PipeflowWhy there's no best time for everyone
Lists of supposedly perfect times are doing the rounds online: Wednesday at eleven, Sunday evening, every day at lunchtime. These lists are based on averages across a huge number of very different accounts. Whether they're right for your business, they can't tell you.
Your followers aren't average people. The customers of a bakery in a small village are on their phones at different times than the clients of a tax adviser or the guests of a bar. On top of that, Instagram doesn't show posts strictly in time order but mixes them by its own criteria. So the time is one factor among several, not the switch for success.
The good news: you don't have to guess. With a professional account, you have the data to find your own answer.
Where you can see when your followers are active
If your Instagram account is a business or creator account, you have access to statistics, sometimes also called Insights in the app. You'll find them via your profile, usually through the professional dashboard or an option like “View insights”. The names and menus keep changing, so don't be surprised if yours is called something slightly different.
The interesting part is the section about your followers. There, as long as there's enough data, Instagram shows at which times of day and on which days of the week your followers are most active. For very small accounts this analysis is sometimes missing because there isn't enough data yet.
This information is a good starting point, but not yet a finished answer. Being active doesn't automatically mean someone feels like looking at posts from businesses right then. That's why it's worth checking the information with your own tests.
Think about your customers' everyday lives
Before you test, think about when your customers actually get a chance to look at their phones. These are assumptions, not rules, but they give you sensible time windows to test instead of trying things at random. A few examples of how different this can be:
- Café: guests often decide at short notice where to have breakfast or cake. A post in the morning or before the weekend can work.
- Hair salon: appointments are often booked in the evening from the sofa. A post in the early evening makes sense.
- Trade business: anyone planning a new kitchen or bathroom often looks at ideas at their leisure at the weekend.
- Physiotherapy practice: many patients work during the day and tend to scroll during breaks or after work.
How to test times properly
A test only tells you something if you don't change too much at once. Here's how to go about it:
- Choose two or three time windows: for example morning, midday and early evening, based on your statistics and your customers' everyday lives.
- Alternate over several weeks: post in one time window for a while, then in the next, or alternate within the week.
- Compare similar posts: a photo of a finished project and a text tile with opening hours will perform differently anyway. Compare like with like.
- Take notes: for each post, write down the day, time and topic, and after a few days the reach, comments and saves.
- Leave out special cases: public holidays, school holidays or a particularly popular topic distort the result.
Reading the results correctly
After a few weeks you'll have a small table. Don't just look at the single best post, look at the trend: does one time window keep doing a little better than the others? Then that's your provisional standard time.
Pay attention to the right figure. Reach shows how many accounts saw a post. Comments, saves and messages show whether it really interested people. For a business, what counts in the end is also whether enquiries, bookings or visits come in. If more appointment requests arrive after evening posts, that's a strong signal, even if the likes are similar.
If there's no difference, that's an answer too: then time isn't the deciding factor for you, and you pick the time that suits you best. Your energy is then better spent on the content. Repeat the test now and then, because habits change with the seasons, and your followers change as your account grows.
When the best time doesn't fit your working day
Often the best time is exactly when you don't have a hand free: early in the morning in the bakehouse or in the evening with the last customer. The solution is planning. With a professional account, you can schedule posts for later in the app; the option is usually in the advanced settings when you create a post. There are also tools that take care of scheduling.
The only important thing is that you still take a quick look when the post goes live. If questions come in straight away and you reply promptly, that's a good sign for the people asking.