The Top 22 Social Media Monitoring Tools 2026

As generative AI reshapes how people research, learn, and make decisions, a new discipline is emerging: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Just as SEO helped brands get discovered on Google, GEO ensures they appear accurately and positively within AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot. With millions of consumers now turning to generative engines instead of search engines, GEO is fast becoming essential for marketing and PR professionals looking to influence how their brand shows up in this new discovery layer, where conversations, not clicks, determine visibility.

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Why Should Marketing & Insights Teams Care About GEO?

How Does GEO Work? Key Mechanisms & Signals

What's the Difference Between GEO and SEO?

Increase Your GEO Readiness with Meltwater

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of ensuring that AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Llama, etc., provide accurate, positive, and up-to-date information about your brand when users ask questions. These platforms are referred to as Generative Engines, Answer Engines, or Large Language Models (LLMs). They are increasingly used by consumers to research purchases and make decisions.

GEO is a way of making sure that AI platforms give people the right information about a company’s brand and products. 

For example, if a person asks ChatGPT: “What is a good family car for camping trips?” then the auto manufacturers would want ChatGPT to suggest their SUV models, and list the benefits. To make sure that happens, the auto brands need to use GEO.

GEO ensures your brand shows up correctly within these AI-generated responses.

The practice of GEO involves several steps, but it is mostly focused on creating, structuring, and publishing content in the best way to influence the responses given by AI Generative Engines. 

In this article we’ll go into the detail of how GEO works, why it’s important, and how you can use it to make sure your brand is featured positively in AI platforms.

Sometimes, generative engine optimization (GEO) is referred to as answer engine optimization (AEO). Learn more about the differences and similarities of GEO and AEO, and take a look at the best AEO tools.

For a long time marketers have been able to rely on the fact that consumers almost exclusively use Google to research buying decisions. So they have been able to use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to ensure their brand’s website appears in the organic search results, or use paid search advertising to buy ads on relevant search results. 

This is a highly effective way of targeting the right audience at the right time. But now things are changing.

LLMs aren't just another channel. They sit on top of this ecosystem. They synthesize everything into a single conversation.

Allie Konchar, Partner & Chief Client Officer, Omniscient

Changing user behavior: AI + conversational search

Increasingly, consumers are using tools like ChatGPT to research their buying decisions. Data from Meltwater’s 2026 Global Digital Report shows that ChatGPT.com is now the fifth most visited website on the web.

While search engines remain popular, many search queries now produce an AI generated summary that often provide enough information to divert users away from clicking through to websites, because their question has already been answered. McKinsey reports that around half of all Google search queries already produce AI generated summaries, and that number is increasing all the time. 

With conventional web search, consumers are performing research manually, trying to find trustworthy sources and sifting through information to reach the answers they seek. But with Generative Engines, the AI is performing the research automatically, using its existing base knowledge alongside supplemental information pulled from more recent online sources. A search engine shows users where to find answers, while a Generative Engine just gives them the answer. 

For marketers, the key takeaway is that few top-of-funnel consumers are visiting your website, because during the awareness phase their information needs are being met by Generative Engines. This makes it more difficult to move them down into the consideration phase. 

TIP: For more data around growing AI usage and online consumer behavior, download our 2026 Global Digital Report, featuring nearly 700 pages statistics to help inform your GEO strategies next year.

You already know that everybody is talking about AI, and all of your competitors are having the same discussions as you about what it means for their marketing strategy. Those who move decisively to implement GEO, ensuring their brands are represented clearly and positively in Generative Engines, will capture the largest share of those consumers who start their buying journey with an AI query. 

Those who ignore GEO will lose ground, as growing numbers of consumers turn from search engines to Generative Engines, the size of the audiences that can be reached through conventional search marketing will decrease. 

How do generative engines (LLMs) surface content?

