Users used to speculate and experiment to determine the ideal moment to publish on Instagram back when the platform had a chronological timeline. Many claimed that their thoughtfully chosen Instagram posting hours had resulted in higher involvement. Before discovering ways to “outsmart” the algorithm remained everyone’s main objective, these were the good – old days.
You must now produce and publish appealing material that other people will want if you want to increase your Instagram following. If you don’t post at the correct moment, your followers might never see your photos on IG because of its constantly evolving algorithm. So how do you decide when to share something on Instagram?
Don’t worry if you’re unaware of how to post on IG
or where to begin. We’re offering you a thorough guide to publishing on IG, including the ideal time to post depending on the day of the week and the type of business you run. You’ll be sharing on Instagram like a pro in no time with our advice on how to make the most of the scheduling tools for Instagram and the finest Instagram promotion service.
Engagement on Instagram Worldwide
Our universes are more globally interrelated than ever before if the last couple years have proven to us everything. In need of our businesses to achieve their objectives, our strategy for social media must take into account this new approach to life.
The graph below displays the global interaction on Instagram by each day of the week and time of day. The time is in CDT, please note. This means that you wouldn’t post at 11 AM for each timezone separately because 11 AM CDT is suitable for posts that are intended for a worldwide audience.
Best Instagram Posting Hours by Time Zone
The effectiveness of your social media advertising approach might be significantly impacted by your location. Identifying when your Instagram audience is most likely to be engaged can help you reach them at those times because audiences react varied based on where they are in the global. The below time periods were found to be the most ideal by later data. So if you want to get more IG followers, try posting around the times below (according to your audience).
Time Zone For Canada and the United States
Central Standard Time (CST): 6 to 8 AM
Western Standard Time (WST): 2 AM to 6 AM
Eastern Standard Time (EST) 4 to 9
Here are the best-ranking posting times for collaboration in different regions if you’re seeking the best times to publish for viewers outside of North America.
- UK: 4 AM to 6 AM
- Africa: 6 AM
- South America: 4 AM
- Australasia: 11 PM to 2 AM
- Europe (Eastern): 5 AM to 7 AM
- Europe (Western): 6 PM – 8 PM
- South Asia and the Middle East: 3 AM
- East Asia and Southeast Asia: 11 PM to 4 AM
Cheatsheet for the Ideal IG Posting Hours
How much involvement you receive within that same timeframe can vary depending on what day of the week you publish. Consider the little variations in your schedule and attitude that you may not be aware of and how they affect your attitude. All who follow your Instagram account are subject to the same rules.
Even if we prefer not to admit it, a lot of us browse social media early thing in the morning to gather up on the previous evening. It’s time for a lunch break browsing after that. Ultimately, before going to night, we have one more glance at what our buddies and favorite companies are up to.
The ideal period of the day to post on IG
- Wednesday, and Friday: 11 AM to 12 PM CDT – Think about the fact that the majority of your audience will be on their lunch hour at this moment and even more willing to browse Instagram to see what their friends, favorite companies, and influencers have been up to lately. Publish content throughout these times that is simple to interact with and spread.
- Tuesday: 11 AM to 2 PM CDT – Lunch hours are typical throughout these hours, as mentioned above. However, the extra period may be a suitable time for posting long-form material like IG TV videos or even going live on IG.
- Thursday: 11:00 CDT. To generate a timely response that people will return to continue reading, start publishing Instagram stories on Thursdays during these shorter lunch periods with engagement enhancers like polls, queries, and quizzes.
The same hours may not be practical every day when timing postings. Take into account your industry as well as the day of the week.
Industry-specific Best Times to Post on Instagram
The overall information provided above regarding the best time to post is a fantastic place to start if you want to develop an active IG following. But if you need to get more specific, Sprout Social’s analysis demonstrates that the ideal times to post, are when your company is in the technology company, healthcare, education, restaurant, or non-profit sectors.
Technology Businesses
IG peak periods for the technology sector vary globally, making it challenging to predict when to post. Emphasis on the time frames listed below to order to make sure IG responds to tech postings.
