Are you wondering what times of the day are best to post content on social media for maximum engagement and reach? That we’ll find out in this guide.
Let’s be honest: we all want the best return on our content creation efforts – be it in the form of views, engagement, or leads. But that requires posting content at a time when most of your target audience is online, waiting to see your content.
For instance, people tend to use social media a lot during mid-day and mid-week, primarily because they’re taking a break from whatever they were doing. Whereas, content creators experience minimum engagement during weekends, possibly because users are busy in their vacation.
In this guide, we’ll dive deep into the best times to post on social media, especially Instagram. Let’s dive in.
Is There a Best Time to Post on Social Media?
You see, students are likely to scroll through social media when they get free from school. Whereas, the 9-5 workers use it after 5 PM once they’re done with the work. Similarly, younger people are likely to use social media late at night whereas millennials are prone to sleeping sooner or by midnight.
With that at hand, there are surely some golden times to post social media content for maximum results. It all comes down to who your target audience is, their characteristics, time zone, behavior patterns, etc. And finding out the perfect time to post according to your criteria can be challenging.
For instance, social media marketers use previous data to identify what type of content worked the best and when. This helps them identify the ideal times to post for maximum reach, engagement, and results.
But the same is not doable for people starting with a personal brand who don’t have a lot of data at hand. In that case, experimenting with posting at times that worked best for most content creators is the best solution. And that’s what this guide will help you with.
Why Should You Post at a Specific Time?
Finding out your ideal post times and scheduling your posts accordingly will boost your content’s reach. It’s because the algorithm of popular social media platforms like Instagram prioritizes the most recent content.
For instance, if the algorithm views two posts as equivalent, it’ll rank the newer one higher in the news feed and search results. That’s why your content is likely to get the most traction in the first few hours of posting.
This clarifies that posting at a time when most of your followers are active is most effective for maximum views, engagement, and leads. The same applies to most social channels like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
What is the Best Time to Post on Instagram?
The overall golden time for creators to post content on Instagram is 11 AM on Wednesday. Other than that, the times of 10 and 11 AM on Tuesdays and Wednesdays also work very well. That said, here’s an overview of the best times to post on Insta according to days:
Best Time to Post on Instagram on Monday
Data reveals that 12:00 PM is the best time for content posting on Instagram on Monday. Likely people are encouraged to perform best after a good weekend and when they find themselves tired at lunch, they scroll through social media a bit.
Best Time to Post on Instagram on Tuesday
We’ve found that 9:00 AM tends to be the best time to post on Instagram on Tuesday. It’s possibly because people are replying to comments they may have made on Monday or engaging with comments on their Monday post. To provide a bigger picture, engagements tend to be maximum between 8 AM and 10 PM on Tuesday.
Best Time to Post on Instagram on Wednesday
As social media engagements are at their peak in the mid-week, Wednesday is an important day for creators. According to our research, 11 AM is the best time to post on Instagram on Wednesday. The time between 10 AM and 11 PM also yields great results in terms of views and engagements.
Best Time to Post on Instagram on Thursday
The case with Thursday is quite similar to other mid-week days, Tuesday and Wednesday. We’ve found 12:00 PM to be the best time for posting content. Apart from that, the engagements remain high till 2 PM, until lunchtime is over.
Best Time to Post on Instagram on Friday
Data suggests 2:00 PM to be the golden posting time for social media creators on Friday. It seems people get really tired after putting in the effort to complete all their weekly tasks before planning the weekend ahead. When they feel tired at lunchtime, they’re likely to scroll through social media a bit and engage with some posts.
Best Time to Post on Instagram on Saturday
The best time to post on Instagram on Sunday is morning hours between 7 AM and 11 AM. To be precise, engagements are at a maximum at 9 AM. So, it’s recommended you take advantage of those early hours before your audience gets busy planning their weekend.
Best Time to Post on Instagram on Sunday
The case with Sunday is similar to that of Saturday. The best time to post on Sunday is between the early hours of 8 AM and 12 PM. Apart from that, the engagements remain constant throughout noon, evening, and midnight.
What is the Best Time to Post Reels on Instagram?
Instagram reels are a highly effective way to boost your growth and engagement rate. Studies suggest the best time to post reels on Instagram is between 9 AM and 12 PM from Monday to Thursday. Where on Friday, you’re better off posting reels at lunchtime.
When it comes to weekdays, Saturdays, and Sundays, either post reels during the early hours or in the evening for maximum attention. Other than that, we recommend experimenting with posting reels at different times each day to see what works best for you.
