You might have asked yourself the same question, especially if you are a marketer tasked to post on photo sharing social media websites. It’s a nerve-wracking scene since photo-sharing social media outlets are some of the most active and fast-paced social media to run. So, what is the best time to post on Instagram? And how often should you post on social media?
Some will say that everyday at any time is good to post on Instagram, while some would say specific times like noon and early evening is when traffic is best. But would you believe us if we told you that the most ideal time to post on Instagram is at 5pm EST on Wednesday?
That’s extremely specific and easy, don’t you think? You might even be skeptical with that kind of information. Thankfully, Latergramme did a bit of research for us.
According to an analysis by Latergramme, they found out from over 61,000 posts that on average 2am and 5 pm EST are the best times to post your photo on social media if you want your followers to see and pay attention to your campaigns. Meanwhile, it was also found out that the worst times to post are on 9 am and 6pm. Furthermore, they also found that Wednesday is one of the best days to post.
However, what makes 2am and 5pm so special?
Matt Smith, founder of Latergramme, offered to shed some light on that discovery. He explains that there is a high chance that less users post on their times. Furthermore, 5pm often is the time where most people get off from work and are killing time on their social media before going home. But just because they don’t post anything doesn’t mean you cannot engage them. You most certainly can! Although they don’t post anything on their social media, most users would be found scrolling from their stream, and this is something that businesses should not take for granted.
Latergramme also found out other interesting things, especially on the trends in terms of posting on certain days and time. For example, they found out that not all peak hours are the best times to post, like Monday at 5pm. However, for Mondays, the highest engagement rate often happens at 7pm and 10 pm, while on Friday 1 am and 8 pm are the best times to post.
Another thing that Latergramme did is that they took the liberty of ranking the days of the week according to highest engagement. They measured it by adding up a post’s 'like' and dividing it by the user’s follower count. What’s surprising is that there are only slight differences that are proportionally significant to the posting times. An average of about 4.9% engagement at best was seen while 4.4% for the worst.
But despite of those, Latergramme still came up with the same conclusion that Wednesdays are the best days to post on your social media accounts.
Latergramme is a service that allows users to manage and schedule their Instagram posts with ease.