What is the Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2023?

The latest social media statistics prove that Instagram is a powerhouse of engagement. You already know it and you want to reap the most of it.

The reality, these days, hits you a little differently, right? Despite putting in great effort and time to create and publish quality posts, your content is unable to grab any eyeballs.

The same is the fate of multiple marketers because they avoid one crucial factor in the mix – the best time to post on Instagram.

It is one of the crucial factors behind erratic engagement rates. The logic is quite simple, your post should go live at the time when most of your audience is active on Instagram to engage with it.

So, what is the best time to post on Instagram?

Well, this has a short answer and a long answer. The short answer is that the best time to post on Instagram is between 6 am-11 am (PST).

Now that the short answer is so precise, why would anyone bother about the latter?

It’s because every business has its own personalized best time to post, depending on the niche and location of its target audience.

It’s hard to say that the average best time to post for a wide range of businesses, based on different companies’ data in various parts of the world, would also apply to your business.

Hence, you must find out the personalized best time frame for your business. This blog will guide you to find out when is the best time to post on Instagram for your business.

But before doing that, let’s find out why it is vital to know the best time to post.

Why Does Finding the Best Time to Post on Instagram Matter?

Instagram keeps tweaking its algorithm, making timeliness crucial for posts to rank on a user’s feed and accommodating newer features. Yet the basic ranking more or less depends on these three factors:

1. Interest: Posts having content similar to what you previously showed interest in will appear on top of your feeds.
2. Recency: The most recent posts will be prioritized to rank higher on the feeds over days or week-older posts.
3. Relationship: Posts and accounts that you had frequently interacted with in the past on Instagram rank better on your feed.

With recency being a major factor in ranking a post on Instagram, choosing the right time to post becomes more prominent.

If more active people see the post, the engagement rate increases within the first hour of posting. Based on this, the Instagram algorithm will decide how many more feeds you can make an appearance to further amp up the engagement long after posting.

So, what does this mean for you?

It means that you have to strategically choose the best time to post on Instagram for likes, comments, shares, and saves, and do it when your audience is most active for the best results.

But wait, there’s more!

Post more frequently on the platform at peak times to use the recency factor to your advantage. It has a higher chance of your brand being shown in feeds.

So apart from this, let’s move to the main point and find out the best time to post on Instagram to help you achieve your Instagram marketing goals.

How to Find the Best Time to Post on Instagram For Your Business?

There are two ways to find the best time suitable for posting to get more engagement on your Instagram brand profile:

1. Using SocialPilot’s Instagram Analytics

Your best time to post on Instagram depends on three things – audience, day of the week, and timezone.

Fortunately, SocialPilot’s Instagram analytics feature helps you figure all of that under one dashboard.

Let’s see how.

The “Time Range” filter lets you choose the exact period for which you want to see the insights in the analytics section. You can view, download, and email the analytics report of your Instagram business accounts for up to the last 3 months.

There’s also a heat map that automatically calculates the average number of followers active at each hour and each day of the week in the chosen time range to give you the personalized best time to post on Instagram.

This heat map graphics will give you all the information about the best times and days for getting more engagement on Instagram for your business.

Moreover, you can see the location of your followers, their gender, their age, and other significant follower insights.

These days, reels have been taking Instagram by storm, which is why we knew it was imperative not only to allow users to post reels using SocialPilot but also to release Reels analytics.

Reels analytics helps you monitor your reach, interactions, likes, and video plays. You can use all of these insights to navigate your Instagram account growth and gage what kind of content your audience prefers and when.

Here’s a curated list of some Instagram analytics tools if you’d like to compare and opt for the best one to measure your Instagram campaigns and best times to post.

2. Using Insights on the Instagram Application or Creator Studio

Instagram’s own native analytics is a great way to find the optimal time to post on Instagram. There are two routes to check these.

1. Instagram Mobile App

The first one is by using the Instagram mobile app. It is a convenient tool that lets you find significant insights, like the location of your followers, their gender, age, and when they’re most active on Instagram.

To access insights on Instagram, having an Instagram business account or an Instagram creator’s profile is a must. Another added benefit of having a creator’s profile is that you can access the “Instagram Creator Studio“.

2. Instagram Creator Studio

And this is what the second route is. Instagram Creators Studio, like Instagram insights, gives you access to multiple audience insights to find the best time to post on Instagram.

One shortcoming of the Instagram native insights is that they only provide you with the followers’ online activity data for the past 7 days.

