When to Post on Instagram for Maximum Engagement

Lauren Peek | @_LaurenPeek What time of day do you usually post on Instagram? At 9:00 a.m. when you first get to work? At 6:00 p.m. when you've just gotten home from work? Research says these are actually the WORST times to post on Instagram.

At the request of the Huffington Post, Latergramme, a service that allows users to schedule and manage Instagram posts, looked into the best times and days of the week to post on Instagram. They evaluated over 61,000 posts for engagement (likes and comments divided by the users' number of followers) to obtain the data.

The results? The best times to post on Instagram are 2:00 a.m. EST and 5:00 p.m. EST. The very best time of them all: 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday.

In fact, it turns out that Wednesday is the best day of the week to post overall, but only marginally.

Although the best time of the day to post can vary slightly depending on what day of the week it is, these results provide a good, general guideline for when to post. Fewer people are posting during the 2:00 a.m. time slot, which leads to better engagement amongst images posted at that time. Around the 5:00 p.m. time slot, people are taking a mental break between the end of the work day and heading home.

If you're posting to your business Instagram account, it's worth evaluating these times. Engagement is key. Having a ton of followers isn't worth a lot if they're not interacting with your posts. Posting when others aren't posting or when lots of followers are online is a crucial move.