Timing is of utmost importance when it comes to the success of your social media content. Posting your social media content at the right time is crucial to driving more potential traffic, enhancing content reach, and ensuring optimal engagement.
Instagram has recently taken over social media platforms with more and more users signing up daily.
Instagram currently ranks as the 4th most used social media platform with over 2 Billion people using the app each month. This means there is a harder competition to get better engagement.
Several factors play a role in determining the success of your Instagram content. These include quality of content, audience interaction, and posting schedules.
Likewise, the timing at which you post your content is crucial to get more likes, comments, shares, and reach better.
In this article, we will extensively discuss the best time to post on Instagram for likes. This article will help you understand Instagram algorithms, the importance of timing, and ways to enhance your content reach and engagement.
Understanding Instagram’s Algorithm
Instagram follows a specified algorithm to prioritize content and serve the right content to the right users.
This is done to offer a better user experience to everyone and assure content relevance for every user to make their Instagram sessions more captivating and productive.
Engagement plays a crucial role in enhancing the visibility of your Instagram content. With more likes, comments, and shares on your content, Instagram gets a signal that your content is valuable and thus ranks your content higher in the feed of your potential audience and followers.
The timing of your content has a significant impact on your content engagement too. You may witness a remarkable difference in your content engagement if you put a special emphasis on the timing of your posts.
The right content posted at the right time may help you succeed on Instagram.
General Best Time to Post on Instagram
According to statistics, the best time to post content on Instagram varies depending on the day of the week.
Here is a general day-wise summary of the time to post your Instagram content.
- Monday: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
- Tuesday: 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM
- Wednesday: 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM
- Thursday: 9:00 AM – 12:00 PM and 2:00 PM
- Friday: 11:00 AM
- Saturday: 9:00 – 12:00 PM
- Sunday: 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Weekdays usually observe more audience engagement as compared to weekends. On weekends, you might witness reduced engagement on your posted content.
Knowing the peak engagement time is crucial to determine the right time to post your Instagram content. As per the stats, the time period between 6 AM to 9 AM shows the least content engagement.
Hence you should post your content during the times of higher engagement. This would help you drive more likes, comments, and shares on your posted content.
Influence of Audience Demographics
The best time to post your Instagram content and get more likes is highly influenced by the demographics of your potential audience.
You need to consider factors like age, location, and time zone of your audience to determine the ideal time for your posts.
Age of your Potential Audience
If your potential audience comprises teens and young adults, then the right time to post your Instagram content is between 4 PM to 9 PM.
People of this age group tend to use Instagram after their school or university timings or during late nights leading to more engagement during this time.
Adults aged 25 to 45 years show peak Instagram activity during lunch breaks or after their work timings.
If your Instagram content is targeted at such adults then you should consider posting your content from 11 AM to 1 PM and from 5 PM to 9 PM to get more likes.
People of the older age group would usually show higher activity during early mornings and early evenings. For such an audience, it is recommended to post your content from 7 AM to 9 AM and from 6 PM to 8 PM.
Location of Audience
The best time to post on Instagram for likes is greatly influenced by the location of your audience too.
You have to consider the workweek structure, holidays, and peak activity time based on the location of your audience.
Western audiences may show higher engagement during the weekends. However, if your audience is based in the Asian region, then you may have to optimize your post timings depending on their work schedules and vacation patterns.
Time Zone
Time zones are of immense importance when optimizing your Instagram posting time. If your audience is spread all over the globe then you should keep an eye on the peak hours in various regions.
If your content is locally targeted then it gets a lot easier to optimize your timing as per your local time zone. You can rely on various tools too to assess peak activity times of various time zone regions.
Niche Specific Best Time to Post on Instagram for Likes
The best time to post content on your Instagram varies significantly depending on your niche. You have to tailor your posting times based on the industry your content belongs to.
Based on statistics given by iconosquare, here is an industry-specific breakdown of the best time to post content on your Instagram for maximum engagement.
Hospitals & Healthcare Brands
Mondays: 10 am – 1 pm
Tuesdays: 11 am – 4 pm
Wednesdays: 10 am – 3 pm
Thursdays: 10 am – 1 pm
Fridays: 11 am – 3 pm
Restaurants and Food Brands
Mondays: 10 am – 1 pm
Tuesdays: 11 am – 2 pm
Wednesdays: 11 am – 2 pm
Thursdays: 10 am – 1 pm
Fridays: 11 am – 1 pm
Schools and Educational Brands
Wednesdays: 2 – 4 pm and 9 pm
Travel and Tourism Brands
Weekdays: 10 am – 12 pm and 7 pm – 9 pm
Weekends: 9 am – 11 am and 4 pm – 6 pm
Fashion and Apparel Brands
Weekdays: 12 pm – 2 pm and 7 pm – 9 pm
Weekends: 9 am – 11 am and 5 pm – 7 pm
(Sundays appear to be the best days for posting fashion and apparel-related content.)
Fitness and Wellness Brands
Weekdays: 6 am – 8 am and 5 pm – 7 pm
Weekends: 8 am – 10 am and 4 pm – 6 pm
(Tuesday and Wednesday can be considered the best days for such content.)
Food and Beverage Brands
Weekdays: 12 pm – 2 pm
Weekends: 5 pm – 7 pm
Digital Marketing and Social Media Brands
Weekdays: 9 am – 11 am and 1 pm – 3 pm.
Weekends: Very limited activity, however, 10 am – 12 pm can be considered a better time frame.
Software and IT Brands
Weekdays: 10 am – 12 pm.
Weekends: 1 pm – 3 pm
Apart from this, you can also optimize your posting times by assessing the posting activity of your competitors in the niche. Looking at their posting practices and consequent engagement on their posts will give you an idea about the activity trends of your potential audience.
Testing and Adjusting Your Posting Schedule
A great way to optimize your posting schedule is to test your audience behavior and monitor analytics. This can be done by conducting A/B Testing or utilizing Instagram insights.
Conducting A/B Testing on Post Timing
A/B Testing is a process where one element is changed while keeping other elements the same and assessing the difference in outcomes. The same testing can be done for your posting time too.
In A/B testing, you can create a post and post it in various time frames and assess the consequent engagement and likes on your posts.
This would help you know which time is better to post your content and get maximum likes.
This would also help you know about your audience’s behavior. As a result, you will get to know the right time to post your upcoming content to get maximum engagement and likes on your posts.
Instagram Insights
Instagram insights are a great way to track the activity of your audience and the performance of your posts.
These Instagram insights give you significant details about the performance of your posts and help you optimize your posting times in the light of the information you get.
In order to see Instagram insights, you will need to have your Instagram account in business or creator mode. Once you have your account in either of these modes, you can simply follow these steps:
- Go to your profile section.
- Click on “View insights”.
- View metrics under the “Overview” section
- You can also click on specific content you’ve shared to get a more detailed breakdown.
Furthermore, you also need to keep an eye on the updates in Instagram algorithms to stay well aligned with the latest updates and optimize your posting activities accordingly.
Conclusion
Instagram posting times are crucial to your success as a content creator or a social media manager on Instagram. You have to look for the best time to post on Instagram for likes and maximum engagement.
Optimizing your Instagram posting time is key to getting optimal engagement on your posts and enhancing your potential reach.
In order to ensure more likes and better engagement, you need to consider several factors like your niche, your potential audience, and their demographics. You also need to consider the day of the week and time of the day while posting your Instagram content.
Besides that, you can stay aligned with Instagram algorithms by utilizing insights from the app as well as monitoring your audience’s activities.
This would help you optimize your timings with changing circumstances and Instagram algorithms.