Therefore, we recommend using SocialPilot, which gives you detailed insights into the complete audience analytics section for the past 3 months.

What are the Average Best Times to Post on Instagram?

In our recent studies on:

We have found that it is more suitable to test and find your own data than to stick to a fixed template of best times.

On the other hand, if you are new to Instagram promotion, then the general time-frames can be a good start before you set out to test for your personal best time to post. There are fair chances that these fixed times may work wonders for your brand on Instagram.

Here’s why!

We have curated the following data from popular social media marketing companies suggesting when brands should post on Instagram.

• Later suggests the time frame between 9 am to 11 pm (EST).
• Hubspot favors the time between 2 pm and 3 pm (CDT) and Thursday as the best day to post on instagram.
• Sprout Social deduced Wednesday at 11 am and Friday from 10 am–11 am as the preferred time slots.
• Search engine Journal favors Monday, Tuesday, and Friday at 11 am and Tuesday at 2 pm.

Best Times to Post on Instagram by the Days of the Week

Do you ever wonder if it is possible to find the best day to post on Instagram? In a nutshell, based on all the data collected by multiple brands, we can say that It is always safe to post on weekdays during:

Do you always find yourself searching, “What is the best time to post today?” Well, here’s a further breakdown of the average best times (in PST) to post for each day of the week that you can try:

• Monday: 9 am to 10 am
• Tuesday: 9 am to 10 am
• Wednesday: 5 am, 11 am, and 3 pm
• Thursday: 12 pm and 5 pm
• Friday: 9 am to 10 am and 5 pm to 6 pm
• Saturday: 8 am to 12 pm
• Sunday: 10 am to 2 pm

For your convenience we have converted the above data in the form of a table:

Best Time to Post Reels and Stories on Instagram

Reels are the new favorite on Instagram. Everybody is using it. New Instagram statistics suggest that 58% of marketers are planning to leverage reels in 2023.

If you have been using Instagram Reels, you know that it provides flabbergasting reach and visibility. On the other hand, with the growing popularity, the need to post on the best times has also risen for Reels.

The best time to post reels on Instagram also depends on the location, industry, and audience factors. However, you can kickstart the time optimization of reels by using the following average best times.

And we absolutely can’t forget Stories! If you are thinking about posting without agenda, there is no designated best time to post Instagram story. But if you are a business and want your followers to see your story and come to your Instagram business page, there is a preferred time slot.

Bringing in 2 to 3 times more engagement than normal posts on Instagram, the best time to post Instagram Story is on weekdays during lunch breaks, i.e., 11 am – 2 pm.

How to Effectively Use Multiple Best Times to Post on Instagram?

Eventually, you will come to know that there is no single best day or time to post on Instagram after using the tools mentioned above.

Anyway, you wouldn’t want a world with only one best time to post on Instagram.

But, it can be tiresome for a social media manager or marketing agency to keep posting on multiple time slots while handling various social media accounts.

You can either let go of multiple time slots and opt for one best time from the whole day or manually post on various time slots. Choosing the former will lose your other better engagement times, and going for the latter will waste a colossal amount of your time.

This is where you need a social media content scheduler!

For instance, SocialPilot lets you create and schedule your Instagram post for days, weeks, and even months ahead of time.

So this automatic posting tool will help you publish at different time slots without any hassle. All you have to do is select multiple time slots for every day of the month in its content planner, and your created posts will be published on Instagram.

Tip: Experiment with posting different types of content at varied times to zero in your sweet spot. Schedule multiple reels and stories for the day for an aggravated reach.

Last

Nothing is more annoying than not getting any reach on the Instagram posts you have so effortlessly created.

But now you know how to avoid the pitfall. Use the methods and times discussed above to zero down on your best time to post on Instagram. You won’t see numbers surging on the very first day but with consistent efforts, you will see the results.

It will help you engage with your audience better and get you in the eyes of promising prospects quicker.

But remember, the best time to post can only get you in the feeds of your audience, from there fate lies in the hand of your content.

If your content fails to spark any interest, then sharing even at the best time to post on Instagram can’t fetch your desired likes or comments.

If you are a social media marketer juggling multiple Instagram accounts for your clients, use a social media tool.

For instance, SocialPilot allows you to directly schedule multiple Posts, Stories, and Reels way ahead of time. You can plan every post to be published at the best time so you don’t miss out for any reason.