It’s important to understand that while Generative Engines are based on similar technology, they all work a little differently. Broadly speaking they all use two different sources of knowledge to provide an answer to a query: 

<table class="table-primary alternate-color">
  <caption>How Generative Engines (LLMs) Surface Content</caption>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Generative Engine</th>
      <th>Primary Retrieval Method</th>
      <th>Sources Most Often Cited</th>
      <th>Sources Less Likely to Be Cited</th>
      <th>Notes on Behavior</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td>ChatGPT</td>
      <td>Bing search + internal training data</td>
      <td>Reuters, AP News, Wikipedia, Encyclopedic sources</td>
      <td>Social media platforms (X/Twitter, Instagram)</td>
      <td>Prefers authoritative, neutral, structured sources with high trust signals.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Google Gemini</td>
      <td>Google Search + YouTube + Knowledge Graph</td>
      <td>Reddit, YouTube, Google-indexed blogs</td>
      <td>X/Twitter</td>
      <td>Strongly favors user-generated content, community threads, and Google-owned properties.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Perplexity</td>
      <td>Real-time web crawling + citation-first retrieval</td>
      <td>News publishers, reputable blogs, research papers</td>
      <td>Low-trust UGC</td>
      <td>Most transparent engine — always cites sources and updates in real time.</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td>Claude</td>
      <td>Internal training data + selected retrieval</td>
      <td>Academic sources, reputable news, long-form articles</td>
      <td>Short-form social media</td>
      <td>Prefers long-form text and well-structured explanatory content.</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

Training Data: All LLMs begin by being trained on a huge volume of existing content and data — we’re talking about dozens of terabytes (a terabyte is 1,000Gb). This training data comes from a wide variety of sources (including your website), and gives the LLM its base knowledge about the world. The LLM does not have any knowledge of anything that happened after its initial training. 

Live Web Search: To overcome the knowledge cut-off problem, the training data is supplemented with fresh information gathered from the internet. If the Generative Engine thinks that a user’s query would benefit from more up to date information than it already has, it fetches new content from trusted online sources and works that into its response. Google uses its own search engine to find fresh information, while ChatGPT uses various sources, including Microsoft Bing.

It’s also important to note that AI does not quote any of this content verbatim in its responses. Much like a human, it uses the information it has learned to inform its own answer, and that can include information from various sources, including the press, competitors, consumer reviews. So don’t expect it to always be on-message!

Another key point is that unlike a search engine, an LLM does not have an index of content which it searches to find answers. It would be impossible to search ChatGPT for all mentions of your brand — that’s simply not how it works. 

An LLM is more similar to a human brain, in that it has a lot of knowledge stored in patterns and relationships between words and concepts. It is extremely difficult, verging on impossible, to examine and understand the detail of an LLM’s learned knowledge because of the sheer scale and complexity; this is a challenge referred to as Black Box AI. 

But we do understand how Generative Engines work at a high level, and we can analyze the kind of responses they produce for relevant queries, which gives us insight into how we should optimize our content for increased visibility.

Tip: Learn more about the citation layer.

What content features improve GEO-visibility?

Bear in mind that when you’re optimizing content for Generative Engines, the goal is to write copy that is easier for AI to digest and incorporate into its responses.

Clarity: Avoid overly elaborate language. Do not use corporate-jargon. Keep it simple, professional, and to the point. Leave no room for ambiguity. 

Authority: Wherever possible back up your statements with data from reputable sources, quotes from experts or industry leaders, and reference-able proof points. 

Structure: Organize your pages well with clear titles, headings, and subheadings. Use heading tags (H1, H2, etc) correctly to specify the hierarchy of your content. 

Recency: AI platforms look for more recent information from trusted sources to supplement their base knowledge, so in both owned and earned media, aim to publish fresh content recently.

In many respects GEO shares principles with good SEO practice. If you write consistently high quality content which addresses the needs of your target audience, and structure it correctly on well designed, standards compliant web pages, you will succeed.

