When is the best time to post on Instagram?

Later analyzed 12 million Instagram posts and found that the best time to post on Instagram is between 9am-11am EST.

But is that the best time to post on Instagram for your business?

Every Instagram account has a unique audience, with followers located in different time zones, so it’s important to find your personalized best time to post on Instagram.

Scheduling your Instagram posts for optimized times is proven to help you reach more followers and get more engagement on your posts.

Here’s how to find your best time to post on Instagram, plus we break down the best times for each day of the week:

When is the Best Time to Post on Instagram?

To find the best time to post on Instagram to get the most engagement in 2019, we analyzed 12 million Instagram posts, posted in multiple time zones around the world from accounts ranging from 100 to 1 million+ followers.

Here are the top 3 global best times to post on Instagram for each day of the week, represented in Eastern Standard Time:

That being said, here at Later, we have found that if you want to get more engagement, it’s best to find out what your personalized best times to post are based on your unique audience.

Timeliness has always been an important factor in the Instagram algorithm, but with the new algorithm updates, when you post to Instagram is more important than ever!

Early in 2018, Instagram announced that they were updating the Instagram algorithm to make it more chronological and “ensure the posts you see are timely.”

“With these changes, your feed will feel more fresh, and you won’t miss the moments you care about,” Instagram wrote in their press release.

As a result, if you want to beat the Instagram algorithm in 2019, you need to optimize your posting time for when the majority of your followers are online.

Think of it this way: Since Instagram is now prioritizing “new” content on people’s feeds, your best shot at getting your content in front of your followers is by posting when most of them are actively scrolling the app.

That’s why it’s so important to find your own personalized best time to post on Instagram: you can hack the algorithm to increase your reach and get more likes and followers.

How to Find Your Best Time to Post on Instagram:

There are 3 main ways to find your best time to post on Instagram in 2019:

1. Use Later’s Best Time to Post feature to automatically calculate your top 7 posting times
2. Find your top time zones and see when your followers are online
3. Experiment with different posting times and measure your progress

If you want to skip the experiments and get right to the good data, an Instagram marketing platform like Later can do the work for you!

Later’s Best Time to Post feature automatically calculates your 7 top posting times based on your best performing posts from the recent month:

Since every Instagram account is different, we wanted to create a feature that would give you your personalized best posting times — and that’s exactly what Best Time to Post does!

If you’re on one of Later’s business plans, which start at just $19/month, your best times to post will automatically be highlighted in your weekly content calendar, making it super easy to schedule your Instagram posts for when your audience is most active!

Other Ways to Calculate Your Best Time to Post on Instagram

If you don’t want to pay to find your best times to post on Instagram, you can also calculate them yourself manually.

1. Find Your Top Time Zones & See When Your Followers are Online

When it comes to the best time to post on Instagram, it’s essential to think about the time zones of your Instagram followers.

The best thing you can do to find your optimal posting time for Instagram is to research your audience using Instagram’s native analytics tool, Instagram Insights.

Just keep in mind that in order to access Insights, you’ll need to set up an Instagram business profile.

Instagram Insights gives you everything you could ask for: you can see where your followers are located, their gender, their age, and, most importantly, when they’re most active on Instagram.

If you’re on one of Later’s paid plans, you can also track key insights about your followers directly in your Later dashboard with Later’s Instagram Analytics!

For example, you can also use the location data in Instagram Analytics to pinpoint your top time zones by looking at your most popular cities, and see when your followers are most active on Instagram right from your desktop.

The best part? Later’s Instagram Analytics includes all of the insights you know and love from the Instagram app, plus additional data for calculating your best times to post, engagement rate, click through rate, and more!

Using this data, you can get a great understanding of the best times and days to post on Instagram, and then easily schedule your posts at those times!

2. Experiment with Posting Times and Measure your Progress

If you’d rather crunch the numbers yourself, you can create a spreadsheet to track how much engagement you receive when you post at different times on different days.

Start by picking five different times throughout the week.

For example, if you notice that your followers are most active between 5 and 9pm EST, schedule your posts to appear at 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9pm.

In your spreadsheet, track how many likes and comments each post receives, along with the date and time that you posted them.

The following week, switch the timing of your posts for each day. For example, if you posted at 5pm on Monday in week 1, post at 6pm during week 2.

It might take a few weeks, but you can use this information to help you choose the best days to share to specific networks based on your own audience, along with the times that work best for getting traffic on those specific days.

Other Factors to Consider:

Different audiences will, of course, be active at different times, so there’s no hard-and-fast rule about the best time to post on Instagram. But there are some general rules you should consider:

1. Post for your most active timezone(s): you may be located in LA, but if most of your followers are in New York, you should be posting with the EST time zone in mind. If you have followers in both North America and the UK, you may find that posting at “odd” times in your timezone (like midnight PST) actually perform well for you, because it’s 8am in London, England.
2. Post more during off-work hours instead of during the day: generally, the best times to post on Instagram can be lunchtime (11am-1pm) and evenings (7-9pm). Instead of posting while you’re at your desk, schedule Instagram posts during the work day so you don’t have to worry about it during your free time!
3. Save the important posts for weekdays: The differences are slight, but average Instagram engagement does shift depending on the day. For example, B2B companies may get more engagement during the week while their audience is at work, whereas bloggers may get more engagement on the weekends when their audience is more likely to have time to read their posts.

How to Schedule for Your Best Time to Post to Instagram

Now that you know when your Instagram audience is most active, and how to drive the most engagement based on your audience’s activity, the last step is to schedule your Instagram posts for your personalized best times to post on Instagram.

There are many reasons why you should be scheduling Instagram posts in 2019, but one of the top reasons is that you’ll be able to consistently have content going out at your best times to post on Instagram.

One of the best ways to ensure that you are consistently posting when your audience is most active is to use Later’s Quick Schedule tool.

With Quick Schedule, you can create your own Instagram queue based on your best times to post.

You just have to select your posting times once, and then you can easily save yourself time by dragging and dropping posts on to your calendar, which will then automatically be scheduled for your best times to post on Instagram.

Instagram is an incredible channel for businesses to achieve their marketing goals, but in 2019, it just isn’t enough to post content whenever you feel like it anymore.

By planning and scheduling your posts in advance for the best time to post on Instagram, you can boost your engagement, drive traffic, and gain new followers and customers!

 

 

Source: https://later.com/blog/best-time-to-post-on-instagram/