The Best Time to Post on TikTok, No Matter the Year

If you’re not already posting on TikTok, you’re missing out on the opportunity to reach a highly engaged audience. Almost a third of TikTok users open the app daily, and US users spent an average of 82 minutes on it every day, according to research from Sensor Tower. 

The good news is that not too late to learn how to use TikTok, but you’ll need to be strategic with how you cut through the noise and build a follower base. There’s a lot of work behind going viral on TikTok, and posting at the right time is just one of the variants you need to get right. It’s important because, to put it bluntly, you can earn more money on TikTok if you get more views and followers. 

The timing of your posts really matters; it’s one of the key factors that will help you to be successful on TikTok. Get it right and you’ll reach your audience when they’re already engaged, boosting your chances of racking up views or encouraging followers to share TikTok videos. Get it wrong and it’ll feel like your video has been lost in the void. 

Influencer Marketing analyzed 100,000 TikTok posts to find which posting times generated the highest engagement and found the three best times to post each day are:

Consistency is another key way to grow your reach; the platform itself advises you to post every day on TikTok and aim for one to four posts daily. That means that there is no single best day to post on TikTok—every day is the best day. 

Broad research is a helpful starting point, but the best time for you to post on TikTok might be different than everyone else. To work out when you should be posting, you’ll need to consult your own profile’s analytics. 

It’s easy to find your analytics, once you’ve switched to a Pro or Creator account. You simply tap the burger menu, as explained in this video from onbrandbysarah:

When you’re reviewing your analytics, you need to find out:

Before you start drawing up your personalized TikTok calendar, you need to decide how frequently you’ll be able to post. For example, starting with four posts a day might be too much. It’s better to post three times a day and know your schedule is sustainable than post four times a day and end up being inconsistent or using lower-quality videos.

Next, you need to decide when to publish those posts. If you’re planning to post three times a day, take note of the three times with the highest number of users online. It’ll be different each day, so make sure you check them all. 

When you’ve got an idea of your posting frequency and the times your audience is online, you’re ready to make your own TikTok calendar. It doesn’t matter how you do it: you could use a Google sheet, your digital calendar, set up your own timeslots in your social scheduling software—or just grab a pen and paper to get started. If you’re a visual person, you might find it easier to get a sense of how the times change across the week if you’re looking at a calendar. 

When you’ve drawn up your overall schedule, you need to fill in the blanks with content that will genuinely resonate with you and your audience. Don’t forget to schedule any lives you want to plan, and earmark times when you’ll be able to do more reactive things like stitching or dueting videos. 

Need some inspiration for different types of TikTok posts? Take a look at this crash course, which explains everything from lipsyncing and dance videos to voiceovers, storytime, and more:

Since some of the best times to post are in the middle of the night, you’ll need to get comfortable with scheduling your TikToks. There are a couple of ways to do this:

TikTok’s own, free-to-use video scheduler, is really easy to use:

An essential part of your TikTok marketing strategy should be paying to promote your TikTok videos, to make sure you’re reaching a wider audience. You’ll need to think about your goal (do you want more video views, more followers or more website visits?) and who you want to target (what gender, age range and interests are most relevant?), then decide on a daily budget and a duration for the promotion. 

When you’ve got your plan and you’re ready to use TikTok promote, you can either go to the video you want to boost and tap the promote button or go to your profile and tap business suite or creator tools to find the promote option.

The important thing is to just get started. Instead of procrastinating by agonizing over the best time, you need to go ahead and post your first TikTok! It’s only by taking action and publishing your content that you can start to build followers and start refining your posting calendar. 

When you’re comfortable testing your posting schedule, you should take a look at the other ways to skyrocket your growth on TikTok. Make sure your strategy includes dueting and stitching videos, jumping on trends and challenges, choosing the best sounds, and more.