Audience, feedback, and favoriting, oh my! With more than a billion monthly users, Instagram has the potential to be a pivotal business-building tool if used properly. To get the most out of Instagram, you need to know how to get others to interact with your photos through things like like and commenting. The Instagram algorithm highly values comments and likes.
While there are other indicators of success on Instagram, likes are important since they keep your posts at the top of the feeds of your target demographic. To increase your Instagram following and visibility, we combed through the data to uncover the optimal posting window.
How Often You Should Post on Instagram
Posting on Instagram between 2 and 5 p.m. Eastern time seems to get the most attention from followers. We say roughly because this window might vary greatly based on your target demographic and their typical login times. That’s something we’ll discuss shortly.
You could also see a spike in activity between 5 and 6 a.m., Monday through Friday, when your target demographic begins to awaken. Posting on Instagram on the weekends is best done between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., when users tend to be online later and less often.
Best Practises for Increasing Instagram Popularity
Given the complexity of maximising Instagram likes, we’ve compiled some guidelines to assist you determine the optimal posting times for your business.
What’s Important Is Not How Recent It Is
The Instagram algorithm is always evolving. Instagram now prioritises what it thinks users will find most relevant above what has been posted recently. Therefore, in terms of technological significance, relevance trumps posting time.
For you, what does it entail? To have your images seen by the correct people, they need to be both interesting and tagged with the proper hashtags. It just takes one stunning image to appear in someone’s feed, prompting them to check out your profile and, maybe, decide to follow you.
Remember that Instagram likes no longer appear to followers, but they still matter. If your Instagram post receives a lot of likes, the app will recommend it to other people. Instagram users will still be able to view the likes on their personal photos, but the overall amount of likes won’t be shown publicly.
Think About Different Time Zones
Unless your business operates only in one location, the number of time zones will make it more difficult to determine the ideal posting schedule. If you want people all around the world to interact with your posts, you’ll have to do some testing to see when is best.
Instagram posts should be made on a daily basis; to save time, you may even schedule them in advance. Changing when you publish each day can help you get more likes from people all over the world. To reach those in the Central European, Eastern, and Pacific time zones, try sending messages on Thursday at 5 a.m., Friday at 2 p.m., and Saturday at 10 a.m., respectively. Or, you might keep testing to see if there is a specific period that seems to work best for increasing engagement across the board.
The Best Times to Post
Instagram users receive the most organic likes and comments on posts made between Tuesday and Friday, with Wednesday being the most popular day to share content. It’s no surprise that the weekend is the slowest time of the week.
Fresh, consistent material is the key to Instagram success, so don’t skip posting on those days. On days with little engagement, though, you may want to be even more selective about when you post.
Think About Your Target Market
The amount of interaction on Instagram that a certain brand or demographic sees varies greatly. Brands in the beauty and fashion industries, for example, have a wide clientele, so they see activity at all hours of the day. In contrast, IT companies tend to see more engagement during traditional work hours (M-F, 9-5), namely before and after lunch.
Instagram Insights allows you to see when your followers and fans are most active on the app so you can post content at the optimal time. However, testing, testing, and more testing is the greatest method to correctly evaluate involvement. You won’t be able to get all the information you need about your Instagram followers from the platform’s statistics. In order to have a clearer idea of what hours and dates work best for your business, you should test them out over the course of many weeks.
Get more people to follow on Instagram
Want to boost Instagram engagement and follower count? Our Instagram follow button may be set up in a jiffy. Put this nifty widget on your site, and your visitors will be able to follow you on social media with just a click. The audience is the starting point for engagement. Having this option readily available makes expanding your fan base and attracting additional likes a breeze.
In addition to this article, we have compiled a number of free Instagram resources to help you increase your following, such as our guide to the proper Instagram caption limit, our answer to the question “how do you share a post on Instagram,” our collection of tips and tricks for optimising the size of your Instagram profile picture, and our guide to optimising the caption for an Instagram giveaway.