Everything moves fast on Instagram. While some viral posts can make the rounds for hours, if not days, you typically have a limited timeframe to get the attention of your audience before a post fades into obscurity. To stand out from the billions of active users, you have to appeal to the algorithm’s tendency to prioritise the content that gets immediate engagement, whether it’s likes, comments, shares, or saves. As such, timing your posts is crucial for optimising your reach.
Timing is so vital because Instagram users interact wit the platform differently depending on the time of day as well as the day of the week. It fits into their lifestyle, fitting in amongst work schedules, leisure times, and often fitting certain daily habits. As such, it’s important to work out the optimal time to post to take advantage of the highest levels of visibility and interactions, leading to greater reach and impact.
As such, we’ve put together this guide on determining the best days for posting, and the differences between how audiences interact at different times of day. However, it’s always important to remember that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Various factors, like your target audience, industry, and content type may change how things perform.
That said, let’s take a look at the key factors you should consider when trying to work out the best days to post on Instagram for maximum engagement.
Why Posting Day Matters For Instagram Engagement
Engagement is the aim of the game for any Instagram account. Various factors impact it, including the quality of your content, good use of hashtags and captions, and how well you interact with your audience. Timing is another vital element, especially on the day that you choose to post. Instagram prioritises those posts that see engagement quickly, meaning that posting on days when your audience is at its most acting can make a major impact on how many people see, like, comment, and share your content.
Different ways of the week typically have different levels of user activity and engagement. Taking the time to see and understand these patterns can help you schedule your posts strategically, ensuring that your content goes live when you’re likely to get the most reach and interactions. If you post at the right time, then you’re a lot more likely to land on your followers’ feeds while they’re actively using the platform, which in turn makes them more likely to engage with your content.
How Instagram’s Algorithm Rewards Timing
As mentioned, immediate engage is one of the most important things according to Instagram’s algorithms. If your post gets a lot of likes, comments, and shares soon after it’s published, the platform is more likely to consider it to be high value, meaning it’s more likely to push it to an even larger audience through the explore pages, hashtag posts and, if you’re really lucky, suggested posts. As such, if you post when your audience is less active, you’re likely to get less engagement, meaning you don’t benefit from this same boost.
Understanding when your audience is less active, such as when they are at work, commuting, or asleep, means that you can avoid your posts getting buried under others by the time they do get around to checking their feed. Conversely, posting during high-engagement periods, like lunch breaks and evenings, can mean more instant interactions, and the resulting boost that the algorithm gives as a result.
How Daily Routines Impact Engagement
We’re going to look more in-depth at each of these, but here are a few examples of how user behaviour on Instagram can change depending on the time of day:
- On Weekdays, most users are working during the day, but some may check their feeds during breaks, lunchtime, or at work. They’re more likely to be active during the evening. Later in the week, however, people tend to settle into their routines more and take a more relaxed approach to engaging whenever they have the chance.
- On Fridays, while some audiences may dip in their interest, the majority are going to see a spike in activity, eager to relax with social media before the weekend and to check in with what they have been missing throughout the week.
- On Weekends, some users may spend less time online as they enjoy their free time, but many other industries are going to thrive especially lifestyle businesses, such as travel, food, and entertainment.
Engagement patterns do tend to vary based on the type of content you post and the industry that you are in, which makes it important to understand which days work best for your specific audience. We’re going to take a look in a later section at how monitoring your analytics and testing different posting days can help you get a lot more specific with your approach.
Analysing The Weekly Cycle: Best Days For Maximum Reach
If you’re looking to reach as many people as possible, then you need to understand how user activity fluctuates during the week. Some general trends are going to suggest peak times to try out, but the best days to post can vary depending on factors like your industry, target audience, and content type. Analyse the weekly cycle of your own community so that you can find the best days to post and increase your chances of reaching a larger audience.
Breaking Down Each Day Of The Week
Every day of the week has its own unique engagement patterns that tend to show. As mentioned, your audience’s schedule may have distinct differences from a more general audience, but let’s look at how the general audience tends to change each day.