First you need to understand your starting point. Meltwater’s GenAI Lens is a tool that gives brands insight into how they are discussed by all major Generative Engines, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, and Deepseek. 

With GenAI Lens you’ll be able to understand how your brand is already featured in LLMs, what source websites are used in those responses, and whether outdated or inaccurate information is being used. 

We know that LLMs pull content from the web, which they use to inform their responses. So whatever is said about your brand online will significantly affect how Generative Engines talk about your company. 

Start with your own website, this is the first place LLMs will look for information about your organization. But also focus on trusted, high authority third party sites like the mainstream news and specialist media within your industry, because these are the kinds of sources that LLMs will use. GenAI Lens can show you which websites the leading LLMS use to source information about your brand. 

Once you have a comprehensive audit of how your brand is currently portrayed online, you can perform a gap analysis against your desired messaging, and build a plan for how to reach that objective.

Tip: AI brand monitoring, AI media monitoring, and LLM monitoring will help you understand your online footprint. Learn how to track your LLM visibility and how to track LLM brand mentions.

An important difference between GEO and SEO is understanding how people search differently when using Generative Engines. Users interact conversationally with AI, and are likely to ask more complex questions in natural language, compared to simple keywords or short queries in a search engine. So it’s useful to get an idea of what kind of questions people will ask about your brand or industry, to help plan your GEO content.

Tip: Learn more about AI visibility for retail brands.

Unlike search engines, at present the leading Generative Engines do not share data on popular user queries, so it’s not easy to find out exactly what people are asking about your business. But you can look at popular keyword searches associated with your brand, and brainstorm the most likely questions people will ask Generative Engines. 

You can also use a social listening platform, like Meltwater Explore+ to analyze social media conversations around your brand and industry, to gain insight into common questions. Once you have mapped out all of the most likely questions people might ask, you can start creating content that answers those questions.

Tip: Learn how to connect social listening with generative engine optimization. 

Conventional SEO was built around search queries but GEO requires thinking in concepts, context, and authority — you need to focus on the intent of the query, rather than simply trying to match keywords. 

LLMs prioritize sources that provide comprehensive, well-structured, and contextually rich content. Focus your content strategy on:

Educational depth: Long-form resources that answer questions end-to-end. Publish explainers, FAQs, and data-backed insights that answer “how” and “why.”

Credibility signals: Citations, quotes, and data from reputable sources (analyst studies, thought leadership, or trusted media).

Rich media: Generative Engines pull information from videos and images as well as text content, so make use of varied content formats. 

Consistency across channels: LLMs learn from media, social, and owned content together; ensure your brand narratives are aligned across them.

The key thing is to ensure that your content is genuinely helpful in answering those questions you mapped out. If your content is too focused on sales messages, it’s less likely to be used by the LLMs.

TIP: Discover innovative AI-generated content examples to enhance your digital strategy.

You can optimize the content published on your website and owned channels, but LLMs also source information from trusted third party websites. That means digital PR has a key role to play in ensuring your brand is featured in high authority earned media, including news features, expert comment from your spokespeople, product reviews, and any other kind of brand story traditionally generated through a media relations campaign.

Tip: Learn more about the importance of earned media for GEO and about PR Pitch GEO optimization.

The tricky part is that unlike advertising, which can tell exciting and attention grabbing stories, PR professionals are limited to working only with the facts. But while you cannot always control the outcome of media outreach activity, ensuring that PR and GEO are aligned will help increase the volume of third party sources that feature the right messaging.

Tip: Learn how GEO is reshaping PR strategies.

Meltwater’s GenAI Lens gives you the ability to track your GEO performance over time, so you can understand whether your strategy is working well and spot areas where you need to improve. The tool provides visualizations that show brand sentiment, emotion, key phrases, people, products and things mentioned, alongside citations.

Armed with this information you can identify gaps in your GEO strategy where you might need to create more or better content. You can also discover which third party sources have the greatest impact on your GEO performance, and use that information to optimize PR outreach to focus on the most important media. 

