The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn.

The best time to post on LinkedIn, on our numbers, is 12:00 to 17:00 UTC.

Posts in that window index 1.16 against 0.87 for every other hour, 14:00 UTC is the strongest single hour at 1.20, and Sunday afternoon is the strongest cell in the whole grid at 1.34.

That answers the search. The more useful finding is how little it is worth. When the same LinkedIn writer posts in the afternoon, they earn 1.07 of their other posts: seven points. On the same study, the first line, the format and the hashtags are the bigger levers.

So read what follows as a slot grid to plan around, not a reason to hold a good post for Sunday. It sits alongside how often brands should post, which is a separate decision.

How to read the numbers

Every figure here is an index. The learning set’s median post earns 320 reactions plus comments, and each band’s index is its own median against that.

A slot at 1.16 sits above the learning set’s median. A slot at 0.76 sits below it. A band needs at least twenty posts to be reported at all.

All times are UTC, because the authors post from many time zones. Convert to your own clock before you plan around any of it.

Three limits apply to every number below:

• There is no reach or impressions data, which LinkedIn does not publish.
• No band is claimed to cause anything.
• Every index is correlational across accounts of very different sizes.

Hour by hour

The day has one clear peak in the early afternoon and a long, flat low through the evening and night.

• 01:00 UTC: 0.53, the trough
• 07:00 UTC: 1.03, the first hour of the day above 1.00
• 09:00 UTC: 1.06
• 12:00 UTC: 1.12
• 13:00 UTC: 1.16
• 14:00 UTC: 1.20, the peak
• 15:00 UTC: 1.19
• 16:00 UTC: 1.05
• 17:00 UTC: 0.77

The fall at the end of the afternoon is steep, from 1.05 at 16:00 to 0.77 an hour later. No hour from 17:00 UTC through to 06:00 UTC reaches 1.00 again.

Taken as blocks, the evening indexes 0.76 and the night 0.75.

By day of the week

Days matter less than hours. The gap between the best and worst day is 13 points. The gap between the afternoon and the evening is 40.

• Monday: 1.06
• Sunday: 1.05
• Friday: 1.04
• Saturday: 1.02
• Tuesday: 0.99
• Wednesday: 0.98
• Thursday: 0.93

Saturday and Sunday both sit above 1.00. A weekday-only LinkedIn calendar leaves two above-median days unused.

Thursday is the weakest day on this measure.

The day and slot grid

The study splits each day into five UTC slots: 05:00 to 08:00, 08:00 to 12:00, 12:00 to 17:00, 17:00 to 22:00 and 22:00 to 05:00. Here are the cells, in that order.

• Monday: 1.02, 1.10, 1.16, 0.81, 0.82
• Tuesday: 0.98, 0.89, 1.15, 0.76, 0.80
• Wednesday: 0.97, 0.88, 1.12, 0.73, 0.79
• Thursday: 0.92, 0.87, 1.11, 0.68, 0.68
• Friday: 1.00, 1.05, 1.16, 0.76, 0.72
• Saturday: 0.90, 0.94, 1.24, 0.79, 0.73
• Sunday: 0.80, 0.92, 1.34, 0.89, 0.71

Three things stand out. Every day’s best slot is its afternoon. The two strongest cells are the weekend afternoons, Sunday at 1.34 and Saturday at 1.24. And the weakest cell is Thursday evening at 0.68, matched by Thursday overnight.

Mornings are mostly below 1.00. Monday at 1.10 and Friday at 1.05 are the only 08:00 to 12:00 slots above it.

Why the afternoon number is smaller than it looks

The raw index flatters the afternoon. The biggest accounts also post then, which inflates the raw number.

Per 1,000 followers, the picture flips. The afternoon earns 6.7 against 7.8 for other hours, which reads as 0.93 against 1.08.

The within-author lens compares each post with its own author’s median. On that lens, afternoon posts earn 1.07 of the same author’s other posts, and 84 of 141 authors do better in the afternoon. Where the raw lens and the within-author lens disagree, the within-author reading is the one to trust.

So the afternoon is a real edge, and a small one. That is why timing is advisory in NBK’s own rules.

What moves more than the clock

The same study measured the post itself, and it puts timing as a small lever next to the first line, the format and the hashtags.

• First line length: under 40 characters indexes 1.13, over 140 characters 0.76.
• First line words: four to seven words is the strongest band, at 1.11.
• First line shape: two or more sentences on the first line is the weakest shape per follower and on comments.
• First line opening: a story anchored in time indexes 1.17, a number 1.12, a question 0.88.
• Format: a link card indexes 0.51, and within the same author earns 0.52 of their image posts.
• Hashtags: posts with none index 1.05, one to three 0.82, more than three 0.84.

These are correlational too. But they are levers a team controls on every post, and they sit where the effort pays.

What we would do with this

On these numbers, here is how we would run a LinkedIn calendar.

1. Default new posts to the 12:00 to 17:00 UTC window, converted to your local time, because it costs nothing. LinkedIn lets you schedule a post anywhere from 10 minutes to three months ahead, so a post finished in the morning can be set to go out in the afternoon.
2. Stop scheduling into the evening and overnight unless there is a reason, since no hour from 17:00 UTC to 06:00 UTC reaches 1.00.
3. Use the weekend afternoon. Sunday and Saturday afternoons are the two strongest cells in the grid.
4. Never hold a finished post for a better slot. Seven points within the same author is not worth a week’s delay.
5. Put the hours you save into the first line, and test it before you test the clock.

If your LinkedIn output is regular but flat, the timing is rarely the constraint. A social audit finds which part of the system is.

How NBK thinks about timing

Timing feels like a setting you can change in a minute, which is why it gets asked about. The answer here is plain: there is a better window, and it is worth a little, not a lot.

Social that works runs like a system. The scheduling slot is one small part of it. The packaging, the format and the rhythm of a LinkedIn content system carry more of the weight.

Next step

If your team is posting on LinkedIn regularly and still feels stuck, NBK can help find the constraint in the system, starting with the first line rather than the clock.