Throughout 2020 and 2021, social media became more significant than ever as a method for individuals to stay connected, discover new trends and hobbies, and keep up with current events.
As the volume of social interactions and messaging needs increased, brands had to pivot to thrive in an unexpectedly rapid digital transformation, and social marketers had to fight burnout.
With this in mind, it’s no surprise that our analysis of the best times to post on social media for 2022 revealed a number of significant shifts in the data, including higher and varying engagement across platforms and industries. Both businesses and their customers were continually adjusting their online behaviour, resulting in new patterns of social media interaction and engagement. This data will help marketers understand what the social landscape looks like now as many of us continue to improve and reinvent strategy for 2022 and for future.
When is the best time to post anything on Instagram to ensure that it is seen?
And when it comes to getting the most likes, what day of the week is the best? Who has received the most comments?
Continue reading to learn the universal best time to post on Instagram that seems to work for everyone — as well as how to uncover your brand’s own, unique best times to post (because all businesses and audiences are unique).
Is there a best time to post on Instagram?
As each brand caters to a unique audience with unique social media behaviour patterns, each brand may have a somewhat different sweet spot for posting on Instagram. However, there are several best practices you may follow that consistently produce excellent outcomes.
Because the Instagram algorithm promotes recency, publishing when your followers are online is essential. If all other factors are equal, a fresher post will appear higher on the newsfeed than an older one.
When it comes to optimising a post for success, recency is one of the quickest and easiest gains.
But it’s also important to understand what your Instagram marketing strategy’s specific objectives are. Do you have specific goals in mind for increasing awareness, increasing engagement, or increasing traffic? What does success mean to you, and when have you seen your postings accomplish it in the past? In general, your past successes are a good reference for when you should post.
Overall best time to post on Instagram
The global best time to post on Instagram, according to our observations and studies, is…
Wednesdays at 11 a.m.
We discovered that Instagram users are most likely to interact with the material throughout the middle of the day and on weekdays. That makes sense – it’s the ideal time to unwind after a long day at work or school by browsing.
So, if you’re new to Instagram and don’t have a lot of historical data or audience insights to work with, try posting around this time and see how it goes. As your account expands, you may want to adjust your posting schedule to better match the Instagram activity patterns of your target audience. This is how we use Hootsuite to determine the best times to post to our Instagram account.
The best posting time as per Hootsuite is early in the morning and late in the afternoon.” For Instagram, it means we attempt to post between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. PST on weekdays, or between 4-5 p.m. PST on weekends.”
North American B2B audience—our Instagram posts do best when we hit the wake-up or lunch-time hours for our Pacific time zone audience, and the sitting-down-to-work or logging-off hours in the Eastern time zone.
Using the activity heatmap provided in Hootsuite Analytics, it’s easy to see when your Instagram audience is online |
You may also analyse post and campaign performance with Hootsuite Impact’s tools. “The data there tells us whether we should stick with the same strategy or pivot in the future.”
In general, when deciding when to publish on Instagram, consider the following |
“As a guiding star, we look at previous performances, and then review when the audience is online for a second viewpoint.” If our content isn’t performing well after that, we’ll try posting at alternative times to see if it improves performance.”
All in all, an Instagram content calendar should be as data-driven as the rest of the marketing strategy.
And since the big picture matters, too, here are some key Instagram statistics, benchmarks, and demographics to help you strategize |
- Businesses post to their feeds an average of 1x per day
- The average engagement rate for a post from a business account is 0.96%
- People spent 30 minutes on Instagram every day in 2020 (up from 26 minutes per day in 2019)
- Each visit to the platform lasts about 6 minutes 35 seconds
- 63% of American users check Instagram at least once a day, and 42% of American users check Instagram several times per day
Tips for finding your best time to post on Instagram
1. Review your top-performing posts
To begin, evaluate the type of performance you want to achieve: brand recognition or engagement. Depending on which of these is more important to you, how you time your Instagram posts may differ.
Which of your previous blogs received the most views? When did you make this public? And how do these posts differ from those that receive likes?
Here, your Instagram analytics is the most reliable source of information. Of course, not all analytics tools are created equal, and some social media management tools might assist you in avoiding time-consuming data analysis.
For example, Hootsuite’s Optimal Time to Publish tool recommends the best times and days to post to Instagram based on past performance. It examines your posts from the last 30 days, groups them by weekday and hour, and then calculates the average impressions or engagement rate to determine the best time windows for your postings.
Check when your audience is most active online
Examining your analytics to identify when your followers are scrolling through their feed is the next step in determining the optimum time to post.
As marketers, we must understand our target audiences. If you’re targeting Gen Z sports enthusiasts on Instagram, their social media habits are likely to differ significantly from those of tech execs who meditate in their infrared saunas at 4 a.m.
The Best Time to Publish function in Hootsuite will automatically break down this data into a heatmap. It will also assist you in experimenting by anticipating when your Instagram followers will be online.
It will also recommend time periods that you haven’t utilised in the prior 30 days, allowing you to mix up your posting schedule and try out fresh strategies.
Consider when your competitors are posting
Depending on your industry, your competitors may be undertaking some of the same calculations and testing as you. Keep an eye on what’s working for your industry’s viewers via social listening.
Post in the time zone of your target audience
If you have a global audience or if you are based outside of the “normal” time zones, 3 a.m. can be the perfect time to post.
Instead of setting some genuinely heinous alarms, how about automating your Instagram posts? Using an Instagram scheduler to ensure your posts go up at the proper time, day in and day out is one of the finest tools to help you achieve this.
Monitor and adjust
Yes, optimising your Instagram posts for success requires a significant amount of effort it involves far more than simply selecting the appropriate filter. However, crunching the data once a quarter to determine the best time to post is one of the simplest ways to ensure your content reaches the correct people.
“We look at our top-performing posts weekly to see if there are any insights that will help us modify our strategy or publishing cadence,” says Brayden Cohen of Hootsuite’s Instagram team. However, we only vary the hours we post once every quarter, if at all.”
For example, because of the pandemic’s impact on work schedules in 2020, many individuals are spending less time commuting or taking a conventional lunch break, according to Cohen. B2B audiences are spending more time on their phones, which is reflected in their Instagram usage, which is spread out throughout the day.
Set a reminder in your calendar to assess your results and make improvements as the world and audience habits change.
Show up consistently over the long term
It’s important to be systematic about your posting if you want to get the full benefits of all this audience data. While you won’t see a dramatic increase by posting a few hours sooner now and then, consistently utilising the data will shift the needle over time.
It’s a vicious circle – your audience becomes accustomed to seeing your brand on their feed, enjoys your content, and engages with it. Showing up on Instagram on a regular basis builds credibility, trust, and a genuine relationship.
At the end of the day, the algorithm notices when you have an authentic relationship with your audience, and so does your bottom line.
Summing-up
The optimum time to publish on Instagram or any other social media platform may appear to be a minor consideration, but as this article shows, it may have a significant impact on the amount of engagement you receive. As a result, start with the best times provided in this article. Once you’ve posted over a hundred updates and have some data, you can use an analytics tool to evaluate your account and determine your personal optimal time to publish.
Continue to evaluate this data on a quarterly basis, because as your account expands, so will your followers’ combined habits.
If you’re serious about growing your Instagram, you will have to create and post regularly. You can use Shergroup’s social media marketing solution to create engaging content for your audience and continue to build on your Instagram account to ensure that you always have something to post at the best time on Instagram. For more information on our social media marketing solution please contact our business solutions advisors who’d be able to guide you with your requirement.
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