Like SEO, this is a process of constant iteration and improvement. GEO should not be seen as a one-off project that will generate positive results in perpetuity, but rather an ongoing activity that needs to be integrated with the broader marketing mix.

Tip: Learn How to Measure PR Performance Across LLMs and Generative Search, and understand how to report on LLM visibility.

Which Media Sources to Prioritize for GEO

When an LLM processes a user query, it can often detect that the response might require more recent information than it has access to in its original training data. In that situation it will look online for more up to date content that will help it to form a more accurate answer, but where exactly do Generative Engines look for this information?

At Meltwater we used GenAI Lens to research which content sources the leading AI platforms were most likely to reference in their responses, and there were distinct differences between them all:

Open AI ChatGPT: Heavily favors text-based news and newswires (Reuters, AP, PR Newswire) and reference sites (Wikipedia). Much less likely to cite social media and UGC. 

Google Gemini: Leans towards high quality UGC from sites like Reddit and YouTube, as well as other online sources within the Google ecosystem. Does not index X/Twitter content. 

Google Search AI Overviews: Highly focused on UGC from Reddit and YouTube, as well as Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn. 

xAI Grok: Strongly skewed towards conversational UGC from X and Reddit. Less likely to cite traditional reference sources like Wikipedia, YouTube or academic sites. 

Unlike SEO, where most practitioners were happy to optimize only for Google, in GEO we have to consider the nuances of several different platforms; at the very least ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. In short, it’s good practice to ensure you have up to date content propagated across a wide range of platforms where LLMs might look for supplemental information.  

In terms of which online sources are most likely to be referenced overall, we looked at several categories and charted the most frequently cited websites:

<ul class="medium">
	<li><b>Social Media & UGC</b></li>
    <ul>
		<li>reddit.com: 43.1%</li>
		<li>youtube.com: 17.9%</li>
        <li>facebook.com: 11.1%</li>
		<li>linkedin.com: 9.2%</li>
        <li>quora.com: 5.6%</li>
	</ul>
	<li><b>Consumer Reviews</b></li>
	<ul>
		<li>glassdoor.com: 21.6%</li>
		<li>indeed.com: 20.6%</li>
        <li>trustpilot.com: 15.7%</li>
		<li>bbb.org: 9.9%</li>
        <li>yelp.com: 8.0%</li>
	</ul>
	<li><b>Travel</b></li>
    <ul>
		<li>tripadvisor.com: 83.2%</li>
		<li>expedia.com: 10.0%</li>
        <li>booking.com: 6.8%</li>
	</ul>
	<li><b>News & Media</b></li>	
    <ul>
		<li>yahoo.com: 26.5%</li>
		<li>prnewswire.com: 10.8%</li>
        <li>reuters.com: 9.0%</li>
		<li>forbes.com: 6.7%</li>
        <li>usnews.com: 6.7%</li>
	</ul>
    <li><b>Academic & Science</b></li>	
    <ul>
		<li>nih.gov: 53.6%</li>
		<li>researchgate.net: 14.5%</li>
        <li>sciencedirect.com: 10.0%</li>
		<li>jhu.edu: 7.5%</li>
        <li>cdc.gov: 5.8%</li>
	</ul>
    <li><b>Market Research & Consulting</b></li>	
    <ul>
		<li>statista.com: 18.8%</li>
		<li>mordorintelligence.com: 16.3%</li>
        <li>gartner.com: 14.9%</li>
		<li>mckinsey.com: 13.5%</li>
        <li>cbinsights.com: 13.0%</li>
	</ul>
    <li><b>Business & Financial</b></li>	
    <ul>
		<li>investing.com: 14.1%</li>
		<li>morningstar.com: 13.2%</li>
        <li>nasdaq.com: 11.4%</li>
		<li>nerdwallet.com: 10.4%</li>
        <li>seekingalpha.com: 8.8%</li>
	</ul>
    <li><b>Government & Public Sector</b></li>	
    <ul>
		<li>weforum.org: 20.6%</li>
		<li>europa.eu: 17.8%</li>
        <li>canada.ca: 12.7%</li>
		<li>imf.org: 11.5%</li>
        <li>sec.gov: 10.1%</li>
	</ul>
</ul>

Many teams focus on keywords, backlinks, and meta tags, but LLMs prioritize context, authority, and relevance. GEO requires content that answers full questions with clear, verifiable information, not keyword stuffing or link chasing.

