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To find the most optimal posting time takes research. And, ironically, also time. Luckily, this article is going to show you exactly how to do that! So read on to find out?
Olga Rabo
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When is the best time to post on Instagram? This is a question that doesn’t let many Instagrammers sleep at night. Literally!
And indeed, it’s a tough one. Finding your best time to post on Instagram promises to increase reach and engagement of your posts, which is oh so important in the days of the Instagram algorithm.
There are tons of articles online that give you all kinds of advice on when to post! Some tell you that you should do it on Wednesdays at 3pm. Others tell you that you should actually avoid posting at 3pm and opt to post between 8-9am instead. Then there are others that swear you’ll get the best engagement if only you post from 12-1pm.
Confusing, right?
We're going to summarize all the studies carried out by industry professionals and explain how to find YOUR perfect time to post on Instagram. Let's improve your Instagram content strategy and your presence on the network together!
Good question.
Posting at your unique best time can help you reach more of your followers, which would result in a higher engagement rate on Instagram.
It is crucial to drive as much attention to your post as you can within the first 15-20 minutes, because the algorithm favors those posts that get an initial spike of likes. If your post gets a lot of engagement shortly after it’s posted, it tells Instagram that your content is of great quality — and that the algorithm should push it up the feed for more people to see.
There are engagement techniques you can use to gather those first likes. For instance, commenting on others’ content right after you published (to drive more attention to your own profile and score a ‘like’ on your latest post), using targeted hashtags, boosting your content via Instagram ads, and more.
However, all that hard work may be in vain if you publish your posts when your already existing audience isn’t online. You won’t be able to generate those first likes, which are so crucial for engagement, if you post your content at the time when your audience can’t see it.
When you look at the studies carried out by Sprout Social, Social Pilot, Hootsuite, Buffer, Later or HubSpot, it's enough to make you lose your head. They rarely agree on the best times to post on Instagram.
And for good reason: they've studied thousands of different pieces of data! There's no magic bullet: your best moment is unique. That’s because each brand has a unique audience, located in different time zones and with their own unique behaviors and browsing habits.
But let's take a look at the generic data before getting into the details!
The best time to post on Instagram on Monday is 7 am, 11 am to 2 pm, 4 pm and 8 pm.
The best time to post on Instagram on Tuesday is 7 am, 10 am to 4 pm and 6 pm.
The best time to post on Instagram on Wednesday is 7 am to 8 am, 9 am to 4 pm and 6 pm.
The best time to post on Instagram on Tuesday is 7 am to 1 pm, 2 pm to 4 pm and 8 pm.
The best time to post on Instagram on Friday is 7 am to 8 am, 11 am, 2 pm, 4 pm and 8 pm to 9 pm.
The best time to post on Instagram on Saturday is 4 am, 7 am, 9 am to 3 pm, 4 pm to 8 pm.
The best time to post on Instagram on Sunday is 4 am to 5 am, 6 pm, 7 pm and 9 pm.
Based on the same sources, the best times to post Reels on Instagram tend to cluster around early morning and evening hours. Posting in the morning (between 6 am to 9 am), in the afternoon (between 2 pm to 4 pm) or in the evening (between 6 pm. and 9 pm.) can increase engagement.
Weekdays, particularly Tuesday through Thursday, are often highlighted as optimal days for posting Reels.
Instagram Stories benefit from regular posting and strong engagement with followers, rather than specific times of day.
However, evening times between 6 pm and 9 pm are often recommended for higher engagement. For business-to-business (B2B) sectors, lunch hour (11 am to 1 pm) can also be effective.
According to the various studies previously mentioned that have been conducted, here's a rundown of the best times to post on Instagram by industry.
The best time to post on Instagram is highly individual, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. It depends on you, on your business, and on your audience, which is always case by case.
To find the most optimal posting time takes research. And, ironically, also time. Luckily, we’re going to show you exactly how to do that!
If you have a business Instagram account, you can use the analytics feature to better understand your audience. Instagram Insights will offer you a clear demographic of your followers, including gender, age, and location.
Finding out your audience’s location is very important because the majority of the time, your audience will be from different places. And even when your audience is predominantly from one country, they might still be situated in different time zones.
For example, if most of your followers are in California and New York, they will still be in different time zones even though the cities are in the same country. California uses Pacific Time (PT) and New York uses Eastern Standard Time (EST). So when your followers in California are still sleeping by 6 am, your New York followers are already up and about by 9 AM.
This data is very useful in discovering the exact times the majority of your audience is most active, so you can share your post when they are online.
You will find your audience location by going to the Followers section of Instagram Insights. Here you can see the top location of your followers by City and Country.
After you have identified where your followers are located, find out when they are most active!
How quickly you get engagement on your post determines its lifetime value. In other words, if you post at a time when your followers are online, you give your content an opportunity to be seen — and liked!
