When is the best time to post on Instagram is definitely one of the most asked questions? It can be seriously frustrating trying to figure out the answer to it because the answer is this: it’s different for every single person.
The best thing to do is experiment, but even that can be confusing. We’ll give you tips and tricks to try when figuring out the best time to post on your Instagram account.
Why It Matters
If you’re using Instagram, chances are you want your posts to be seen whether that’s by 200 followers or 2 million. We create content so that people enjoy and interact with it.
It’s not enough to guess when your followers will be online, or only post when you feel like it or are free during that particular day. If you really want to increase your engagement, you need to figure out when is the best time to post on Instagram.
When trying to grow your audience, it’s important to engage with them when most of them are online. Of course, not everyone will be online at once so you can never find a time when you can engage with your entire audience at once but you can come pretty close if you follow the following steps.
The Studies Show
Before we tell you how to figure out what works best for your unique Instagram account, we’ll look at what the studies show. We’ll talk through three different studies and analyze the results they found.
First, Sprout Social found that the very best time to post on Instagram is Wednesdays and Fridays at 11 a.m.
They claim that Wednesday is the best day to post on Instagram while Sunday is the worst. As evident from the chart, posting really late at night or early in the morning has the least levels of engagement.
Overall, their recommendations are to follow the crowds by checking Instagram midday and midweek. If you do Instagram first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, you are missing the prime times on the app. It looks like people are checking Instagram throughout their workday, probably to fight the boredom. So when you’re on your break, this is a great time to post or engage on Instagram, according to Sprout Social.
Another study done by Later analyzed 12 million posts and found the best times to post on Instagram are between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. EST. Having used this living in a GMT time zone, we can confirm this has really good results! Of course, you’ll need to trial it on your own account.
They even made a chart to showcase the best times to post on Instagram. You could definitely try one of those three posting times each day to see if you have better results with engagement! For example, try 10am EST on a Monday, 7am EST on a Wednesday and 3pm EST on a Friday and track the results.
Lastly, Hubspot did their own study that showed the following results.
As you can see, this study doesn’t compliment the other studies. Each study has quite varying results meaning it’s hard to rely on such studies. Although following these studies is a great place to start, particularly the Later one, it’s always best to run your own experiment.
Check Your Insights
The first step to figuring out the best time to post on Instagram is to check your own personal insights through the business Instagram account which is free and simple to set up. Once you’ve done that, seven days later, you’ll be able to see your insights. This includes the most active times on your Instagram.
It shows when your followers are usually online using a graph.
For example, this chart shows that followers are most active at 6 pm on that particular Tuesday. You can easily swipe through the days to see how much it varies. In fact, if you click “days” it does show you which days are the busiest. This can help you decide which days to skip posting or double up on posting depending on your schedule.
Experiment The Best Time To Post On Instagram
Now that you have your chart at hand, it’s time to experiment! For a month or so, write down the stats for every Instagram post as well as the times you posted.
If you post at 12 p.m. and get 730 likes, put that into your chart. Do this for a week. The next week, try posting at 3 p.m. Gradually circle the clock until you’ve tried a good variety of posting times.
Keep your notes on your phone, in a notebook or even better, make a spreadsheet! Highlight the days you’re happy with your engagement and see if there is a correlation between the times you’ve posted. For example, you might soon see that Sundays are your busiest days and that they work best when you post early afternoon.
The thing to remember is that everyone’s engagement is different and that you might need to do an updated spreadsheet every few months but the algorithm likes to change a lot as well.
Give it time and be patient. Soon enough you’re sure to find the best time to post on Instagram!
A Quick Guide
If you are looking at a chart similar to the one posted above, there are a few tips and tricks to try.
As evident, the busiest time is 6 p.m. It might seem obvious to post at 6 p.m. then, right?
Nope.
Everyone seems to flock to Instagram around that time which means a lot of people are posting then, too! For you, that means that your post can easily get lost in the masses of new posts on Instagram. People are so busy posting, engaging and flicking through all the new photos that they might see yours but not find the time to like or comment, meaning your impressions will be high but engagement will be low.
The algorithm will not favor that at all.
The best tip to give you here is to post before the rise really spikes. It starts to get quite busy at 3 p.m. so try posting at 2 p.m.
You might be wondering, “Why on earth would I do that?”
Because by the time most of your followers are online, your post will already have had some attention. The algorithm sees that it’s already quite popular so pushes it to the top of your follower’s feed.
Therefore, you will get a lot more likes throughout the busiest hours on Instagram. Dream come true!
The most popular post on my personal Instagram was posted at 3:30 p.m. – just after the rise. The rest of my most popular posts have been posted just before the rise, at about 2:30 – 2:45 p.m. When the rest of my followers logged on, the post was doing quite well-meaning the algorithm pushed it out. Overnight, and for even the next few days, people were still liking and commenting on the post.
Posting later in the evenings hasn’t worked well for my particular Instagram. That doesn’t mean it won’t work well for you. So try out a few different posting times, be patient and track your results! You’ll soon discover the best time to post on Instagram for your account. Once you have a good schedule, it takes the pressure off. Instagram will be fun again!