Best Time To Post on Instagram

Inasmuch as uploading the best content is very vital, posting at the wrong time will not achieve the expected results. The timing of your posts is extremely important, if not, you may be setting yourself up for failure.

The ideal posting time may not be the same for all brands and some studies have shown that there are particular times of the day that are the most ideal for posting. These times may not suit your brand, so you may have to experiment with different times to find out the best times for posting your content so that you can find the best time for posting them.

Just like other social applications, Instagram leverages continuously changing algorithms to make it a little difficult to find the best posting times. Even if you finally get the best posting times, you may still have to stay a step ahead by continuously fine-tuning your techniques. 

Because the Instagram algorithm takes note of how much engagement your posts get and how quickly users interact with your post, it is important that you improve your technique so that your posts can get the maximum reach.

What is the best time to post on Instagram?

The ideal time to post on Instagram is dependent on some factors like day of the week, time zone, and audience, among other things. For example, if your audience consists mostly of college students, they would probably have more time to spend on Instagram as compared to an audience that consists of business people.

This is why you have to determine the ideal time to post. We will talk about this in detail subsequently. However, some days during the week are ideal for all audiences and brands.

• 7 – 9 am – when most people are on their way to work.
• 12 – 2 pm – Lunch breaks
• 5 – 6 pm – work closing period
• 9 – 11 pm – bedtime scrolling

This is according to the research carried out by ShareThis, most people visit their Instagram while on their way to work. Other peak periods of Instagram activities are lunch breaks and close work hours.

The average ideal time to post during the weekend (Saturday and Sunday)

• 9 – 11 am
• 2 – 5 pm

People pick up their phones later in the morning due to the weekend’s hangovers. Another period when there is a high level of engagement is in the middle of the afternoon. As weekends are typically work-free. The best time for you to post your content depends largely on the kind of audience you have. 

Take note that many people usually go out on Saturday nights to have fun, so it may not be a good idea to post on Saturday nights, depending on the audience you target. A research carried out by HubSpot shows that Sundays are not great for posting either. So, you may have to exclude it from your posting schedule.

Why are these the best times to post

If you consider your schedule, you will see that your daily routine keeps changing. These changes can potentially impact how and when you visit your social media platforms. 

Many active social media users use their phones when they wake up to prepare for work. The most tedious days are usually the most tedious so it is advisable to post on early Tuesday mornings up to Friday mornings. This will generate more engagement for you. 

Again, people find it suitable to visit their social media platforms during lunch hours. This is because people begin to get mentally tired, and their social media platforms offer them the needed respite. Saturday mornings are also great periods to post on Instagram. 

This is because, irrespective of whatever they are doing at the time, the early hours of Saturday are great periods for generating traffic.

Study Your Industry Trend to Determine the Best Posting Times

Inasmuch as these times that have been mentioned are great, you need to develop a strategy for your brand so that you can target the exact audience you want to show your content to. Such sectors as tourism, entertainment, healthcare, and technology will not have the same peak times. 

If you want to get your target audience in your sector, you may have to do some research so that you can make the best decisions. This will help you find out the best time to make your posts on Instagram.

How Does the Instagram Algorithm Affect Your Visibility?

While trying to determine the best times to post on Instagram, you must also take into consideration the Instagram algorithm and how it affects what users see. 

The Instagram algorithm favors the newest posts, so that the most recently posted contents have a higher probability of showing up in users’ feeds, It is this algorithm that determines whether and when users will come across your posts. 

This means that you should make your posts as recent as possible at the time followers will visit Instagram. 

This algorithm also analyses the level of engagement a post gets when determining whether they should make it visible to users or not. 

The greater the comments and likes your post gets, the more Instagram will make that post show up on your audience’s feeds. Posting at the optimum times will encourage people to engage with your posts and help each post to reach as many members of your audience as possible.

Learn more about how the Instagram algorithm works.

How Important Are Time Zones?

If a major part of your audience stays in the East Coast, make sure to use the times of their time zones that have been recommended. This also applies if you are dealing with an audience not resident in the United States. You need to factor in their time zones. 

You can still use the guide shown above, irrespective of whether your followers are scattered across different time zones. How can you do this? 