2. Ignoring source credibility and transparency

AI models reward trustworthy, well-cited content. Publishing unverified claims, outdated statistics, or missing citations can lower visibility or lead to inaccurate AI summaries of your brand. Always include reputable data sources, authorship, and dates.

Tip: Learn more about the uncanny valley of AI writing.

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)? & How to Do It

Become a certified influencer marketing professional!

In our industry, we know that learning never ends. Social media trends come and go, and it’s important to ensure that we stay ahead of the game. That doesn’t just require staying on top of the latest industry updates, but it means maintaining a consistent education of best practices to ensure that your skillset is a competitor.

While many of us are still living the remote-work life, 2024 is a great year for online learning. Such programs are a great way to ensure that you stay on top of the game, even though you may not physically be in it.

To help give you a competitive advantage, we compiled a list of influencer marketing courses and certificate programs every influencer marketing expert should consider enrolling in.

We'll take a look at 5 influencer marketing certificate programs you should know about:

Meltwater: Influencer Marketing Industry Certification

Udemy: Create Influencer Marketing Campaigns That Grow Your Brand And Increase Your ROI

Meltwater: Learn How To Find, Vet, Manage, and Measure Influencers

Meltwater: Advanced Recruiting, Collaborating, Payments, and More

Coursera: Influencer Marketing Strategy Course

All successful influencer campaigns are based on successful strategies. In this course, you will learn influencer marketing fundamentals in order to effectively launch winning campaigns. After completing the course, you will have a complex knowledge of influencer marketing that will allow you to identify where influencer marketing fits into your funnel, best practices for budgets, tools for successfully identifying relevant influencers, how to measure the impact of your campaigns, and much more! 

Introduction to Social Influencer Marketing

Sign up for the course: Meltwater Influencer Marketing Industry Certification

Up your influencer marketing knowledge with this thorough 7-part course covering the ins and outs of influencer marketing. Ensuring that marketers get the most bang for their buck, and learn how to run influencer campaigns with strong ROI.

Part 5: Partnerships and Collaboration Strategies

Part 6: Measuring Your Influencer Campaign

Sign up for the course: "Create Influencer Marketing Campaigns That Grow Your Brand And Increase Your ROI – Don’t Pay-And-Pray"

The Meltwater influencer marketing solution is one of the best influencer marketing platforms, so why not take a course on all the ways you can leverage it for your influencer marketing strategy. Brought to you by Meltwater, this course will give you all the foundations you need to run successful campaigns with the tool.

Finding potential influencers to work with

Managing your influencer marketing campaign (influencer management)

Measuring your influencer campaign performance

Sign up for the course: Learn How To Find, Vet, Manage, and Measure Influencers

Once you receive the foundational knowledge on leveraging Meltwater for your influencer marketing strategy, it’s time to enroll in the advanced course. With this, you will learn how to use the advanced features of Meltwater's social influencer platform including recruiting, managing influencer contracts, processing influencer payments, integrations, custom scoring, and workspaces. This is the ultimate course for learning how to become a Meltwater Power User!

Introduction to Influencer Marketing with Meltwater: Advanced

Sign up for the course: Advanced Recruiting, Collaborating, Payments, and More

Offered by Rutgers University, this college-level course lets you learn the fundamentals of building a successful influencer marketing strategy. The course covers everything from the difference from B2B to B2C strategy to determining relevant influencer marketing KPIs that will properly measure your campaign success. And, in order to complete the course, you must submit an influencer marketing strategy pitch, allowing you to feel confident in the skills you’ve acquired.

