Best time to post on Facebook on Monday

Ask the three big Facebook studies about Monday and you get a lunch hour, a late afternoon and an evening. Sprout Social’s Monday peak is 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. Hootsuite’s best Monday time is 5 p.m. Buffer ranks 9 p.m. first, then 10 p.m. and 7 p.m. No hour is shared by any two of them. On Tuesday, by contrast, Sprout Social and Buffer at least meet at 7 p.m.

What makes Monday odd is how it bends Buffer’s and Hootsuite’s patterns. Hootsuite’s best time on every other day falls between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m.; on Monday it moves to 5 p.m. Buffer’s top slot on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday sits between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.; on Monday it jumps to 9 p.m., and even its third Monday pick, 7 p.m., is an evening hour.

Neither study says why, so treat it as a pattern to check rather than a rule. The practical lesson is narrow but useful: if your Page posts at 8 a.m. every weekday out of habit, Monday is the day to try something later.

Sprout Social’s industry rows tell a different story from its headline. For most sectors the Monday window opens in the morning, well before the overall 12 p.m. peak, while Hootsuite gives Monday slots to only three sectors.

Education is the one sector where both studies name a Monday time, and even there they sit side by side rather than overlapping: Sprout Social’s window ends at 12 p.m. and Hootsuite’s starts at 1 p.m.

Sprout Social’s guide describes where to look in Meta Business Suite: select your Page, open Planner, create a post and choose Schedule, then pick Active times to see when your followers were most active. If that option isn’t offered for your Page, your post history is the fallback.

For the history check, pull your last eight to ten Monday posts, note the hour each went out and its reach three days later, and see whether midday, late-afternoon or evening posts did best. A Page that always posts at the same Monday hour has nothing to compare yet, which is the reason to run the test below. Read every hour in your followers’ time zone: all three studies report local time.

1. Weeks 1 and 4: post at 12 p.m., inside Sprout Social’s Monday peak.
2. Weeks 2 and 5: post at 5 p.m., Hootsuite’s Monday pick.
3. Weeks 3 and 6: post at 9 p.m., Buffer’s first choice.
4. Keep the type of post the same each week, and three days later record reactions, comments and shares per person reached.

Skip any Monday that is a public holiday where most of your followers live, and add a week at the end instead. If two slots finish close together, keep the one where someone can answer comments soonest.

Tip: A 9 p.m. Monday post collects its comments late in the evening. Schedule it, then make answering them the first job on Tuesday morning.