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The best time to post on LinkedIn: how to find your own

By Miles Burke · Updated 9 October 2026 · 6 minute read

Why the published lists disagree

Search for the best time to post on LinkedIn and you will find confident answers that contradict each other. Each list is an average across a different set of accounts: different industries, different countries, different time zones. An average of a recruiter in London and a founder in Sydney describes neither of them.

Those lists are a reasonable place to start if you have never posted. Once you have a few months of your own posts, your own data is the better guide.

How to find your own best time

1. Export your analytics. On a computer, open Content analytics, choose the past 365 days and press Export. The spreadsheet lists your top posts with their publish dates and impressions. See the export guide.
2. Group your posts by day of the week. Add a column for the weekday of each post's publish date.
3. Take the median of each group. The median is the middle value when a group's posts are sorted by impressions. It describes a typical post, where an average would be dragged up by one hit.
4. Ignore groups that are too small. A day with two posts tells you about those two posts, not about the day. Wait until a group has five or so.
5. Repeat for time of day. Split your posts into morning, afternoon and evening and compare the medians in the same way.

Two different questions

There are two things you might mean by "best day", and they can have different answers:

• When is my audience looking? Add up your daily impressions for each day of the week. This shows when people are on LinkedIn seeing your posts, whenever those posts went out.
• Which publishing day works best? Compare the total impressions of posts by the day they were published. This shows which launch day gives a post the best run.

If the two agree, you have a clear answer. If they differ, try publishing the day before your audience is most active, so the post is already moving when they arrive.

Traps that skew the answer

• Viral posts. One breakout post can make its weekday look like the best by far. Using the median instead of the average takes care of this.
• Too few posts. If you always post on Tuesdays, you know nothing about Thursdays. You have to try other slots to learn anything about them.
• Scheduled posts. LinkedIn's export gives each post's publish date but not the time. A post's time can be worked out from its link, but for a scheduled post that gives the moment you scheduled it, not the moment it went live. Leave scheduled posts out of any time-of-day comparison.
• Time zones. Make sure you are reading times in your own time zone, and remember your audience may be in another one.
• Topic. If all your Monday posts are on your strongest subject, Monday will look good for a reason that has nothing to do with Monday.

How to test it

Pick the two slots that look most promising. For four to six weeks, alternate between them with similar kinds of post, then compare the medians again. A small, deliberate test tells you more than a year of posting whenever you happen to have time.

Common questions