Top Influencer Marketing Certificates To Add To Your LinkedIn

When is the best time to post on social media?

Every social media manager wants an answer to this question! Social media posting times can influence who sees your post and the engagement rate on your social posts, so knowing when to post plays a part in the success of any social media management strategy.

So, what is the right publishing time to ensure maximum visibility and impact on your followers?

The answer isn't as simple as 6:00 p.m. on Sunday (despite what people may think!). The best times to post on Facebook, LinkedIn & Co. will depend on when your followers are online and when they use specific social channels. That might not be the answer you were looking for, but there are ways to figure out social media peak times—the time and days when your audience is online and engaging with your content. 

We'll show you how to determine them—plus share a few of the social media posting times that studies suggest as optimal times to post.

This infographic includes some quick tips that can help you organize your content calendar in order for your posts to get more exposure. 

https://meltwater-experience.pages.dev/experience-social-media-infographics/

When Is the Best Time to Post on Social Media?*

What Is the Best Time to Post on Facebook for Maximum Exposure?

What Is the Best Time to Post on Instagram?

What Is the Best Time to Post on Twitter / X?

What Is the Best Time to Post on LinkedIn?

What Is the Best Time to Release a YouTube Video?

How to Find the Best Times to Post on Social Media for Your Brand

Best Times to Post on Social Media are Impacted by Time Zones

While peak times vary across the different social media platforms, the afternoon appears to be a popular time to post to social media. Content shared on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays also seems to outperform content shared on other days of the week.

Best time to post on Facebook: Tuesday-Friday from 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.

Best time to post on Instagram: Wednesday & Thursday from 5 a.m., 11 a.m., and 2 p.m. - 3 p.m.

Best time to post on Twitter: Wednesday and Friday from 8 a.m. - 10 a.m.

Best time to post on LinkedIn: Wednesday and Thursday from 7 a.m.–8 a.m., 12 p.m., and 5 p.m.-6 p.m.

Best time to post on YouTube: Thursday & Friday from 12 p.m.-3 p.m.

Best time to post on TikTok: Tuesday & Thursday from 9 a.m.-12 a.m.

*These posting times will vary based on your specific audience.

The best time to post on Facebook: 9 a.m. - 1 p.m.

The best day of the week to post on Facebook: Wednesday

If you want to find out when you should be scheduling your content, Facebook now provides easy-to-use analytics tools. These tools allow you to track the behavior of our page’s visitors to determine the Facebook peak times based on your specific audience.

When scheduling your content, you'll want to test out different times. These times could vary based on who you are trying to reach. Your Facebook marketing strategy may need to go through a few rounds of trial and error before you feel like you’re synching up with your audience and optimizing your posts. Here are some things to try:

Test #1: For one week, share Facebook content only on your top two or three most visited days. Then compare the engagement rates with your historical records. Does it help to share content only on these high-audience days? If not, try again.

As a follow-up, you could then experiment by posting the day before one of these peak days, as Facebook posts tend to generate engagement anywhere between a few hours to a day later. Again, compare results and make adjustments.

The next step is to test out the best time of the day to post to Facebook. 

Test #2: Test publishing your content during Facebook peak times. Then, test publishing a few hours before the peak. Compare results.

Remember that these times are unique to your specific fan base and will probably fluctuate. They may even change from month to month—so check back often, test, and keep optimizing. 

Within Facebook, below “When Your Fans Are Online,” under the heading “All Posts Published,” you’ll find posts from the past three months listed in chronological order. You can click on the inverted arrow to the very right above the chart to view these by various metrics.

