What is the best time to post to Instagram?
Updated: Apr 7, 2021
In truth, whilst you will find many articles and blog posts that suggest the best times to post, these are simply guidelines and are likely not going to be aligned to your audience/locations.
For example, I have two accounts on Instagram. One for my photography work, and the other for my consulting business. Each of them has a very different audience who are active at different times of the day. Therefore, using a recommended time for both is simply not going to get me the best reach and engagement on my posts.
So how do I know when is the best time to post?
The best way, in my opinion, is to check your audience 'heat chart' on Facebook Creator Studio. This is a genuinely helpful graph that will very quickly allow you to determine when the best time is to post based on how many of your audience is active at that time.
This approach ensures you are posting at times that most of YOUR audience are using Instagram, therefore, the theory is, more eyes will see your post, and therefore, hopefully, more engagement on your content.,
How do I access my audience heat map on Facebook Business?
Below is a step by step guide on how to access your Instagram insights on Facebook Creator Studio. I am in the process of getting things in order to create video guides, so once I've recorded that, I will add it to this blog for those who prefer to watch the video :)
Step 1: Navigate to Facebook Creator Studio
Step 2: Switch to Instagram at the top middle of the screen as shown below
Step 3: On the left-hand menu, select 'Insights' as shown below
Step 4: Select 'Audience' below 'Insights' on the menu as shown below:
Step 5: Scroll down the page until you get to the 'When your followers are on Instagram' section as shown below
This graph shows you which days your followers are active on. If you only post a few days a week (ideally you should be posting at least once a day! See this post for more) this graph will help you decide which days to post. In my example, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday are days when most of my followers are active.
However, I post 2 - 4 times a day therefore I'm more interested in a breakdown per day.
Step 6: Select 'Day and Hour' on the graph as shown below
Step 7: Ta-dah! Your 'heat chart'
The above chart is based on my newly created Consulting Instagram account (4 weeks of activity at the time of writing this blog).
Essentially, the darker the colour, the higher the number of active followers.
Anything that is white, should be completely avoided as a time to post because the chances are you will get very little engagement.
Looking at the above chart, ideal times for me, based on my connections would be
Monday - 4pm / 6pm / 7pm
Tuesday - 1pm / 5m / 8pm
Wednesday - 1pm / 4pm / 6pm
etc
What I can also determine from this chart is that Sundays are the best day for me to post as my followers tend to use this day to catch up on Instagram.
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