Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2022

Instagram is adding 100 million new users every 4 to 9 months.

This has been a consistent rate all the way back to 2014.

But how do you know when to post so that your audience is most engaged?

This is a question that marketers constantly ask themselves over and again. Times change and Instagram use patterns follow suit.

In this article, we will walk you through everything you need to know about when to post on Instagram. You'll learn how to find the optimal time and day of the week so you can create a posting schedule that works for you.

Posting Early

The debate between early versus late posting continues. When is the best time to post on Instagram? However, we feel that, in 2022, early posting allows for the greatest chance of success.

The reason is that early posting allows your business account to be the first thing that customers see when they pick up their phones in the morning. It doesn't matter if you'd posted it earlier in the morning, your post may be the first thing that they see.

Most posts around the world are shared in the later morning hours between peak times of 9 AM to 1 PM. By posting your content earlier than that, you are reducing competition. You're making it more likely that consumers will see your posts first thing in the morning.

With this information in mind, we recommend posting between 4 and 6 AM. Smaller Instagram post size is usually better during this period.

It doesn't matter when users first wake up or are most active. By posting into this timeslot, you will be amongst the first businesses to post every day and will increase your chance of being noticed.

This differs from previous strategies that seemed to suggest that posting during times of high morning activity works best. There is talk about the Instagram algorithm prioritizing engagement such as quick likes, comments, and shares. The belief is that this helps to organically boost posts and increase the bottom line for your marketing strategy.

However, new evidence suggests that situation is more complex. Rather, engagement isn't the only factor that determines whether or not your post goes viral, especially during morning hours.

Through longer-term A/B testing, some social media thought leaders have recognized that posting early leads to improved engagement over the long term.

Segmentation

After your morning post, the next best recommendation is to focus on finding times of high audience activity. Your marketing team will need to segment out customers based on behavior and try to schedule posts during the times they are most likely to be on the app.

This may appear to contrast with the above argument. But it doesn't really. It's just that this segmentation principle better applies to posts scheduled for later in the day. You can combine these strategies to build a plan for how to post on Instagram that maximizes followers with your most liked Instagram posts.

You can get a quick win with your morning posts. Then you can use the power of segmentation to identify areas of opportunity that your competitors are missing.

Depending on your industry, you can quickly identify when customers are using the app through various social media management tools.

For example, you may find that your audience is most active on Instagram stories in the afternoon on Wednesday between 1 and 4 PM. If your target audience can be segmented into a religious following, they may be less likely to be active on Saturday or Sunday (or more active!).

The greater truth is that the more segmentation you do, the more likely you are to succeed. You'll be able to identify times when your audience is active but your competition is not. This is the golden ticket opportunity that you want to consistently seek to find.

Audience behavior changes every year, although the greatest differences in behavior change occur over the longer term. If you can pick up on these smaller changes in individual patterns for your specific audience, you will be at the cutting edge and constantly winning viewership over your competitors.

So How Do You Segment in 2022?

You might consider dividing your audience into hyper-local versus local versus global audiences. These are likely to show different patterns, especially if the global audience includes a variety of visitors in different time zones.

You may also segment your audience into consumers interested in individual versus business products.

Naturally, Facebook will allow you to target age and gender differences in other common demographics.

Finally, you can look at your specific content and divide it up naturally. You may find that comic or satirical posts register with a particular audience later in the evening, and can continue to focus your efforts on posting to them later.

group of friends filming each other with their phones

How Mojo Can Help

Mojo helps you transform your posts and ideas into beautiful animated visuals.

Mojo can instantly take a standard post and convert it into a highly engaging, highly interactive caption for Instagram or ad message for targeted customers.

Mojo offers hundreds of templates, high-quality animations, and other text effects to make your content jump off the screen. Our designers have engagement at the front of their minds. Not only do they want to create beautiful imagery for your customers, but they also want them to convert.

Finding the Best Time to Post Based on Your Instagram Insights

At the end of the day, your social media strategy needs to take into consideration the habits and activity patterns of different segments of your audience. Beyond that, posting early in the morning is a surefire way to set yourself ahead of the pack and get at least one win every day.

You can combine this timing optimization with the visual optimization of your posts from Mojo. Mojo is designed to maximize engagement and keep your followers growing. Please contact us if you are interested in learning how Mojo can augment your business goals.

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