Posting at the “peak online” time is pretty much hacking the Instagram algorithm.
This data gives you a good understanding of the best times to post, based on your own audience.
If you need a more exact hour-by-hour breakdown, you can also consult Iconosquare. With our social media analytics features, you can see when the followers are online most (the most colored boxes) and when hardly anyone is online (the least colored spaces). You can find it in Analytics tab, in the Reach section.
What you want is simple: pick the hours when most of your followers are online and post on those specific hours.
Once you’ve published enough content, analytics can compare your posting habits with your most successful content and let you know if you’re hitting the sweet spot and publishing at the time that’s best for you.
On Iconosquare, you’ll be able to see this data in the Best Time to Post chart in the Engagement section.
The blue-colored circles represent your optimal posting times. And the smaller blue circles represent less optimal, but still effective times to post.
You can filter your results by engagement, likes, and reach, and select a data range on our date picker. The very best times are starred. For this case, that’s Wednesdays at 5pm.
It might take a few weeks for enough data to accumulate, but be patient! You can use this information in the future to help you choose the best days to share your content on Instagram to ensure you’re going to get the attention (and traffic) you deserve!
Above, we have seen the best time to post on Instagram depending on the industry. But the results are based on averages from a large amount of data. It is best practice identifying your immediate competitors and monitor when they post, plus which of their posts receive the most engagement.
Tracking your competitors' posting habits can provide valuable insights into their content strategy and help you optimize your own.
Unfortunately, Instagram Analytics doesn’t have a feature in its business tools for monitoring other accounts. Here are some tips on how to track and analyze your competitors' Instagram posting habits manually:
1. Start by understanding their posting frequency to help you determine if you are under or over-posting. How often do they post? Daily? Weekly?
2. Then, you can analyze their posting timing: What times of day do they post? Are there specific days when their engagement is higher? This can inform your own posting schedule.
3. Finally, analyze what type of content (Reels, Stories, Videos, Carousels, Photos) they post and which ones have received the most engagement, which types of content get the most likes, comments, shares, and views.
You can follow these 3 steps manually by sifting through each competitor on Instagram, or you can keep an eye on all your competitors at once, effortlessly, thanks to Iconosquare's social listening feature! Our comparison chart gives you all the information you need, including the day and time they post most on Instagram.
It's up to you to try it out!
Testing and experimenting should be every marketer’s mantra, and social media isn’t an exception.
Once you’ve drawn inspiration from your industry and your competitors and established when your audience is most likely to be online, the next thing to do is to play with different posting times to identify that Most Optimal Hour.
Choose a period when your followers are active on Instagram and start posting at different times within that period, to track any difference you receive in engagement rates.
For example, if you notice that most of your followers are online between 5 and 9pm, schedule your posts to appear at 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9pm. Then, if you want to do the tracking manually, note the engagement rate of each post, along with the day and time of publishing.
Switch the timing of your posts every week. If you published on 1am this Wednesday, next week you could try 1pm instead. Once you have enough data to overview, highlight time slots that show a higher engagement rate:
When it comes to analyzing your posting times, though, keep in mind that the quality of your content can play a key role here.
Different types of content get different engagement rates, that’s why it’s a good practice to post different media on the same day and the same hour of the week. This way, you’ll accumulate more data on each time slot, which will help Iconosquare offer you more accurate suggestions based on your posting history.
To save time, you’re probably already generating Instagram captions and scheduling your Instagram posts for direct publishing. Well done. That means you’re sharing content consistently. What you can do now is to make sure you’re sharing it consistently at the right time.
Iconosquare’s Scheduler is a quick way to schedule your Instagram content. Once you’ve posted enough of it, the Scheduler will indicate the most optimal time to post your media on Instagram with a little yellow star. 🌟
The yellow stars show you some of your best times to post. These are based on your top 5 best times to post (based on engagement) over the period of the last 3 months. So the more different timings you experiment with, the more accurate the suggestions will be!
The blue people show you when your followers are the most active.
It can be very useful if you’re, for example, located in Europe, while your main audience is in the US (like in our own case), you can still make sure your content gets seen despite the difference in time zones. Because let’s face it: being asleep while your audience is awake is, well… not ideal. 😅 So it’s great there’s now a way to get around this!
Instagram is one of the best channels for businesses to grow online and achieve their marketing goals. It just isn't enough anymore to post whenever you feel like it. Becoming more strategic regarding your posting times is one of the key ways to Instagram success.
However, finding the best time to post takes time (pun intended). Remind yourself that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. If you want to take data-driven decisions, you first need to accumulate that data — and that can take a while.
By planning and scheduling your content for the best time to post on Instagram, you can increase your reach, boost your engagement and, ultimately, gain more followers and customers. Hooray!
Olga is based in Berlin. She’s all about creating strategies, increasing clickthrough rates, and sharing her in-depth knowledge of content and social media marketing. She’s a big travel addict.
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