The daily use of the famous photographic social network Instagram highlights how this window on the world can reach an infinite number of people. The platform makes available to its subscribers not only the possibility to look out in a few seconds on what is happening in the world but to be able to convey it to their own contents without particular efforts.
Although the interactions and topics covered on Instagram are really many, it is possible to plan the publication of content based on the target audience and the times of greatest traffic. But when to post on Instagram? In the next few lines, we will try to answer this question, but we recommend that you also take a look at the article on how to put empty space on Instagram to have more completeness on what to write on Instagram as a biography.
Let’s go deeper and try to understand when is the perfect time to post on Instagram, assuming that in some cases it also depends on the topics covered and the target audience.
How to know the best times to publish posts, stories and other content on Instagram
The first step to take to understand the ideal time to publish your content on Instagram is to know the best times and days to make your posts visible to the public. So that you can outline the steps to follow in the simplest way possible, in the next few lines we will examine each stage to reach the goal. We will analyze specifically- time zone, data, best times-days, dedicated applications and programming software. Let’s start with the first point.
The importance of the time zone
The internationality of Instagram gives you enormous visibility but it is important to consider that the ideal publication time of Canada is not always functional on the other side of the world. The most important brands publish messages and posts at different times depending on the target audience and above all on their availability.
If your followers are residents in the USA or Canada, it is advisable to evaluate the EST time zone, as it includes a greater number of people available and active on Social. If your target audience is closer to the UK it is smart to post according to the GMT time zone. For this reason, it is essential to analyze the data of your followers in order to understand the times and days of publication.
Personal profile data analysis
Among the most appreciated features of Instagram is the tool for analyzing the data of your followers. If you search the web for the best times to post on Instagram you will find an infinite number of articles that recommend completely different time slots. Although this may sound strange, it mostly depends on the fact that each profile has a story of its own. Your followers and related posts need an objective analysis based on your content and not on third parties. Today, in fact, we will see how to analyze and make the most of your data.
There are four key points that you must always keep in mind- location, age, gender and period of greatest activity of followers. As previously mentioned, Instagram already has a built-in tool that allows you to observe such data. Once you have opened the official Instagram app, just click on the “statistical data” section or for the most updated versions on “Insight“; you will find it in your profile, precisely where you have the bio.
Most likely you cannot see this section because you have set up a personal profile. In order to unlock the analytics function, you need to switch to the company account. Switching from a personal to a corporate profile is free and allows you to have a lot more information.
To make the change click on the button at the top right with the three horizontal lines present, at the top right, in the home of your profile. Then enter the Settings and scroll the page until you find the Account item. From here just click on “Switch to a professional account“, Instagram will ask you to accept and in a few seconds, you will see the much desired Insight category.
Best time to post on Instagram
Now that you have the Insight tool available, you need to give the App time to store periodic data. We recommend that you wait at least seven days to accumulate enough data that you can actually work on. You should know that Instagram analyzes the activities of your followers over seven days or over the past thirty.
Thanks to this tool you will be able to understand the times when your content has been most successful and when the user was particularly active on your Instagram profile. The graphs are very simple to decipher, but in order not to make mistakes, just know that the best times to post on Instagram are shown on the left side of the screen, while on the right you can see the number of active followers for a specific day of the week.
Usually, the best days to post are Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. The recommended times are from 11:00 to 13:00 (meal times). Even the evening hours, from 19:00 to 21:00, are the times that Instagrammers prefer, as they are finished working. Also on Saturday at 17 o’clock, it is a good time to publish. Instead, to be abolished on Sundays.
Detaching ourselves for a moment from your community, it is interesting to examine the data provided by third-party applications such as SproutSocial. This application highlights the best days and times for a certain category of address, add them to the examination of your personal profile to try to know when to publish on Instagram without making mistakes.
SproutSocial analyzed that the best times and days by category are:
- Tech– Wednesday at 6 in the morning and from 9 to 10 in the morning; on Friday from 7 to 10 in the morning.
- Medium– Friday at 9 am.
- Finance– Friday at 11 in the morning.
- Products according to consumption– Wednesday at 3 pm.
- Education– Friday at 10 am.
- Non-profit– Tuesdays from 1 pm to 3 pm and Wednesdays at 2 pm.
The data, although objectively interesting, must be integrated and not taken individually. Your community, with its characteristics, is much more reliable than a generalist empirical data.
Analysis tools
If you are not satisfied with Instagram’s data analysis features, it is advisable to use dedicated applications that can offer you more information. We will examine the aforementioned SproutSocial but on the Play Store and Apple Store, you will find several with the same features.
Dedicated applications, such as SproutSocial, are intended to guarantee you the perfect management of social networks. This application, like many others used for this task, analyzes the essential metrics not only of Instagram but also of many other platforms; the most famous- Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.
Inside there are features that analyze and offer an already outlined report of the best time slot to publish your content. The result in this case will not be generic but inherent to the activities of your followers and your time zone. Furthermore, it will be possible, with a dedicated App, to schedule the publication of your posts, making the process automatic and avoiding the alarm clock. Among the best we recommend- SocialPilot and Onlypult.
As you may have guessed, being able to take advantage of such a system will allow you to grow faster on Instagram. Over the years, analytical studies have confirmed that periodic publication at the best times allows for significantly faster growth than casual publications or at off-peak times on the platform.
Another interesting and useful tool is the social media Listening tool. This takes into consideration three types of analysis- Audience, competitors and identification of trends. These elements will allow you to manage the publication on Instagram at 360 ° and to convey new followers in an intelligent and fast way to your content.
The software for automatic sharing
Dedicated apps can give you a great hand in understanding the age range, location and gender of your followers, but there are also software for perfect programming. Although an App like the one previously examined may have an integrated scheduled publication tool, it is advisable to use professional software for automatic sharing on your social networks, including Instagram.
These will allow you to save time and better take care of the content of your posts, thus increasing not only the followers but also the quality of the content itself.
