Worst Time to Post on TikTok: Tick Tock for TikTok

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Carolyn Howell

Last Updated: May 21, 2024

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TikTok, the popular social media platform, promotes visual content, which is why it is the King of videos. On TikTok, you can find various videos ranging from duets, stitches, lip syncs, influencing, ads, and product reviews. The list is unending, so the world participates in numerous TikTok challenges and trends. But with a global TikTok audience, content creators must know the worst time to post on TikTok.

This knowledge can affect your TikTok post performances either negatively or positively. So, to become a famous TikTok personality or brand, you must learn the importance of timing. But after learning this, you need to apply your knowledge to see positive results in your follower growth. Time waits for no one, so the earlier you learn to take advantage of it, the better. Hence, this article explains all you need to know about post timing.

An illustration of a clock showing TikTokers’ activities 24/7.

Is There a Universal Worst Time to Post on TikTok? Understanding Timing

If you own a TikTok account, you may have noticed that not all your posts have the same success rate. The general performance, including impressions, views, likes, comments, reposts, and engagement, discloses post success. Notably, all of these factors contribute to posts going viral on TikTok. Some posts may receive higher engagement than others, but have you ever wondered why?

Though different factors can affect the outcome of a post, an important one is the time at which you post. The time could mean the hour or day of the week. If you carefully observe, you’ll note that your target audience can’t be available on TikTok 24/7. They’ll take time off the app to perform other important activities. So don’t post when your niche’s audience is unavailable, as it’s a bad time.

So, since post timing is relative to niche and audience, there’s no universally worst time to publish a TikTok post. There are thousands of TikTok niches with various subcultures and communities around them. So, each community has different times of availability. 

For example, workers are mostly unavailable during the daytime as they must carry out responsibilities and handle tasks. But on the other hand, stay-at-home parents will be free in the daytime as their kids will be in school. Also, they would’ve handled most chores in the morning.

So, professional demographics influence availability similarly to audience, location, and other factors. Therefore, there is no accurate one-size-fits-all worst time to post. While it is possible to predict, on a large scale, the prediction may not be favorable for different individuals. So, rather than search for a universal time to avoid, discover the worst time to post based on your audience.

A picture of a social media user’s analytical insights.

How To Find Your Worst Posting Time: Gathering Information From Analytics

You can’t rely on information from others about the worst TikTok posting time as it’s relative. So, this means that you’ll have to do some digging yourself. Therefore, you must conduct observational analysis, experimentation, and research to find your worst posting time. However, the terminology shouldn’t scare you off, as you can do these things yourself.

So, for the observational analysis, you have to study the performance of your posts. You can access your post performance from your TikTok analytics dashboard. However, you can only access this dashboard if you have a professional TikTok account; otherwise, you’ll have to switch. So, from the dashboard, you can check the times your posts have the lowest performance.

But to ascertain the timing, you can use a TikTok post scheduler to publish a video at those times. After doing this, if the post-performance is still poor, you’ve discovered your worst time to post. Alternatively, you can learn more about your TikTok followers to help you decipher when to post.

You need to check your follower insights to learn about the people who subscribe to your TikTok videos. You can find your follower insights under TikTok analytics. From the insights, you can access your follower activity. This tab will show you a graph of their active times. Any hour outside their active time isn’t a good posting time for you.

So you can figure out the worst and even best times to post on TikTok. With this, you can optimize your timing to get more views and increase your TikTok engagement rate. This act will hone your chances of TikTok’s algorithm promoting your content.

High Social’s screenshot of TikTok’s analytics tab.

How to Access Your TikTok Analytics: Finding the Statistics

You must’ve learned that analytics are the keys to your information vault. If you can access your analytics, you’ll have detailed insight into consumer behavior. This valuable insight can help you channel your actions rightly. Aside from knowing when to post and when not to post, you can also formulate TikTok growth strategies.

For brands, it will help you monitor your TikTok marketing strategies to know which produces the best results. You’ll also be able to decipher which to modify before application. So, TikTok analytics is highly valuable to all TikTok users – brands, influencers, and creators alike. That’s why you must learn to access statistics from TikTok analytics. So, find below seven steps to guide you.