- The absolute best time is Wednesday at 6 or 9 a.m.
- Best times to post on IG: Wednesday from 10 to 11 in the morning, Friday from 7 to 10 in the morning, and Saturday from 7 to 11 in the morning.
- Worst Day: Sunday: In this sector, most people do not browse social media as frequently on the weekends.
Retail Business
For individuals working in the retail sector, IG retail posting is really essential. Many people than ever today utilize Instagram as a buying platform. The ideal and worst IG posting hours are listed below if you’re trying to attract an audience engaged in shopping.
- The best times to post on IG: Wednesday at three o’clock and Friday at noon (11 am – 12 pm)
- The absolute best day: Wednesday
- Day to avoid: Sunday. This is reasonable given that most individuals are present in real life on weekends.
- Lowest Engagement: Early in the Morning and Late at Night During these times, the majority of individuals sleep and are not on social media.
Information & Entertainment
Finding the optimal time to upload content on Instagram to look out for and feature on customer feeds is now more important than ever because social media has grown to be such a significant channel for the media and entertainment industries.
- Best time to post to IG: Friday (9 am)
- Best days for engagement: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday (8-5 pm) during working hours.
- The lowest engagement: Saturday and Sunday. Since most individuals are off work, spending more time with family and friends and less time on social media.
Non-Profit
Your whole social media strategy for NGOs should include Instagram. Facebook is a fantastic venue for event promotion, and IG posting is the ideal way to round out your plan. Also, the cost of marketing on IG is relatively low. That’s something most NGOS would appreciate. Discover when to post on IG for NGOs by reading on.
- The ideal time to post on IG: Wednesday at 2:00 PM is
- Best Participation: Wednesday (1-4 pm)
- The worst days to get engaged: Saturdays and Sundays
Healthcare
Most healthcare organizations don’t place a strong premium on social media. Even though this is the case, posting on IG is still significant and deserving of improvement for individuals in the healthcare industry due to the enormous number of people who use the site generally. According to Sprout Social’s study, the ideal times to post for healthcare is as follows.
- The ideal time to post to IG: is Tuesday at 8 AM.
- Most Regular Participation: Monday through Friday, 9 am to 3 pm
- Worst Days for Engagement: In most industries, engagement is lowest on Saturdays and Sundays.
Professional Services
Professional social media companies typically share instructional content with links to articles, videos, and other sites. The opening post piques the curiosity of users, who are subsequently directed to various types of material. As per howsociable.com, the optimum time to post about professional services is in the early hours because research shows that users love to consume this material first thing in the morning.
- Best time to post on IG: Any day between 9 am and 10 pm
- Best days.: Weekdays, especially Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday
- Worst days for engagement: Saturdays and Sundays are the Most people do not choose to receive education on the weekends.
Drinks and Food
Instagram users undoubtedly enjoy seeing images of mouthwatering meals. Simple Instagram tools can tell you that lunchtime is when people are most likely to interact with food images. In the middle of the day, when most professionals take a break, engagement is likely to be at its highest. For the best posting times if you work in the food and beverage industry, keep scrolling.
- The best days to post to IG: are Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
- Best Times: Noon, as this is when most people check their phones.
- Most Exciting Day: Friday marks the beginning of the weekend when reservations are most popular.
- Weekends are the worst days for getting engaged.
Travel & Tourism
Even though not everyone can travel or wants to, they will still engage with the IG posts you make about it. Studies show that closer to the weekend, between 11 am and 1 pm, there is the greatest activity in this niche. The following was discovered by travel and tourism businesses as the ideal posting period:
- Best days to post on IG: are Fridays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays.
- The most interesting times: are between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. and between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.
When Should I Post My Instagram Reels?
Instagram Reels are hugely popular, particularly at the moment. Although many are still trying to figure out Instagram stories, reels have become the better product. Because it’s so simple to view, people love the short video format and are watching videos for longer periods of time. However, just because something is simple to consume doesn’t mean it’s simple to produce. In actuality, making Reels can require a substantial amount of time. If you’re going to devote effort to developing a piece of content, you would like to post it in a way that will be appreciated.
