How Often Should I Post on Instagram?

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It’s no secret that Instagram’s organic reach algorithm has undergone significant changes in recent years. Freshness and genuine interaction with your followers are now more critical than ever. To overcome this lack of reach, several brands have tried tactics ranging from posting once a week to multiple times per day.

It’s important to note that best practices for posting frequency differ greatly from channel to channel, so don’t presume to find that what works for your brand on Twitter is also the golden rule on Instagram. Let’s look at how often you can post on Instagram.

How Often Should You Post on Instagram?

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Aim to post one to three times a day on Instagram. Major brands post 1.5 times a day on average, so if you try to follow the same rule, you should do well.

Although this is a good general rule to follow, it might not be the right solution for you. If you begin by posting several times a day and gradually reduce to just a couple of posts per week, your rate of user engagement will most likely decline. So, while it is best to post often, it is also important to be able to maintain a regular amount of posts.

In other words, the best number of posts for your account is the number that you can reliably maintain.

Another rule to remember is “quality over quantity.” It is always preferable to post less frequently with high-quality images than to post frequently with low-quality content.

Tips for Finding Your Best Time to Post on Instagram

Here’s how to get posted on your Instagram post frequency.

1. Identify Your Best-Performing Posts

First, consider the type of performance you want to achieve: brand awareness or engagement. Depending on which of these is more important to you, your approach to timing your Instagram posts can differ.

Which of your previous posts received the most views? And how do these posts vary from those that get likes? Your Instagram analytics should help you a lot.

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2. Analyze When Your Target Audience Is Most Active Online

As marketers, we must understand our target markets. If you’re targeting Gen Z sports fans on Instagram, their social media consumption patterns can vary greatly from those of tech executives who wake up at 4 a.m.

Hootsuite’s Best Time to Publish feature will automatically convert this data into a heatmap. It will also assist you in experimenting by predicting when your Instagram followers will be online.

3. Post in the Time Zone of Your Target Audience

If you have a global audience or are located outside of the “usual” time zones, your best posting time may turn out to be 3 a.m. Rather than setting some truly heinous alarms, how about automating your Instagram posts? One of the best tools for doing this is to use an Instagram scheduler to ensure that your updates are posted at the appropriate time every day.

4. Consider When Your Competitors Are Posting

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Depending on your business, your rivals might be performing similar calculations and experiments. Social listening (or even a complete social competitive analysis) will help you keep track of what is effective for consumers in your industry.

5. Show up Regularly in the Long Run

To reap the full benefits of all this information about your audience, you must be methodical in your posting. Although posting a few hours earlier than normal now and then is unlikely to result in a dramatic increase, using the data regularly would shift the needle over time.

It’s a virtuous circle: your audience becomes accustomed to having your brand appear in their feed, they enjoy your content, and they engage with it. Consistently being on Instagram fosters credibility, trust, and a positive relationship. Finally, when you make an authentic bond with your audience, the algorithm notices, and so does your bottom line.

Wrapping Up

Instagram is a fantastic channel for companies to achieve their marketing objectives, but in 2021, simply posting content anytime you feel like it isn’t enough.

You will increase engagement, drive traffic, and gain new followers and customers by knowing when and how frequently you should post on your Instagram.

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