- Monday: As the week starts anew, people are getting into work and school, catching up and preparing for the week ahead. As such, engagement is likely to be light throughout the day, but may see some spikes at lunchtime and in the evening hours after 7 pm.
- Tuesday: People tend to engage more as they settle into their work week, and Tuesday gives an early boost to engagement, especially from lunchtime onwards.
- Wednesday: The middle of the week, or “hump day,” is often thought of as a peak engagement day, when people tend to be at their most active. There’s a mid-morning and early afternoon boost to engagement for a lot of audiences.
- Thursday: The surge of users from Wednesday tends to continue into this day, although it may slow down some as the weekend approaches.
- Friday: This is another peak day for some, as many people use their newly freed time to get a lot more active on social media. However, others, especially other business users, tend to check out to start planning their weekend instead.
- Saturday: Engagement tends to be mixed on the weekends. Lifestyle industries benefit around this time, as people are more susceptible to influences on how to spend that free time, but a lot of users will be offline, enjoying their spare time.
- Sunday: For the audiences that disengage on Saturday, it tends to stay low for Sunday, as well. However, people start trickling back in towards the evening as they rest up before the start of the weekday, and are more likely to log on to “catch up” before the week starts again.
Your audience’s behaviour may be different from the general trends outlined above. As such, you have to put in the work to identify when your followers are most active using this as a baseline, with an understanding of their weekly routine, based on their own industry, lifestyles, and interests.
Timing Is Everything: Best Hours On Optimal Days
Posting on the right day is crucial if you want maximum engagement on Instagram. However, get even more specific to the right time of day and you can heighten the impact of your posts even more. Posting on the wrong hour of the right day can trip up your content, too. Posting at the right hour is about understanding when your audience is most active. Here, we’ll look at how choosing the right hours to launch your posts can boost your visibility.
General Best Times To Post On Instagram
In keeping with the theme we’ve been hammering on, your audience is likely to have its own specific preferences based on their lifestyle and industry. However, there are some general engagement trends that tend to make themselves apparent as the day goes on.
- Mornings (7 am – 9 am) tend to be good for early posts designed for quick engagement, as people check their feeds at breakfast while commuting, or right as they start their work or school day.
- Mid-morning to early afternoon (10 am – 1 pm) can see a boost as people are likely to check their social media during their morning break, as well.
- Lunchtime (12 pm – 2 pm) tends to be the peak of the first half of the day, with people getting an extended break to relax with their feeds for a while.
- Afternoon (3 pm – 5 pm) can see a slight drop in activity as people focus on finishing up their workday, but can be a good time to start engaging in some conversations,
- Evening (6 pm – 9 pm) is the most active period of the latter half of the day, as people are more likely to be scrolling their feeds as they unwind from work.
- Late night (9 pm – 11 pm) is when engagement starts to wind down, but some audiences, like younger users or night shift workers, may still be active. It’s also a good time to post for international audiences.
There are specific days that also have peak times to post, as well. To quickly break them down:
- Weekdays tend to see the most engagement from 10 am to 2 pm, hitting users during their breaks.
- Fridays see engagement peak a little later, around 3 pm, when most people are winding down at the end of a work week.
- Saturday typically sees the best engagement around the late morning and early afternoon (10 am – 1 pm), as this is when people do their “morning” check after sleeping in.
- Sunday tends to see users more active around evening, from 6 pm to 9 pm, as people are relaxing, their weekend plans are typically over at this point, as they prepare for the upcoming week.
Working out the specifics of your audience’s habits by the hour can help really hit the nail on the head in terms of engagement. However, Friday tends to be one of the highest engagement times to post for most audiences, so let’s look at why.
Friday Focus: Why It Stands Out For Engagement
Friday is unique in terms of how users engage with Instagram. It’s the last weekday before the weekend, and we all know the feeling of finally being “free” once we’re out of work and school for the weekend. While some audiences do start to disconnect as they transition into their weekend plans, more audiences stay highly active on social media, enjoying the opportunity to freely browse. Identifying which patterns your audience falls into can help you make the most of the day.