Post Clicks/Likes, Comments, and Shares: This allows you to see which content received the most overall interaction. This ranking includes “visible” forms of interaction that your audience can also keep track of (likes, comments, shares) because Facebook shows them next to each post. It also includes “behind the scenes” forms of engagement, such as clicking on links, hashtags, and photos embedded in your post.

Likes, Comments & Shares: Remove “Post clicks” to see “visible” engagement.

Post Hides, Hides of All Posts, Reports of Spam, and Unlikes of Page: See what content led to negative interactions, or actions that caused you to lose audience members and brand visibility.

Engagement Rate: Rank content by the percentage of people who saw a post and liked, shared, clicked or commented on it. Keep an eye out for content that reached fewer people but had a high level of audience engagement. You may want to promote similar posts in the future to a wider audience.

By analyzing these metrics, you will be able to maximize your Facebook presence and deliver content that your audience wants to see. Coupled with what you've discovered about the best times to post on Facebook, you can now ensure that you're giving your audience what they want when they want it.

The best time to post on Instagram: 5 a.m., 11 a.m., and 2 p.m.-3 p.m.

The best day of the week to post on Instagram: Thursday

As one of the platforms that has more than 1 billion users, Instagram peak times are similar to Facebook. Active Instagram followers tend to check in on platforms in the morning during the week, while midday provides the perfect moment to check in again during lunch hour. By the late afternoon, when energy levels are low, Instagram can provide a great break before followers call it a day. 

While the times and days suggested above only provide a starting point for small businesses new to social networks, establishing a 1 will be crucial to targeting your followers with the content that they want to see. 

Tip: Are you posting from Australia? Check out the best times to post on Instagram in Australia. If you are posting from South Africa, take a look at the best time to post on Instagram in South Africa.

Consider How the Instagram Algorithm Influences Post Reach

The best time to post on Instagram matters, but so does the Instagram algorithm which will affect what your followers will see on their feeds. Because Instagram's algorithm will evaluate your content's engagement levels to determine whether or not it should be shown to your followers, you'll need to make sure the content you are posting is like-worthy.

Instagram's algorithm prioritizes content from accounts you've previously engaged with, so even if you are posting new content all of the time, your followers may not see any of it, if they haven't engaged with you previously.

The best time to post on Twitter / X: 9 a.m.

The best day of the week to post on Twitter / X: Wednesday and Friday from 9 a.m.

If you're looking to engage and connect with your audience directly, X, formerly known as Twitter, will be your social network of choice. But you'll want to ensure that you're publishing posts according to Twitter peak hours to maximize engagement and get your follower's attention. As one of the few platforms that still show content to users in chronological order, timeliness is critical on Twitter if you don't want your content to get lost in the noise. 

Publishing at Twitter peak hours increases the chances of your followers seeing your post as well as other people in your target audience, even if they don't follow you. You'll achieve this additional reach if people retweet, comment or like your post because then that post will be shown to their followers. 

You'll also boost your audience reach if you include hashtags in your post, but be sure to include no more than two hashtags.

Staying on top of your conversations on X, formerly known as Twitter, is much easier when you have a social listening tool to engage your followers authentically.

The best time to post on LinkedIn: 7 a.m. –8 a.m., 12 p.m. then 5 p.m.-6 p.m.

The best day of the week to post on LinkedIn: Wednesday & Thursday

LinkedIn works a little differently than the rest, mainly because of the niche audience that it attracts. For the most part, LinkedIn has a fan base of professionals seeking networking opportunities within their own industry and guidance on career growth. Therefore, based on several studies, users tend to be on the platform the most during working hours.

The good news for social media managers is that posting times matter considerably less on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn algorithm emphasizes content that drives engagement, which is why it's not uncommon to see a post from several weeks ago at the top of your news feed. However, that does put a little more pressure on the content marketers reading this to create more high-quality content that attracts a B2B audience.

For B2B companies, LinkedIn presents itself as an ideal channel if you are looking to attract leads through organic posts. Using B2B marketing on LinkedIn means thinking outside of the box and tailoring your content to center around thought leadership pieces. 