Assuming your followers are spread across different time zones, you schedule your posts such that a morning post in one particular time zone will serve as a midday post in another time zone. 

Thus, your posts will perform two roles at once. This may sound a little complicated, but there are many tools that can assist you while you’re doing this. There are some built-in tools in Instagram which can assist you, also you can make use of third party applications as well.

How to Determine the Peak Periods of Your Audience?

If you are using your Instagram account for business, you can leverage the Instagram insights tool so that you can determine the population distribution of your followers, their activity and the trends of their engagements. 

This tool is very efficient and can help you in determining the best times to post your contents for a particular audience. The data for your custom-made Instagram insights is found in the account page of your Instagram app. When you get to the top of your screen, you will see a bar-graph icon. 

Hit this icon and you will find all the data you need regarding how individual posts and stories are performing. You will also be shown comments, impressions and the number of people who have followed and unfollowed you. 

This will help you to determine the type of content that your audience likes and how successful you have been in your campaigns. 

Also, the Follower’s area of Instagram gives you important data about the periods your audience are most active on the platform. It shows you a graph that allows you see the periods your followers are very active and also shows you the times your followers come online. Armed with this data, you can easily determine the patterns of activity of your followers. 

This will help you to optimize your targeted posting. You need to closely observe your Instagram insight trends. As your followers grow, their peak activity times will change, of course. 

This means that you need to adjust your posting times when you observe changes in the peak engagement periods. You wouldn’t want to miss the chance of connecting and interacting with your audience as it goes through changes.

What Should Be Your Posting Frequency on Instagram?

If you want your audience to grow and for your posts to get to your audience, you need to post very frequently. Seek inspiration from established bands if you want your Instagram feed to keep being lively and interesting. 

Research has shown that companies upload at a rate of 1.5 times daily, on average. How can you leverage this? 

Why not make an effort to upload one to two times on a daily basis? Once you have established a rhythm, make sure to remain consistent with that rhythm. If you suddenly change the rhythm of your posts, it may cause your audience to lose interest in your post. Imagine posting on daily basis for weeks and months and then suddenly, you don’t post for three days at a stretch. 

Your audience will lose interest in you because you have begun to fade away from their minds. It may also cause your posts to have a reduced engagement. To prevent this from happening, begin first by posting at intervals, maybe, twice a week, from there, you can begin to develop as time goes on. 

Make sure that drop quality posts, don’t focus on quantity yet. You will get a higher level of engagement when you upload great photos instead of just filling your page with low-quality content in a bid to post plenty of content. 

As you begin to understand your scheduling tool and become more comfortable with searching our great and creating great content, you can begin to increase the frequency of your posts. When you have ironed out the rhythm of your quality content, your audience would want you to post more content.

Why Do You Need To Schedule Posts? 

To keep your engagement constant and keep yourself relevant on Instagram, you may need to invest a lot of effort in doing thorough research. It is, however, not compulsory that you are always on your account throughout the day. 

To reach your audience, you have scheduling tools like Later and Hootsuite at your disposal. Many of these scheduling tools are quite simple to make use of. Also, even though most of them emphasize only scheduling, some others come with built-in features that are used to study and monitor the audience. With these inbuilt features, you can get a better understanding of your audience’s activity. 

Suggestions for ideal posting times for your audience will also be made available to you. This can help make your work easier on Instagram and make your Instagram marketing job more efficient. Instead of posting on a daily basis, you can plan your posts. You could do this week or even months ahead of time. 

This makes you remain very active on social media with less effort. Also, if your contents are always great, you can plan them to fall at peak times so that you can get the largest number of viewers possible. Using scheduling tools also gives you the benefit of easily posting content at different places. 

You could post content that thrived on Instagram to other platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. Again, you can develop something called multi-layered campaigns, which can help spur your audience to do a specific thing like signing up on your newsletter and attending a webinar. 

When you have a good understanding of the best times to make posts on Instagram, you can generate loyal customers and also develop your Instagram presence. This knowledge will help you offer your content to the people who need it at the right time. When you have mastered this art, you will marvel at the rate of growth of your followership.