  1. Launch the TikTok app and tap the profile icon from the bottom menu.
  2. Tap the hamburger menu icon and select settings and privacy. 
  3. Open the manage accounts tab, switch from personal to professional TikTok account, then follow the prompts.
  4. If you don’t see the option to switch, you’re already in the professional mode. So, return to the hamburger menu and select creator tools.
  5. After opening the creator tools, tap the first section, which is the analytics option. Click “Get started” and turn on analytics.
  6. A new page will load with the overview, content, followers, and live options.
  7. Navigate to followers for detailed insight about your audience. But note that if it is your first analytic check, the information may take 1 to 2 days to process.

From here, you can check your net followers, their active times, and their demographics according to gender, age, and location. You can toggle between content, overview, and live for more information.

A close-up picture of TikTok’s mobile app icon on a phone screen..

What Are the Worst Days to Post on TikTok? Periods To Avoid

It’s impossible to ascertain the worst day or time for TikTok influencers, brands, and personalities to publish videos globally. As stated earlier, this results from differences in niche, target audience, location, industry, and other demographics. Nevertheless, studies considering about 100,000 posts have revealed the average worst days to post on TikTok.

You must note that the information may or may not tally with your personal worst times for posting. But whatever the case may be, knowing this will give you an idea of where to start. But don’t rely solely on this. It’s always best to study your followers yourself. 

Moreover, finding your worst time to post isn’t a one-time act. That’s because people and patterns change, so the result of your findings will not remain static. So, you’ll have to keep tracking your performance regularly. This act also implies regular strategy modification by optimizing your posting times. However, I’ve deduced from study results that the worst days to share posts on TikTok are Mondays, Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

But even on days that are optimal for posting, research has shown that there are times you should avoid. So, find below the worst times to post on individual days of the week.

  1. Monday– 11:00 am to 09:00 pm.
  2. Tuesday- 10:00 am to 12:00 pm.
  3. Wednesday- 09:00 am to 10:00 pm.
  4. Thursday- 01:00 pm to 06:00 pm.
  5. Friday-  04:00 pm to 04:00 am.
  6. Saturday- 12:00 pm to 06:00 pm.
  7. Sunday- 05:00 pm to 06:00 am.

You must do some conversions if you aren’t in the Eastern Standard Time Zone. You can perform this conversion with a time zone converter.

A picture of a countdown timer.

Can Timing Make or Mar Your Success on TikTok? Importance of Timing for Posts

You may wonder, “Why all the emphasis on the worst time to post on TikTok.” You should identify when to post for various reasons, as it is one crucial variable for becoming a TikTok sensation. So, post-timing can either make or mar you. If you’re curious, keep reading.

Visibility

One major purpose of being active on social media platforms like TikTok is making connections. But, it will be impossible to connect with anyone if you are not discoverable. Though partaking in trending challenges and using relevant hashtags can put you in the public’s face, that’s not all. Visibility starts with creating interesting content that appeals to a niche. For this, you need AI content creation tools.

But even if your video hits all the marks, one thing can still pull you down or lift you. I know you’re itching to ask what that factor is. It is the time you post. Are you posting your videos at the worst or right times? 

Your visibility will drop if you don’t time your posts to coincide with your followers’ active moments. Let me explain how this works. TikTok has almost 2 billion active users, of whom a large percentage are creators. That means people are constantly posting on the app. So, if you publish a video when your followers aren’t online, the possibility of them seeing it is low.

That’s because thousands of posts from other TikTokers will overshadow yours, thereby killing your visibility. But, if you target your follower’s active moments and schedule your posts, they’ll appear on their following feed immediately. So, how you optimize post timing influences your visibility on the app. And you should note that visibility is good, as you can benefit from it.

Engagement

Do you aspire to become a famous influencer on TikTok or a renowned brand? It all starts with building your engagement. Engagement is proof that your content is relatable. It also shows the fact that people accept you and your opinions. When people accept and relate to your posts, they interact with your content rather than view and ignore them.

TikTokers’ attention to your content also affects your video watch time. People are more likely to interact with videos they watch until the end. Also, having a good watch time is proof of your relevance on the app. So, after watching your dance videos or TikTok trend replication, they fill your comment section.

Also, they will like your videos and share your content, which leads to more visibility. A ripple effect of this is also more profile visits and clicks. So, engagement is very important, and that’s why almost everyone is striving to attain a good engagement rate. But your followers and viewers are the ones who interact with your post. That explains why fake TikTok followers are deadweights pulling you down.

But even with active followers, you have to monitor their activity. This monitoring will enable you to understand their schedule and available times. When you do, always schedule your posts so they meet your followers right as they settle into the app. If you do, you’ll be glad with the turnout of your engagement rate.