The best time to post on YouTube: 12 p.m.-3 p.m.

The best day of the week to post on YouTube: Thursday & Friday

Given YouTube's reach and the heightened demand for video content, YouTube should be a part of any marketing strategy.

When you post on this platform, the time you post isn't as important as the discoverability of the content. Unless you have a number of subscribers to your branded channel, users of the platform are unlikely to know when you've uploaded new content. So, make sure your viewers "smash the subscribe button below" when they watch your content.

The best time to post to YouTube is towards the weekend (especially Thursdays and Fridays) as subscribers are more likely to watch videos throughout the weekend.

While publishing a YouTube video on a certain day will impact views, having your ads shown on certain days will also impact when subscribers see your ads.

The best time to post on TikTok:  9 a.m. - 12 a.m.

The best day of the week to post on TikTok: Thursday & Friday

As the new social media channel on the block, TikTok now has over 700 million active users and is growing among Generation Z. The platform is known for setting trends and social media challenges. 

One thing to remember about TikTok is that it is a channel where one size may not fit all. The creators and influencers you find on TikTok are different, and their audiences have different locations and demographics that play into when is the right time to post. 

However, TikTok does provide analytics to help you find out when your followers are most active on the platform. Make sure that you have a Pro Account to access TikTok's analytics and find the insights into when your audience is active and most engaged.

Tip: We have a more in-depth blog talking about all the best times to post on TikTok. Check out our TikTok guide to understand how you can leverage this social channel for your marketing efforts and take a look at these TikTok scheduling tools to automate your posting process.

Here are a few tips which will help you determine the best time to post a blog, video & other content to efficiently promote your brand on social media.  

What does your audience's typical day look like? Whether they are working or in school will impact when they look at their social media profiles. For example, if your target audience works regular 9-5 jobs, they'll be looking at social media sites during their lunch breaks, while commuting, and over the weekend. 

Whereas, if your audience is university students, chances are they will be checking social media at different times and days of the week. Defining your buyer personas is the first step toward optimizing your social media posting times.

2. Look at What Time Your Posts Get the Most Engagement

Looking at what times and days your posts are currently getting the most engagement is an easy way to determine the peak social media times that work best for your brand. 

For Twitter, go into ‘Twitter Analytics’ and sort by ‘Top Tweets.' Here, you can then look at your top tweets and analyze which time and day you see the most engagement.

For Facebook, go into ‘Insights’, to look at which day of the week you get the most reach and likes.

On Instagram, if you have a business profile, you can look at the Instagram analytics feature. In the screenshot below, you can see which weekdays have received the most interactions & the highest reach.

One way to choose the best times to post on social media is with a social media engagement tool. ViralPost is a feature within Meltwater Engage that looks at your most active & influential users on social media channels, and when they are engaging the most. It then recommends the best social media posting times to upload your content. 

Best Times to Post on Social Media in 2024 [Infographic]

Over the past twelve months, the world’s digital behaviours have shown some of the most profound changes we’ve seen in years, even compared with “the pandemic years”.

The latest research reveals that these behaviours are evolving in a number of unexpected ways, too.

Fortunately however, our huge new Digital 2023 Global Overview Report – produced in partnership with Meltwater and We Are Social – has all the data and insights you need to make sense of the latest trends.

Tip: Take a look at the full Global Digital Report 2023, The Global State of Digital in April 2023, The Global State of Digital in July 2023, and the Digital 2023 October Global Statshot Report.

Top stories in our flagship Digital 2023 report include:

A big change in global internet user numbers

An intriguing decline in various aspects of online activity

Rich insights into evolving social media platform preferences

Changes in the devices that people use to access digital content and services

Some unexpected changes in the world’s online search behaviours

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LinkedIn Blog

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The Full Guide To LinkedIn Management: SSI, Posting & Showcase Pages

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The Ins-And-Outs of LinkedIn Influence

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