Best Time to Post on Instagram
When running an Instagram account, many people are chasing high engagement. With this comes knowing the most popular times your audience is on the app, proper captioning and hashtag usage, promoting the content that aligns with your brand, and so much more! In this blog, we will focus on the best times to post on Instagram. Though it is not a perfect science, there are patterns and data to look for.
Best Times
Based on studies via Buffer and Later, researching 14.5 million posts combined, the common consensus is that posting in the early morning is best practice on weekdays. While Later proved posting as early as 4AM was the most effective, Buffer’s data showed 7AM produced the highest engagement.
Another jump in engagement was later in the day, specifically on Thursday and Friday around 4PM and between 7-11PM on Sunday nights. All of this is not to say that your account will fit into these exact times on every single post. You may post something on a Wednesday at 2PM that goes viral. Between algorithms and your follower base, every account is unique!
Best Days
Historically, the best days to post are during the week. The morning of Monday-Friday produced the most engagement results from both Later and Buffer. Users scroll when they wake up, on their daily commute, and to catch up on things from the night prior, before getting started with their workday.
The weekends have proved to have lower engagement days for all. Many people will be out and about, traveling, or spending time off their phones. Saturday morning produces slight engagement in the morning but not nearly the amount as a weekday. If you want to post on a weekend, it is best to do so on a Sunday night, as most social media users may be winding down their weekend.
Next Steps
In order to find the perfect time for your brand, we have the next steps to get the best engagement out of your page. Community businesses, nonprofit companies, healthcare companies, and entertainment companies will all have different prime times to post on Instagram due to their varying target audience. The best way to figure out when you should post is to try out the following:
- Create a social media audit: Track your competition, see what they are doing well and when they are posting, as well as which posts are not doing well within a specific time and day.
- Test your content out: The truest form of finding your posting sweet spot is to analyze the information. Start posting on Instagram at scattered times each day (or every other day), and track which posts receive the most engagement.
- Use Instagram Insights: If you have a Business Profile on Instagram, you can track specific data regarding your most successful days and hours for posting. Click on Insights, Total Followers, and scroll down to Most Active Times to get the most accurate and up-to-date information about the hours and days you should be posting for your specific account.
In summary, the number one data point you must consider is the impact of reach. Deciding who you want to reach and finding out how to reach them when they are using Instagram is essential to increasing engagement. This is where your Instagram page might sink or swim. We hope our handy steps allow you to reach your top engagement or, at the very least, understand your audience and analytics better.