There is no best time to post on YouTube in general, but each channel has its own, depending on the habits of its audience, and the hours at which they are active on this social network.
Best time to upload a video to YouTube
Identify the best time to upload a video to YouTube is crucial to maximize initial visibility. This optimal time depends largely on the target audience and usually coincides with the times when your subscribers are most active on the platform. Use analytics tools to discover these peak times and plan your posts accordingly.
Video consumption patterns vary depending on the demographics and geographic location of your viewers. For example, if your core audience resides in different time zones, consider schedule publication to coincide with the time when most of your subscribers are online. This way, you can increase the chances that your content will be seen immediately after its release.
One aspect to bear in mind is that the quality content is just as important as the timing of the post. While uploading videos during peak times can help improve visibility, strong, engaging content is critical to retaining your audience and encouraging interaction, key factors for long-term success on YouTube.
The first 24 to 48 hours after uploading a video are critical, as YouTube uses metrics from this period to assess the relevance of the content. Therefore, by scheduling your video to be published at the optimal time, you make sure that off to a good startThe platform is more likely to recommend it to other users.
Finally, it is advisable to maintain a consistency in schedules posting schedule. Not only does this help establish a routine with your audience, but it can also improve your ranking in YouTube's algorithm. Watch the results and adjust your posting strategy based on the performance of your videos to find the schedule that works best for your channel.
Time-dependent performance of your video
Although the truth is that there is no direct, long-term relationship between the time you post a video and its performance, the initial boost does depend a lot on the time you post it.
Keep in mind that a large part of your subscribers do not have notifications turned on and, therefore, will not know when you post a new video.
Similarly, if when you publish a video, most of your subscribers with notifications enabled are sleeping, no matter how much YouTube notifies them, they will not come to see it at that time.
Ideally, you should post your videos right at the time you know your subscribers are already inside YouTube consuming content.
How to know the best time to publish on your channel?
Best time to publish according to YouTube
To find out the best times to publish on your YouTube channel, just take a look at the information that YouTube gives you in your YouTube Studio. You can get there by following these steps:
- Access your YouTube Studio
- In the menu on the left, select "Statistics".
- Now, in the top menu choose "Audience".
- Scroll down to "Activity hours of your YouTube users".
Here, YouTube shows you a graph of the 7 days of the week, in time slots.
The darker colored stripes coincide with the times when the most viewers of your channel are connected to YouTube.
Best time to publish a video according to vidIQ
Another tool you can use to find out the best time to post a video on YOuTube is vidIQ.
vidIQAmong many other metrics, it also shows you the hours of each day when your subscribers are on YouTube. This information will appear in a column on the right side, on the home screen of the web application.
By clicking on the arrows, you can change the day of the week and even select another time zone.
Best time to publish a video according to metricool
Metricool is another tool you can use to find out what is the best time to publish a video, although in this case it is general statistical data, obtained through a study conducted among thousands of YouTube channels.
To find out the best times, once you are inside metricool, go to the Planning option in the top menu, and in the drop-down below, select your YouTube channel.
Inside the planner you will see several columns (one for each day of the week) and different rows (one for each hour). The idea is to locate the rows that have a darker color.
What time to post a video on YouTube?
Now that you know the times your audience is connected to YouTube, the only thing you need to do is to schedule the publication of the video about two hours before, taking into account that YouTube always takes some time to send all notifications.
In other words, you should try to post your video when there are the highest number of dark bands in consecutive hours.
Scheduling or publishing directly?
Many youtubers make the mistake of posting videos directly at times when their subscribers are online. However, that doesn't quite work, as YouTube takes time to process the videos, check for copyright, search for infringements, generate subtitles, etc.
That is why the best practice is to schedule the video well in advance, so that YouTube has time to complete all these processes and the day and time you have chosen, the video can be published already finished processing.
The first hours of a video's life
The first hours of life since the publication of a video are important for YouTube to start storing information about it: how much interest it has among those notified, how much interaction they have done with it, what other videos people who have watched your video have watched, etc...
The more information it stores, the better it will know in which group to place your video and the sooner it will start recommending it to the audience that the algorithm understands may be interested in it.
Let's not fool ourselves. Posting a video at a certain time does not guarantee its success or virality, but it will take off sooner.