The appropriate time to publish on your particular page can vary depending on the kind of Instagram material you use, and it may take some trial and error to determine what works ideal for your audience. Here are some recommendations you can use to get started, though.
You should post on Mondays at 6 am, 10 am, or 10 pm. You should post on Tuesdays at 2 am, 4 am, or 9 am. Try 7 am, 8 am, or 11 pm on Wednesdays. Tuesday at 9 a.m., 12 p.m., or 7 p.m. Posting at 5 am, 1 pm or 3 pm on Fridays ends the work week. Try Saturdays at 11 am, 7 pm, and 8 pm, or 4 pm on Sundays. Sundays at 7 am.
Discover the Best Instagram Posting Hours By Own Research
Consider Using A Business Account & Insights
Creating an Instagram business account offers a variety of advantages, one of which is the capability to use analytics to determine when your audience is most engaged. You may adjust posting times by using these IG analytics to see when your subscribers are most engaged. The most reach and interaction will result from posting at these times, which will help you increase your following.
As previously indicated, an Instagram business account or Instagram creator identity is required to view Insights. Entrance to the Instagram Creator studio panel is the main perk of changing to a creator account. Further audience insights are provided by the Instagram capabilities on this dashboard, such as in-depth information about the online times of your users.
You can view a variety of information when you have access to Insights, including follower location, demographics, and peak activity hours. You may also check which posts are getting the most interaction from your followers. This can assist you in figuring out the kind of material that is most appealing to your audience so you can produce more of it and boost engagement even further.
At the end of the day, each of your readers is different, and relying on where they are in the world, what they do for a living, and how much time they have available, they might or might not fit the criteria for the ideal posting time that you will determine via your research. By conducting your own experiments, you can really choose when to post. Look into the peak times of activity for your particular audience. Verify their location and time zone by looking up their location in the world.
Learn how the algorithm functions
You need to keep in mind one more aspect of this: the Instagram algorithm. Here is a quick explanation of the algorithm’s operation in case you are unfamiliar. Instagram already has your content under surveillance when you upload it. It will be shared by the algorithm with some of your followers. The algorithm will then send it out to more of your followers if it likes what it sees in terms of interaction. Once more, if there is strong involvement there, it will reach even more individuals. Presumably, this pattern will continue until your post appears on the search results page.
However, it is clear how crucial your early opinions and participation are. Instagram will presume that your post is not very important if no one responds to it straight away and won’t bother to share it with others. As a result, the platform won’t recognize the value and worth of your post if you publish in the early hours of the morning or at a period of the day when most of your users aren’t online. Without that initial spike in interaction, you’ll post.
Use the Most Popular Scheduling Tools to Plan Your Instagram Posts
Not interested in attempting to find the best times to post for yourself? Lacking the time to closely track your Instagram involvement, look at analytics, and determine when to post is the optimum time? We understand. The optimum time to publish on Instagram for your account is displayed to you using popular scheduling tools, which remove the element of guessing from the process.
Later
It might be difficult to determine when to publish on Instagram. The need to determine the optimal posting hours and optimize your content is greater than ever since engagement and reach appear to be dropping every day. Identifying the optimal time to publish to connect with your Instagram followers has been a significant difficulty up until now since, as we’ve discussed above, every account has a different audience.
The “Best Time to Publish” option that Later gives emphasizes the ideal time for your account particularly, as the name suggests. The optimal scheduling window for your Instagram followers is determined by Later’s algorithm based on when they are most active. You must upgrade to one of Later’s commercial plans, which start at $16/month and feature limitless posts and more, in order to use the service to determine the optimal time to post.
Sprout
A dedicated data science department at Sprout continuously collects client data. They compiled the data on the ideal posting times above, and like Later, Sprout Social displays the greatest timing for your posts.
Sprout Social is exceptional in that it can schedule and automatically post your content in addition to showing you the optimal times to post for your account. “The algorithm can examine more texts, more interactions, and more variables over a far larger span of time than a person can to determine the optimum times to deliver a message and how those times change week to week,” said Joel Booth, a Senior Data Scientist at Sprout.
