TikTok on Sunday (and What it Means)
The best times to post on TikTok on Sunday are 7 AM, 8 AM, and 4 PM. Browsing through TikTok as a leisurely morning activity is fun for people around 7 AM and 8 AM as they wake up. Then, their afternoon entertainment and inspiration come from watching TikTok videos around 4 PM.
But Wait: Your Ideal Time to Post on TikTok Might be Different
It's no secret that third-party data can only get you so far when trying to get a sense of the best times to post on TikTok. You are unique, and so is your audience, and their behavior can alter the best hours or days to post for YOU.
The best time to post on TikTok ultimately depends on YOUR audience — which will always differ from another creator. To that end, it’s important to dig deeper into your account’s analytics and find out when your audience is active, and use that to guide your decisions around when to post content.
How to Determine Your Best Time to Post on TikTok?
The best time for you to post on TikTok is based on the following:
- Where your audience is
- The days they are most active, and
- The times of the days they’re most active
A fitness creator based out of India is not going to get the best-possible engagement by posting at the same time as an artist in the United States!
Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to find the above information from your TikTok account and what it means:
1. Convert to a Pro Account and Navigate to Analytics
To convert your TikTok account from basic to Pro, follow these steps:
- Go to your profile page and tap the three dots in the upper right corner of the screen.
- Click ‘Manage my account.’
- Click the text in red that says ‘Switch to Pro account.’
- Now you can choose your business category before clicking ‘Done’ and that’s it.
Now your business account has a dedicated Analytics page that you can use to know which times are the best for you to post content. To know your numbers, simply go into your settings menu and tap on ‘Analytics.’
Your analytics give you a bird’s eye view of your profile overview, content performance, and follower data.
2. See Where Your Audience Resides
Finding out how your audience is dispersed geographically is a great starting point for you to know which posting times are best aligned with them. To know your top territories, follow these steps:
- Go into your TikTok settings page
- Tap ‘Analytics’ and then tap ‘Followers’
- Now scroll down to view your ‘Top Territories’.
While TikTok does not divide your followers by their cities, you get a clear idea of which countries your followers reside in. Many TikTok agencies can use your audience territories to calculate which time zones will be the most suitable for you to post in.
3. Check the Days When They’re Most Active
Along with their different time zones, you should also know which days of the week your audience most likes to open the TikTok app and watch your content. You can find out when they are most active by following these steps:
- Go into your TikTok settings page.
- Tap ‘Analytics’ and then tap ‘Followers.’
- Now scroll down to view your ‘Follower activity.’
Here you can see performance data from the last 7 days, and you can check with the calendar to note which days of the week were the best for your content.
One thing to note here is the outliers for activity spikes. Special days like public holidays and seasonal festivities can cause your audience activity to increase or decrease — so make sure to account for any special cases too.
4. Determine the Hours When They’re Most Active
When it comes to global audience activity though, TikTok has gone one step further. You can also find out exactly which hours of every day your followers were most active from directly within the app.
To get access to your data, follow these steps:
- Go into your TikTok settings page.
- Tap ‘Analytics’ and then tap ‘Followers.’
- Now scroll down to view your ‘Follower activity.’
- Tap ‘Hours’ instead of ‘Days.’
Now you can see your activity spikes for every hour of every day in the past week. One thing to note, TikTok automatically presents this data in the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), so make sure you convert that into your decided local time.
5. Analyze the Data
Now for the fun part — put all your collected data into an Excel sheet and see what patterns you can uncover. Use this to track metrics that are important for you — video reach, likes, comments, shares, average watch time, and posting times.
Because you already know your audience — their demographics, preferences, and peak activity hours — you have the foundation to curate a marketing strategy that helps you achieve your goals. Using all this information, you can use your judgment to calculate what your optimal posting times are and schedule your TikTok posts accordingly.
If you’re based in the UK, but the majority of your audience’s location is in the US, also account for the time zone differences when deciding your best times to post. With consistent monitoring over a quarter, your content should start performing better and you should see your video views and subscribers grow.
Learning how to check TikTok analytics is crucial if you want to see your conversion rate rise because there’s so much data just waiting to be utilized. Everything you want to know, from which content your followers love the most to their gender split, is available on TikTok for you to leverage.
6. Keep Experimenting!
The way your audience behaves and the times they’re most active will likely continue to change. To that end, it’s important to keep a close eye on your data and be agile with the way you post TikTok content.
But before you think TikTok posts are just another numbers game, wait! Just like any platform’s social media marketing strategy, you never know what could catch the audience’s eye and go viral. The secret sauce is in the experimentation, and you have full creative control, so keep trying out new tactics.
You can play around with TikTok's entire production with the available creator tools, including your signature colors, style, speed, format, and music. Along with your in-feed videos, your ads on the platform are also open to a ton of experimentation, including the video size. Here’s an easy TikTok videos size guide to help you get started.
Get TikTok’in!
With TikTok not looking to slow down anytime soon, there is so much potential for creators to establish and monetize their brands. Strategically timing your content is a surefire way to improve your engagement and reach on the platform, because you organically guarantee top-level traffic.
Knowing the best time to post on a social media platform is key to helping your online presence skyrocket. With the best times to post now in your back pocket, it’s time to get TikTok’in!
BONUS: Here’s the guide to the best time to post on YouTube, and here’s a guide to the best posting schedule on Instagram, so you can always ensure your content meets your audience wherever you are.
