Posting content on LinkedIn can be powerful tool that can help you grow your business, reach customer and close deals – but if you’re not posting at the right time, it might not be working as well as it could be.
If you’re not posting content on LinkedIn yet and this is part of your initial research, here’s a video I made that might help you with getting started:
The act of posting is fairly straightforward. There are two ways to share content on LinkedIn: you can either link to external content, like your own blog or YouTube video; or you can post natively to LinkedIn by writing a blog directly in LinkedIn Pulse, or uploading video directly to your feed. As with most social platforms, it seems that native content is preferred in the algorithm. Don’t worry too much about this, though. If your blog is on your website, it’s best to share it direct from there. Remember to never copy and paste your content into LinkedIn – this will hurt your SEO!
Ok, enough fluff, let’s get into it…
Best days and times to post on LinkedIn
A good starting point here is to get into the mind of your ideal customer, the end reader or viewer for your content. Think about when they are using LinkedIn and have the time to engage with what you post.
According to a study performed by Sprout Social, the best days to post are Tuesdays to Thursday, with the highest engagement coming between 10am and noon:
This makes sense in context. On a Monday, people are usually getting back into the week, catching up with the weekend’s correspondence and kicking off their projects for the following days. On a Friday, people are wrapping up their work (or they have one eye on the weekend!).
Where this becomes a little more complicated, is when you factor in time zones. The beauty of social media is that you can reach customers all around the world. It may even be the case that a large portion of your users are based in another country. For example, most Lix users live in the USA, whereas we’re in the UK. If I post content at 10am UK time, it might be 4am – 6am for my US audience. It’s better for to me to post at the tail-end of the high engagement, at say 2-3pm, so that I can maximise my engagement in the both the UK and the US at the same time.
If you’re not always available to post content at these times, check out this short piece I wrote on LinkedIn automation tools and content scheduling – this can help you to prep your work and have it post at at time that suits you.
In short – the key to finding the best time to post on LinkedIn, is to think like your customers! Put yourself in their shoes and adjust for time zones. I hope that I’ve been able to give you some insight into when it’s best to post on LinkedIn. I know that everyone has their own schedule, but if you can stick to these guidelines, your posts will likely reach a wider audience and generate more engagement than they would otherwise.