Why Is Friday A High-Engagement Day?
- Workweek Wind-Down: A lot of people start to relax as they finish their work or school week. Some check Instagram more to ‘catch up’ on what they might have missed, while others are looking for weekend inspiration, or looking to connect with their communities after not being as active.
- Weekend Planning: A lot of people use Instagram for inspiration on how they can spend their weekends, looking at restaurant recommendations, local events, travel ideas, and more. This is what makes this a peak day for businesses in the lifestyle and leisure industries.
- Casual Browing Mindset: As soon as they are out of work/school, a lot of users feel like their time opens right up meaning they take a more relaxed approach to spending time browsing, which leads to higher engagement in general.
- Pre-Weekend Shopping Spikes: A lot of brands see an uptick in shopping-related engagement on Friday, as people are likely to be looking for deals before making weekend purchases.
- Good Vibes: Simply put, a lot of people are in a much better mood on Friday, which also makes them more likely to engage with posts that share and amplify that feeling.
Making The Most Of Friday Engagement
- Post at the right times of day, such as Midday (12 pm – 2 pm), Afternoon (3 pm – 5 pm) and Evening (6 pm – 9 pm) depending on your audience trends to hit them in the peak engagement windows of lunchtime, the end of work, and the start of the weekend.
- Match the mood of your users, posting light-hearted and upbeat content to make the best of the weekend vibes.
- Use Instagram Stories and Reels to catch and capitalise on attention quickly.
- Use calls-to-action to take advantage of the weekend shopping habits that your users may fall into, if you’re in the right industry.
Friday marks a pretty unique time for most accounts, being the transition between weekdays and weekends. However, how you make use of those two distinct parts of the week makes a big difference, too.
Weekend vs Weekday Posting: What Works Best?
Many brands and content creators question whether posting on weekdays or weekends is the best for engagement levels. The truth is that there are advantages and disadvantages on both sides and understanding how those apply to your audience can help you determine your own best posting schedule.
Weekday Posting: More Consistent Engagement
Posting on the weekdays, especially from Tuesdays to Fridays, tends to lend more steady engagement levels, as your users have more structured routines:
- Regular check-ins are more frequent, as people tend to check their feeds during breaks, lunch hours, and evenings. This can make peak engagement times more predictable.
- You’re likely to see higher levels of engagement from professional and industry figures as they’re likely to be using the platform to actively network and seek information.
- You may benefit from the biggest algorithm boost as weekdays tend to see the highest numbers of users active on the platform. As such, if you get a boost through quick engagement on your posts, you’re more likely to have your content served to more people.
Weekend Posting: Fewer Users But Boosts For Certain Audiences
The shift in user behaviour on the weekend can be unpredictable. Some audiences do thrive on Saturday and Sunday posts, but there is also a decline from some audiences.
- An increase in leisure time may see people checking their feeds at different times based on their plans. This can make weekend posting a little more unpredictable.
- There is an all-around stronger performance for entertainment, travel and lifestyle content as people tend to look for inspiration for their weekend plans.
- Lower work-related engagement should be expected most people who use social media for business are at least half-unplugged on their weekends.
For most businesses and accounts, a balanced approach is the best. You want to avoid keeping your account totally silent for any portion of the week. However, the time to be most active depends on your audience and industry.
Adjusting Your Strategy Based On Content Type
Feed Posts
The traditional feed posts, including single image posts and carousels, tend to work best with immediate engagement to give them traction. As such, the best time to post this is during your audience’s peak engagement hours.
For most, that’s going to be on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, from mid-morning to early afternoon to take advantage of breaks and lunchtimes. Find or take engaging images, craft compelling captions and call-to-action prompts to encourage interactions and get that quick engagement boost.
Instagram Stories
As stories disappear after 24 hours, you want to ensure that you’re posting them when real-time engagement is more likely. Users check stories throughout the day, so it’s wise to drip feed them during engagement peaks, like early morning (7 AM – 9 AM), lunchtime (12 PM – 2 PM), and evening (6 PM – 9 PM).
