I’ve been helping people to grow their Instagram accounts for years now and I always get asked about when to post on Instagram and how often. This article should explain just that.
Wondering when to post on Instagram? The answer is to do so as frequently as possible, without hindering the quality of your posts. There is no perfect time to post, however, by being consistent with the timing of your posts, your content becomes part of your most engaged followers’ daily schedule.
When you upload at a consistent time each day, you will gradually build an engaged community of people who are eagerly waiting in anticipation for your next post.
Provided that your content is good of course!
Contrary to that though, I recommend that in the beginning, you upload at as many different times as possible, so that you can see which posting times get the most/best engagement.
A good starting point is to begin posting at times that your ideal followers (or clients) will likely be on their phones, i.e. on the bus to work, during lunch or just before bed.
Going forward, once you’ve done some thorough testing, you can use your insights and best judgement to schedule your posts for a specific time slot each day.
How often should you post on Instagram?
As already mentioned above, you’ll want to be posting as often as you can without it negatively affecting the quality of your content.
On my tattoo-related account, I’m sharing amazing tattoos up to 5 times a day and am gaining 1,000s of new followers each week.
99% of the time though, this is an unrealistic goal.
I’ve managed to pull this off because of the easy nature of both finding & posting tattoos.
However, there’s no way that I could post 5 times a day on my marketing account – unless I had a whole team dedicated to creating content for me.
For most of you, I would recommend that you start by posting every other day and work upwards from there. Your main target should be to post daily.
The trick is to keep things simple so that you can start churning out content quicker & easier.
And for those of you wondering, don’t worry about posting too often.
If someone unfollows you because you posted twice that day, they were never going to buy anything from you in the first place.
How to access Instagram Insights
Just in case you weren’t aware of how to check your Instagram Insights, you’ll first want to set your Instagram account up as either a Business Account or Creator account.
To do this you will need to go into the Instagram app (on mobile), click on your profile picture in the bottom right corner, click on the triple bar icon (‘≡’) at the top right, and then click on Settings, then Account.
From there you will see the options at the bottom to switch to a business/creator account.
Once you’ve done this, you can find your Instagram Insights by going back to your profile.
Instagram Insights will show you detailed information on both your content and your followers. Including which of your content has been performing the best.
Spending some time reviewing this information regularly can certainly help you to improve and create more great content, as well as learning when to post it all going forward.
I was able to see that over 75% of my followers were male, so I could tailor my messaging to suit my audience.
Always Be Testing
When it comes to knowing when to post on Instagram, you should understand that Instagram’s algorithm can be temperamental at times.
Some of your posts might do very well, a few might go viral and many can fall flat on its face.
I’ve had some posts get over 15,000 likes and then there are others that struggle to get 200.
That’s just how Instagram is.
The thing is, your posts can underdeliver for any number of reasons, including the choice of images, text, captions, colours, messaging, timing and more.
So as you can see, knowing when to post on Instagram is only part of the issue.
You need to be persistent in creating content so that you can accurately test which aspects of your content worked and which didn’t.
Make small and gradual improvements to your text, colours, layout and more, one step at a time, to build an Instagram account that others are envious of.
It won’t happen overnight but it will happen.
Conclusion
There’s no big secret in knowing when to post on Instagram. The idea is just to be posting as much as possible, without affecting the quality of your content.
In the early stages, you should test out different posting times to understand which time slots are getting you the most (and best) engagement.
Once you’ve figured out the best time to post, it’s crucial that you become consistent in posting at that time, to give your most engaged followers something to look forward to.
Do you have any questions or feedback on when to post on Instagram? Let me know in the comments section below!