SocialBee
SocialBee might be the sophisticated, economical tool you’ve been seeking to automate all of your social network feeds. Users of this tool can distribute material across a variety of platforms, including Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Pinterest, and Google My Business. The best aspect is that you can alter the postings to fit the demands of each network, giving your material a better opportunity to succeed.
Additionally, SocialBee’s users may reprocess everlasting posts and invalidate time-sensitive topics, establish a content plan for all of their accounts, and get a real-time view of their posts as they modify them courtesy of the Content Categories feature. They even provide a 14-day free trial period so you can try out all of their functions if all of this intrigues you.
Planable
Planable’s user-friendly, “what you see is what you get” interface makes it easy for social media managers to plan extensive Instagram marketing strategies and preview their material precisely as it will seem on the feed. Planable enables users to easily schedule their IG content because it can be difficult to determine the optimum time to post on the social media platform. Users can see their Instagram promotions from above with Planable’s calendar view, and they can schedule content for those times when they recognize their audience will be active and interested.
Drag & dropping posts into the appropriate time slots make content planning straightforward. They can do so from the same location if a piece of material needs minor editing or a complete overhaul.
When is the best time to upload videos on Instagram
Although static articles typically perform well during the day, video postings appear to rank best at night. One explanation for this might be that people store longer films for later in the day when they don’t have work or other obligations since they consider them more time-consuming to view.
Instagram users should publish videos between the hours of 9 PM and 8 AM, 11 AM and 1 PM (when people are often taking a lunch break), and 7 PM to 9 PM (just after people have left work).
The ideal time to upload an Instagram Story:
The best times to post on Stories are right before work, during lunch, and in the late afternoon. Your Story is less likely to stand out and attract viewers over the weekends because there are so many Stories posted. As a result, Influencer Marketing Hub claims that the ideal time to post Stories is during the workweek.
The ideal time to go Instagram live:
Timing is everything when it comes to developing strong relationships with your Instagram users. When you go live, imagine that your followers are at work or in class; even if they wanted to, they wouldn’t be able to attend. This is a far stretch from recording a video for Facebook.
How to Make the Most of Instagram’s multiple Best Posting Times?
After employing the techniques described above, you will eventually realize that there is no one optimum day or time to post on IG. You would not desire a world with just one ideal posting time, after all. However, publishing consistently throughout numerous time periods while managing many social media accounts can get monotonous for a social media manager or marketing firm.
You have two options: manually publish in several time slots or forgo several time slots and choose the optimal moment of the day. If you choose the latter, you will spend a tremendous amount of time wasting time and forfeiting your other better interaction periods. A social media content planner will be useful here. With SocialPilot, you can, for instance, plan and schedule your post for days, weeks, or even months in advance.
Why Is It Important to Post on Instagram at the Best Possible time?
Instagram’s algorithm is constantly changing, making timeliness essential for posts to rank on a user’s feed and allowing for novel features. However, the fundamental ranking largely depends on these three elements:
- Interest: Posts with material that matches what you previously indicated as being of interest will be displayed at the top of your feeds.
- Recency: The most recent posts will take precedence and appear higher in the feeds than those that are many days or weeks older.
- Relationship: On IG, posts, and accounts that you interacted with regularly in the past appear higher in your feed.
Wrapping up
You’ve now gained a thorough understanding of the best and worst times to publish on IG, as well as time zones, post types, audience personas, and some practical strategies for maximizing the platform’s peak hours.
Your major point from this piece should be that, despite Instagram’s constant changes to its policies and algorithm, paying close attention to your insights will enable you constantly stay on top of the game and continue to choose the optimal times to post for your account.
All things aside, keep in mind that if you don’t have content that is appealing, practical, educational, emotionally powerful, and in line with the values of your intended audience, no golden hour will consistently raise your brand engagement or bring in overnight sales. Therefore, we strongly advise you to read this site in order to find interesting Instagram content ideas.
