Best time to post on TikTok: the averages, then your own Follower activity

Is Sunday at 9 a.m. the best time to post on TikTok?

Sunday at 9 a.m. had the highest median engagement rate of any slot in Buffer’s study, ahead of Monday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at 1 p.m. The table lists Buffer’s primary slot for each day of the week and what the study said about the day as a whole.

Saturday leads the days. Yet none of the top three single slots is on a Saturday: two are on Sunday and one is on Monday. A strong day and a strong hour are separate findings, so read the two columns apart.

Three details limit how far the table travels. Buffer measured engagement rate, and views were not the ranking metric, so a slot can rank high on a ratio while reaching fewer people. Buffer normalised time zones across accounts. And every post went out through Buffer’s scheduler, so the sample is accounts that plan their posts in a scheduling tool.

When are your own followers on TikTok?

Follower activity in TikTok Analytics describes your followers; Buffer’s table describes other people’s. A Tuesday at 6 a.m. that suits the median Buffer account may be the middle of the night for followers in another country. Buffer itself tells readers to check their own “Most active times” in TikTok Studio.

In the TikTok app, tap Profile, then the Menu button, then TikTok Studio, then Analytics. TikTok says the feature “is currently not available to everyone” and that data may be delayed depending on the post. Follower insights appear once an account has 100 followers. Below that line, use Buffer’s slot for the day.

Local time is the exception. TikTok shows Follower activity in your local time and every other Analytics figure in UTC. Take a creator in Chicago in October, 5 hours behind UTC, whose Follower activity peaks at 8 p.m. The post goes up at 8 p.m. local, and its views are dated from 01:00 UTC the next day.

Post at 8 p.m. anyway. The hour comes from Follower activity, which needs no conversion; only the post’s own figures move to the next UTC date. The guide to reading TikTok Analytics covers the routes into Analytics and which number answers which question.

A three-week slot test decides which hour to keep

A three-week test puts Buffer’s slot and your own peak against each other on your account. Change one thing only.

1. Week 1: post at Buffer’s primary slot for each posting day, read from the table above.
2. Week 2: post the same number of videos on the same days at your Follower activity peak.
3. Week 3: post at whichever slot won, to see whether the result holds.

Keep the format, the length and the number of posts steady across the three weeks. Three posts a week sits inside the 2 to 5 a week that Buffer recommends in a separate study of 11.4 million posts; the guide to how often to post on TikTok explains why that range holds the typical post steady.

Pick one metric and one reading age for every post: views 48 hours after posting, or average watch time at the same age. TikTok needs about 1 to 2 days to update Analytics, so a same-evening reading is incomplete. Write each number down when the post turns 48 hours old.

The week with the higher median post wins

Compare the middle post of each week. Here is the test with three posts a week and views read at 48 hours.

• Week 1, Buffer’s slots: 410, 520 and 380 views. In order: 380, 410, 520. Median 410.
• Week 2, Follower activity peak: 640, 590 and 300 views. In order: 300, 590, 640. Median 590.

Week 2 wins. The median gap is 590 minus 410, or 180 views at 48 hours. Week 3 goes out at the Follower activity peak, and if its median lands near 590 again, that slot becomes the default for those days.

The totals point the same way here, 1,310 against 1,530, and they are still the wrong number to compare. A total depends on how many posts went out, so a week with four posts beats a week with three on volume alone.

A total also lets one video decide the test. Had week 1’s 520 been picked up and reached 5,200, week 1 would total 5,990 and beat week 2 on volume. Its median would still be 410, and week 2 would still win.

Posting at the right hour does not fix a weak opening

A video posted at your Follower activity peak still has to hold the people who see it first. TikTok’s list of For You signals includes whether a viewer watches a video in full or skips it, and a skip can come in the first second. Go Viral’s Hook Score rates the first 3 seconds from 0 to 100, so the opening gets checked before the video is scheduled. Score first, schedule second.

Import the clip, read the score and the Engagement Heat Map, rework the first line if the score is low, and only then pick the slot from the test. If views stay low at every slot across all three weeks, the hour is probably the smaller problem. The checklist for TikTok videos that get no views covers the causes that come before timing.