Both weekdays and weekends work for stories, as they only require temporary engagement. You can heighten their impact with features like questions, polls, and stickers to keep people engaged and following.
Instagram Reels
With a longer lifespan that feeds posts and stories, reels have the opportunity to build their traction over days and even weeks. Getting an engagement boost from the higher user activity on Friday can help you get your reel off to a strong start, with growing engagement over the weekend.
Late afternoon and evening (4 pm to 0 pm) see users beginning to enjoy their free time, making it a great time to post your reels. Be sure to optimise your reels for shares and saves to boost their early performance.
Leveraging Analytics To Fine-Tune Your Posting Schedule
The general trends above can help you get a good understanding of user behaviour across the board, but you need to tailor it to your specific audience. Thankfully, Instagram’s in-built analytics tools offer plenty of ways to glean the insights you need, and to fine-tune your posting to truly maximise your reach and interactions.
Using Instagram Insights To Find Peak Posting Times
Instagram Insights provides detailed analytics for business and creator accounts, allowing you to access all kinds of analytics. The ones to track are:
- Follower Activity: Showing when your audience is most active, broken down by the day and hour. The most important for finding peak engagement periods.
- Post Performance: Reviewing likes, comments, shares, and saves so you can see which content does the best at what times.
- Story and Reel Engagement: These post formats have their own specialised insights to help you better refine them for maximum impact.
You can select Insights from the menu on your Instagram profile (the three lines in the top right corner.) The Audience section contains the information most pertinent to finding when they’re most active.
A/B Testing At Different Times
A/B testing can help you see the measurable difference between posting at different times. It involves experimenting by posting at different times and comparing the results.
You want to choose a specific post format and type of content, scheduling it at different times on the same day across multiple weeks. Then, you monitor the metrics (likes, comments, shares, and saves) and compare them, identifying the patterns.
This way, you can adjust your posting schedule to ensure you’re making the best use of peak engagement times.
Adapting Your Strategy Over Time
It’s important to pay attention to the constant evolution of both user engagement and Instagram’s algorithm. The best posting times for different types of content will change over time. As such, you should make a regular effort to review your analytics and keep adjusting your schedule to stay ahead of the curve.
Start Testing Your Instagram Timing Today
Now that you know how to discover your optimal posting days and times, you want to put it into practice. Use the trends featured above as a place to start, but use testing and experimentation to find the strategy that works best for your audience in particular.
- Start by establishing a baseline posting schedule, based on best practices. Post on high-engagement days, during the peak hours mentioned above, like mid-morning, lunchtime, or evening, and be sure to experiment with the content of different types, including single image feed posts, stories, reels, and carousels to establish that baseline.
- Now, you experiment with different posting times, using the A/B posting principles to try different times of day, different days of the week, and different content types.
- Next, you analyse your engagement metrics using Instagram insights to see engagement stats, reach, and impressions across different content types. Compare the results from your baseline with your experiments.
- Once you have your results, you optimise your strategy based on when your posts get the best engagement, only to retest and readjust over time, especially if engagement starts to die off.
So, What Is The Best Day To Post On Insta?
Hopefully, all of the above information has shown you how key strategic timing is to navigating Instagram’s ever-evolving landscape. Beyond high-quality content, you need to post on the right days and at the right hours to improve your chances of reaching the widest possible audience and getting the levels of engagement you desire.
There are a few points above that are almost universal and likely to apply to your audience just as much as they do others. However, real success on Instagram means finding ways to apply your knowledge of the platform to your audience in particular. You need to keep experimenting and adapting, finding the specific times and days when your audience shows up at their liveliest and most engaging. To that end, don’t forget to make good use of Instagram Insights.
With the tips above in mind, start timing your Instagram timing. When you find those peak engagement hours for your own audience, it can transform how well your posts perform, growing your reach, and maximizing your impact.