Virality

If you have scored visibility and engagement, with a little more effort at consistency, you’ll go viral on TikTok. Here is why. Though it’s mostly your followers who interact with your post, viewers can also contribute to the engagement you receive. Hence, random viewers who find your content relatable contribute to your visibility. Also, people who regularly follow your content as you release them have the potential to become future followers.

With more followers, your video will appear on more people’s feeds, who will likely promote your content. TikTok’s home page has two feeds: the For You Page and the Following feed. When you make a post, TikTok’s algorithm displays it in the following feed of your followers. That means your followers are prone to seeing your videos immediately when they switch to their following feeds. 

So, if you can get 1000 followers, all of them may be watching your video when it drops. You can easily go viral when they watch, repost, and interact with your video. But, this will not be possible if you release your video when your followers are busy with other activities.

Moreover, if you publish videos when your followers are online, there’s a higher chance of your video reaching the FYP. That’s because the algorithm curates videos for the FYP based on feedback. This feedback consists of your audience’s interaction rate.

A good engagement shows relevance, prompting the algorithm to notice and circulate your video. So, with a high appearance rate on TikTok users’ FYPs, you can say hello to virality. However, posting on TikTok at the wrong time evades all chances of this happening.

An image of someone holding a smartphone showing a TikTok user’s account with over 111,000 followers.

Follower Growth

You may think growing your followers is solely tied to organic growth strategies or buying followers from websites. But even though those strategies work wonders for follower count, they’re not the only things that help. When looking to increase the number of TikTok followers you have, consider post timing.

The time you post also influences your chances for growth on the app. If you post at the right time, the algorithm will share your post with your target audience through the FYP. But if you publish videos at the wrong time, the chances of your target seeing your videos reduce drastically. 

All TikTokers aspire to gain follower growth, as followers are the bane of every activity on the app. Who engages with content, shares videos, and gives recommendations? It’s the followers, so having lots of them heightens your chances of getting better opportunities. You may even get a deal for a paid advertisement from a follower’s recommendation. Your followers are also the ones to collaborate with on TikTok to increase your reach. 

There are many more reasons why having lots of followers is crucial to your success on TikTok. Therefore, you must consider the times you post to gain more subscribers. So, it’s not just enough to identify the worst posting times and avoid them. You also have to learn the best posting times and begin utilizing them.

A picture of a TikTok creator editing a video with CapCut before publishing.

Best Time to Post on TikTok? Influencing Your Possibility for Success

The best time to post on TikTok differs by audience, location & industry/ niche. But regardless, there are average best times to post on TikTok for optimal results. These are 06:00 to 10:00 am and 07:00 to 11:00 pm daily. But since Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays are the best posting days, you’ll get the most outstanding results following them. However, since some factors can affect timing, let’s analyze them below.

Discover Your Best Posting Time With Audience Analytics

The best times stated above are only to serve as a guide. Your audience is different from that of another creator. They consume content from different TikTok niches and have different activity patterns that distinguish their availability. So, you need to check your TikTok audience analytics using the steps I gave earlier.

From your followers’ analytics tab, you can check their activity. This act will disclose the hours your followers are most active in a graph format. So, with this information, you can find your best posting time.

An image of five wall clocks showing the time difference in different locations.

Right Time to Post by Location

You may have figured out the best time for your audience despite knowing the optimal posting times. But while that may work for your local audience, you’ll need to consider your international audience. TikTok has a global user base. The best times may differ for your audience depending on country and location. So, you’ll have to access your follower analytics using the steps I mentioned previously.

From the analytics tab, scroll down to follower insights to check the top countries of your followers. This information will help you discover if their time zones are different. If they are, convert your best posting time according to their zones and use a scheduler to meet these times. Doing this will help to increase your TikTok reach in various countries.

Best Time to Post According to Industry

Different categories of influencers have diverse followers; similarly, various industries attract different groups of people. Depending on their industry, some people are most active in the mornings. For example, followers of beauty influencers who imitate their morning routines will search for routine videos as they wake. 

Likewise, followers of fashion influencers are mostly active on weekends. So, consider your industry when seeking the best times to post. This knowledge will help you avoid the worst time to post on TikTok. But for more follower details, you can contact High Social for their audience targeting services. They’ll help you find the right audience for your niche so you can streamline your follower research as you grow. So, start growing your TikTok today!

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