The best time to post on Instagram in 2021

Despite the tough competition for engagement among social media platforms, Instagram is still one of the most popular channels for marketers today. But if you’re going to drive engagements on the platform, you need to get your timing right. This means understanding the best time to post on Instagram today and updating your publishing schedule accordingly.

If you’re here in search of a universal best time to post on Instagram, I’m sorry to tell you that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer.

But, we can certainly point you in the right direction.

While we’re about to dive into research that indicates what the best times to post on Instagram are, you’ll also need to compare these findings with your own audience insights to see what works best for you.

Why should you care about the best time to post on Instagram?

Considering that Instagram posts are no longer ordered chronologically, you might be curious to know why timing is important. Why should you post at a time when people are using Instagram?

The answer lies in the Instagram algorithm and how it accounts for post popularity signals to figure out how to show content to users. It looks at how quickly a post gains engagements such as likes, comments, shares and saves. It then prioritizes popular posts when displaying relevant content in a user’s Explore page or Feed.

That means if you publish a post at a time when your followers are most likely to engage with it, you’re more likely to ramp up those engagements. And with those engagements come greater post visibility, which eventually contributes to your Instagram success.

The best times to post on Instagram

As marketers, we track, measure and analyze a lot of what we do in an attempt to refine our processes and strategies. We learn from our mistakes, but we also learn from our successes.

For a long time, posting on social media was somewhat of a guessing game for brands. It was less about targeting people at the right time of day and more about throwing a post out into the ether and seeing what happened. But over time, it became apparent that the time you posted would affect the results you saw in a big way.

Sprout Social, for example, took a large portion of this data and found some very interesting results:

In general, the best times to post on Instagram are on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays between 9 a.m. and 1 p.m.
If you’re looking for the highest levels of engagement, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are the best days to post.
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Sunday is the worst day for posting (no surprises there).
Later hours, from around midnight to 4 a.m. are seen to have the lowest engagement.

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Obviously, these findings should only be used as a general rule of thumb for the optimal times to post on Instagram. They aren’t going to be 100% accurate for everyone.

Plus, the optimal post timings change every year. Sprout regularly updates their study on the best time to post on Instagram, so make sure to check the latest findings to stay updated.

Your audience is ultimately going to determine when the best times for you to post are, but you can (and should) use data to help you narrow it down.

Bearing this in mind, Sprout Social also broke down the data they analyzed to study how the best times to post differed from industry to industry. The results showed quite a variance between the likes of the tech and healthcare industries, so it really is crucial that you take more than just the immediately obvious variables into account when you’re planning out your posting schedule.

In the consumer goods industry, for instance, the best time to post on Instagram was Thursdays at 2 p.m. Meanwhile, those in the travel and tourism industry are likely to drive the most engagements on Tuesdays at 10 a.m. Restaurants, on the other hand, saw the most engagement on Mondays at 2 p.m. and between 4 and 6 p.m.

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Across all these industries, Sundays remained the worst day to post on Instagram.

Understanding your audience

Every brand is different, and every audience is different. If 90% of your target audience is based in Australia, you’re not going to have the same optimal time to post as a brand whose audience is primarily based in North America, and vice versa.

The basic rule for getting good engagement on Instagram–or any social media platform, for that matter–is simple, know as much as you possibly can about your audience. The more you know about them, the more you’re going to be able to tailor your content to them. And the more tailored your content is, the higher your chances of engagement (and conversions) are.

Even with the case of optimal post timings on Instagram, understanding your audience behaviors and engagements will help you determine when they’re most active on the platform.

Instagram offers an insights feature that enables you to do just that.

Instagram audience insights are incredibly useful for studying the habits and behavioral patterns of your audience. And the more you understand your audience, the better equipped you are to meet their needs.

You can access insights about your audience’s most active times from your Professional Dashboard. Then select “Total Followers” and scroll down to the “Most active times” section to see when your followers are most engaged. You can navigate between the Hours tab and Days tab to understand and visualize which days and hours they’re most active.

If you’re looking for ways to collect additional data that will help you here, you can opt to use a branded link in your Instagram bio. In doing this, you’ll be able to collect valuable click data that will show you the most popular times and days your audience is clicking. You’ll also be able to see details like the device or browser they’re using, as well as their preferred language.

Given that Instagram doesn’t allow you to add links to your Stories unless you have over 10,000 followers and a verified business account, or to your post captions, your bio link is a prime piece of social media real estate.

But it’s often the case that one link isn’t enough, which is where tools like Link Gallery come in.

Link Gallery is a link in biol that enables you to direct users to multiple destinations from a single link. Think links to your website, latest blog posts, or online store–all accessible from one link. What this means is that you can let your audience know where else you live online, and also track the activity on each destination URL. By tracking this, you can identify the types of content your audience prefers, or even the path to conversion that’s most successful for your business.

Get started with Link Gallery

Find the best time to post on Instagram today

Social media can sometimes be a bit of a minefield, which is why it’s important to be in sync with your audience.

Keep an eye on your audience insights, and make use of tools like Link Gallery to help you collect additional data wherever possible. With all this data in hand, it won’t be difficult to identify the best time to post on Instagram for your brand.

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