You may have heard that 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. is the optimum time to post on Instagram. Alternatively, 2 to 3 p.m. And that you should post more on Thursdays and avoid Mondays and weekends...
So, here it is the truth.
There isn't a single optimum moment to publish on Instagram. All those studies with millions of participants? It's not helpful. Those are not your fans.
So brace up, because we're about to show you how to figure out when the optimal time is to post on Instagram for your company.
What factors determine your best time to post on Instagram?
When it comes to Instagram, the optimal time to publish is when your audience is most engaged. However, if your content is relevant to their daily routine at the time, it may be a period when fewer followers are online.
The Instagram algorithm considers both timeliness and relevance when determining where your post appears in your followers' feeds. And the more impressions your brand receives, the higher your posts appear in your followers' feeds. More impressions may result in increased interaction. And the more people engage with your postings, the more people will see your subsequent posts, creating a snowball effect.
Timeliness: When most of your followers are online
When you post at a time when the majority of your followers are online, your post has a better chance of being viewed by more people. This is because of the timeliness or recency factor, which essentially implies that your article appears close to when a user gets on.
Emma Ward, the marketing manager of The Juicery in New England, have Instagram scheduling down to a science. She sets aside time on Instagram when the majority of The Juicery's followers are online to promote promotions, announcements, and other exciting material.
“I'll post in the evenings if I'm promoting a giveaway, a new location, or something that isn't menu-specific. I want to get the most people to see the content, so I post at a time when the most people are online,” she explains.
While the majority of her brand's followers are online at night, she understands that this isn't the best time to buy smoothies. As a result, the best time to post on Instagram is determined by the content you have to share.
Relevance: when your content fits best into your followers’ days
Instagram's algorithm prioritizes showing users the stuff they want to view. What method does it use to determine what people want to see? By examining the interests and relationships of users. Your followers will interact with your content more if it is relevant to them. As a result of this engagement, Instagram prioritizes your content in people's feeds.
Emma thinks about when her brand's items are most useful in her followers' daily lives. Mornings are a wonderful time for The Juicery to get in front of individuals who are thinking about what to grab for breakfast. Even though her online following is smaller, she blogs about smoothies and other menu items first thing in the morning—around 7:30 a.m. on weekdays and just past 8 a.m. on weekends.
“I want our smoothies to remain top of mind when they embark into a workday,” Emma says of her fans.
She would miss the opportunity to plant the notion of a morning smoothie for those followers who are most likely to pick one up on their way to work if she merely followed conventional “best time to post on Instagram” recommendations from aggregate research.
How to find the best time to post on Instagram for your brand
It doesn't have to be difficult to figure out when the optimal times are to post on Instagram for your brand. You'll have to think about two things:
- When the majority of your followers are active on the platform
- When they are most interested in your brand.
These two data points will help you figure out when is the best time to post, which you can then test and optimize.
Let's go over each stage of determining the optimal times to post together now.
Step 1: See when your audience is most active on Instagram
By looking at the data that Instagram provides, you can observe when you have the most followers on Instagram. Click the Insights button for business accounts to find this information.
You can then click on Insights to see statistics broken down by content, activity, and audience. Choose the Audience option to see information about your followers, such as when they use Instagram, their location, age range, and gender. To see when they're most active, you can switch between hours and days.
Keep in mind that the data on your Instagram account only shows for the last seven days. This only gives you a limited amount of information, but it's a start. Before you make any conclusions based on data from such a short duration, consider the impact of special occasions and seasonal behavior.
Step 2: Hypothesize what type of content is best for those times
The greatest time to post one sort of Instagram content differs from the optimum time to post another. And there's a good possibility you've got a variety of things to provide.
Come up with a hypothesis at this point. You have a better understanding of your target audience than anyone else. What time of day do they deal with the difficulty you help them with? When is it appropriate for them to think of your company?
Emma examines when each sort of material will be most useful to The Juicery's audience before putting it to the test. “I'll test each new form of content at different times. She says that a post featuring an attractive acai bowl will be published at a different time than a gift card offer.
Step 3: Create a schedule to test your hypothesis
You now know when your followers are online and what material you think they'll be interested in during those times. Put it into practice by creating an Instagram posting plan for a defined length of time, such as three weeks.
Assume you manage a gym's Instagram account. We've come up with a few ideas for different types of content that can appeal to your followers at different times of the day.
The goal is to think about when your fans want to hear from you. If you own a gym, your customers may be looking for healthy motivation in the afternoon when their energy is diminishing or in the morning when they must choose between sleeping in or going to the gym. Reminding them about their future class schedules can assist them in making plans for the next day. Also, because Tuesdays and Thursdays are often less crowded at your gym, you might want to publish content encouraging people to come on those days.
You are not obligated to post a set number of times per day. Once you've figured out when your best moments are, you might be able to publish less and have a bigger impact. Remember that hashtags based on days of the week might also help you expand your following.
Step 4: Analyze your findings to figure out the best times for your content
After a few weeks of experimenting with your Instagram posting schedule, you'll have a good understanding of which types of content are engaging with your followers at which times.
After that, you can fine-tune your timetable. Continue to share content that resonates with your audience, and switch up the content that isn't working.
Where can you get the information? Under the Posts tab in the Insights portion of your business account, Instagram displays engagement metrics for each post. For example, you may compare the interactions for each post to get a sense of how each one connected with your audience.
If you were promoting a gym on Instagram, your early morning posts might have gotten a lot of likes and comments, but your late-afternoon postings didn't, even though it was a time when a lot of your followers were online. You may experiment with different types of material at that time to see how your afternoon audience reacts.
Step 5: Continue testing new times
Your post-performance information is based on your previous postings. So, once a month or so, examine your best times and experiment with different ones. This allows you to continue to learn more about your target audience.
Laura Moses, the co-founder of Adventure Cat Boats, often posts during the day, but she occasionally tries out an evening or late-night post to see how her 162k followers react.
Her "experiments" occasionally happen by accident when she forgets to schedule a post and ends up posting at a less-than-ideal moment. “Seeing that post-take-off is sometimes a wonderful surprise, but other times it serves as a reminder that doing some strategic planning and scheduling is smart,” she says.
Brands that plan their postings ahead of time might target specific moments throughout the day. Laura, on the other hand, prefers to post manually. To get attention, she plans to post to Instagram between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays.
Is it true that if you don't post at a certain time each day, your postings will be lost in your followers' feeds? Certainly not.
Analytics data indeed pinpoint the greatest time of day to the hour, and scheduling your posts consistently is crucial to reaching your best time of day—every time—to maximum interaction. However, the time just before or after this particular point is frequently highly advantageous. While not ideal, writing within a range, as Laura does, can nevertheless have a good impact.
How the right tools can power your “best time to post” choices
When you run a small business, your resources are often stretched thin. Your social media accounts are only one component of your overall marketing strategy, and you must approach everything strategically. Using the optimum time to post on Instagram for your business can allow you to have a greater impact with less effort.
How to get started
If you are trying to promote your business, product or service then you should definitely consider the benefits of investing in buying real Instagram followers, auto Instagram likes and views for your account. You can quickly reach thousands of new people without wasting money on traditional methods of advertising. If you are not using this type of service, you are falling behind.
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