What is the Best Time to Post on LinkedIn?
The mid-week days of Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday are the best days to post on LinkedIn. The best time for LinkedIn posting, according to studies, is between 11 AM and 12 PM on Wednesday. Moreover, the early hours between 8 AM and 12 PM work best on most work days in a week.
What is the Best Time to Post on Facebook?
Data by SproutSocial reveals that 3 AM and early-morning hours between 10 AM and 12 PM are the best times to post on Facebook. Apart from that, the best days to post on Facebook are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Moreover, the engagements are the lowest after 7-8 PM.
What is the Best Time to Post on Twitter?
According to HubSpot, the time between noon and 9 P.M is the best time to post on Twitter for maximum reach. And unlike other social media platforms, Friday yields the maximum engagements for Twitter threads. Also, early mornings tend to not bring great results on Twitter.
How to Find the Best Time to Post on Social Media for Yourself?
As mentioned before, every influencer, brand, and public figure has a different audience. It means a post time that works for one creator may not work well for others.
So, though you can benefit from the popular post times like Wednesday at 11 AM, keeping track of the performance of your previous posts is the best solution. This way, you’ll be able to find the best-performing post time for yourself.
Follow the steps below to do that:
Find Out When Your Audience is Most Active
The first thing you might want to do is determine when your audience is active the most. But before we find out how, let’s discuss why.
Why it’s important to find out when your audience is active
Social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter prioritize recency. A more recent post is more likely to show up on a follower’s feed.
For instance, when you open up Instagram on a device, you’ll find that it refreshes and loads the most previous pieces of content for you. Besides posts, you’ll also see that the recent story updates are shown first.
So, if you want to get the most eyeballs on your content, you must publish it when most of your target audience is active. Otherwise, they’re prone to missing out on your posts, which you wouldn’t want.
How to find out when your followers are most active
A good way to figure out when your followers are active is by asking them – through a post, a story, or a poll. Other than that, you can use the good old common sense method where you make assumptions regarding your target audience and experiment with those times.
For example, if you target university students, the evening may be the best time to post, other than the early morning hours. But if office workers are your main target, you can experiment with posting lunchtime. Similarly, if you’re targeting the audience of another country, say America, post according to their time zone.
Track Performance of Your Previous Posts
If you’ve already been posting for a while, checking the performance of your previous content will help with determining your golden post time. A good solution for checking how well your previous posts performed is by using an analytics tool. Otherwise, you can get away with the reports provided by the social media platform you’re using.
When tracking the performance of your posts, consider dividing them into three parts:
- Max reach – the posts that got the most views
- Max engagement – the posts that got the most likes & comments
- Max sales – the posts that landed you the most leads or traffic
When looking at the results of your previous posts, you’ll see which days of the week and which times of the day brought maximum return. Unless you have an analytics tool, you may have to do it manually by tracking each of your previous posts.
Tip: If you’re seeking an affordable Instagram manager & analytics tool to help boost your Instagram growth, Gramyfied is your best bet. It automatically tracks the performance of your previous posts to give you suggestions for the best posting times for you.
But what if you haven’t started sharing content yet? Or don’t have enough pieces of content to make decisions upon? In that case, studying your competition will be effective.
Research Your Competitors
If you’re a SaaS brand looking to grow your audience on Instagram, it’s likely a lot of your competitors will be using Instagram as well. Simply keep an eye on their best-performing posts to find out what post times have been working for them well. Then, experiment with those times for your own content and see if they work for you as well.
Apart from that, it’s worth diving into details when checking your competition. For instance, you can look at when they post value-adding content and what time is specified for marketing posts. This’ll help save the time you’d spend experimenting yourself.
Furthermore, we also recommend not to schedule your posts on hours, say 8 AM or 10 AM. Instead, go for :15, :30, or :40 marks so the competition is minimal and your posts grab the most eyeballs.
Keep Experimenting & Come Up With a Strategy
Once you’ve started posting on social media, it’s recommended you keep tracking the performance of different types of content you post at different times.
Plus, once you have the data of your best-performing content and your competitors’ best performing-content at hand, you can come up with a strategy for fast growth. At this point, you should keep posting on the times you’ve set for yourself.
Also, make sure you post the most important posts at times that yield maximum results, like 11 AM, Wednesday. Other than that you can consider doing A/B testing. It refers to using a social media tool for posting the same content at different times to see which time works better if all else is equal.
And, if you’re targeting audiences in multiple countries, creating multiple accounts may be effective. It’ll help get the best return on your content creation efforts by creating the most specialized content for different audiences.
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