If you are trying to maximise your engagement levels and increase your following, your posts need to attract the maximum amount of attention every time.
There are a few things you can do to increase engagement, and these have been covered in detail in our blog section:
If you do all of these things and make great content, there is one last thing you can do to ensure the success of your post:
Post when everyone’s online.
This will not only let more people see your post, but also maximise its potential for uptake and sharing.
There are a few things we have to consider when we are doing this, so let’s get started and find the best time to post on Instagram for you.
Is There a Generic Best Time to Post on Instagram?
The short answer to this is yes, it would seem that there are specific days and times when the overall Instagram community is at its most active.
Check out this chart that shows global Instagram engagement levels in CST: (CST is 5 hours behind GMT)
From this chart we can see that the best days to post on Instagram are:
- Wednesday
- Thursday
- Friday
And we can see that the best times to post on Instagram are:
- Wednesday 11 AM
- Wednesday 1 PM
- Friday 9 AM
- Friday 10 AM
We can also see that the worst days to post are:
- Saturday
- Sunday
And the worst times to post are:
- All days 10 PM – 4 AM
This alone gives us a great start for posting at the right time to get the most engagement.
What About Time Zones?
Time zones are very important when choosing the best time to post on social media.
If the majority of your audience is overseas, you should consider tailoring your posting strategy to hit the engagement times for these people.
This means that if you are in the UK and there is a lot of people in the USA and Canada that are interested in your content, you should use the above graph and add on 5 hours to the optimal times.
For example:
If you want to hit that Wednesday 11am prime time spot in Chicago, you should post here in the UK at 4pm.
If you want to hit both time zones at once, consider splitting the difference and catching the last of the UK peak engagement levels by posting at 2pm, so you still get good engagement in the USA from 9am onwards.
There are tools out there that help you post at specific times consistently by scheduling posts.
Here at IBF, we have built a great scheduler into our platform so you can set up post scheduling and not have to worry about it.
Find Out When Your Audience Is Most Active Using Instagram Insights
If you have an Instagram business account, Instagram has made it easy to see your very own set of engagement metrics with Instagram Insights.
Instagram Insights gives you personalised data for your account, it is simple to understand and easy to get to:
- Go to your account page by tapping the bottom right icon of your profile picture
- Tap the ‘hamburger’ menu at the top right
- Tap the Insights option with the bar chart beside it
You can move between content statistics, activity data and audience metrics.
Using these graphs, you can get detailed insights into how your audience engages with, as well as when and where.
We can see that for this account, Monday and Wednesday were the best days for growth on the profile, which is in line with our global engagement chart.
We can also see the top locations, which is great information to know when considering time zones and when to post.
Using this information you should be able to determine your exact sweet spot for posting to get the highest level of engagement.
We also get to see things like gender breakdown, as well as the times when the followers for this account are most active.
Start Optimising Your Instagram Posts
If you are serious about growing your account and getting the best engagement levels possible, you should be using these systems to your advantage.
There are also some other third-party apps that let Instagram users see other information on their account in a way that is helpful to their account growth.
Social Monitor provides simple, in-depth information so that you can better understand your audience and track the progress of your account, they are currently doing a free trial so sign up and get started now.
You can combine this with our smart automation software and schedule posts for the best time to get the maximum engagement possible on your account.
