According to the most recent data from social media platforms, Instagram is a veritable engagement machine. You are aware of this, and you wish to maximize its benefits.
Today’s realities must be striking you in a different way. Despite your best efforts, no one seems interested in reading the articles you’ve published.
Numerous marketers get into the same trap because they neglect to consider one essential variable: the optimal timing to post to Instagram.
It’s a major reason why people’s rates of involvement are all over the place. For maximum interaction with your target audience, your Instagram post should be published when they are most likely to be using the app.

When do you recommend posting on Instagram the most?
There’s a quick response and a more in-depth explanation available. The optimal time to make an Instagram post is between 6 and 11 in the morning (PST).
Since the former is no longer necessary due to the brief answer’s accuracy, the later is unnecessary.
This is due to the fact that the optimal time to publish for a given business will vary depending on the nature of its niche and the location of its intended audience.
It’s not easy to say whether or not the average optimal time to publish for a variety of businesses, based on data from different companies in different parts of the world, would likewise apply to your business.
For this reason, it is crucial that you determine the optimal time frame for your company. If you want to know when is the optimum time to post on Instagram for your business, this blog will show you.
But first, let’s figure out why knowing the optimal posting time is so important.
What’s the Big Deal About Optimal Instagram Posting Times, Anyway?
Instagram’s algorithm is always changing, making freshness of content more important than ever for feed visibility and providing room for new features. However, these three elements account for a significant portion of the overall ranking:
- Posts that you have shown interest in before will rise to the top of your feeds.
- The most current posts will always be displayed at the top of the feeds, regardless of how many days or weeks have passed.
- The Instagram feed gives higher priority to posts and accounts with which you have interacted more frequently in the past.

With Instagram’s algorithm heavily weighting posts that are more recent in date, posting at optimal times becomes increasingly important.
The first hour after posting is when engagement rates are at their highest, so increasing the post’s visibility to more active users is a great way to boost those numbers. The Instagram algorithm will use this information to determine how many additional feeds you will appear in after you have posted in order to increase engagement.
Is there any significance to this for you?
Posting on Instagram when your audience is most active will yield the most engagement (in the form of likes, comments, shares, and saves).
Nonetheless, that’s not all!
Use the recency factor to your advantage by increasing your frequency of posts on the site at peak times. Your brand’s visibility in feeds improves as a result.
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s get to the meat of the matter and learn when you should be posting to Instagram if you want to see the most success with your Instagram marketing efforts.
Generally speaking, when is it best to post to Instagram?
Rather of relying on a predetermined schedule of optimal times, we recommend conducting your own experiments and collecting your own data.
However, if you’re just getting started with Instagram marketing, you can use the broad guidelines as a jumping off point for determining when you should post. There’s a decent possibility that promoting your brand on Instagram at these specific times will pay huge dividends.
This is why!
With the help of major social media marketing firms, we have compiled the following statistics to help brands determine the best times to post to Instagram.
- In this context, “later” refers to the hours between 9 a.m. and 11 p.m. (EST).
- According to Hubspot, Thursdays at 2–3 pm (Central Daylight Time) are the greatest time and day to post to Instagram.
- Sprout Social found that the best times to post were at 11 a.m. on Wednesdays and 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Fridays.
- The best times to search the Search Engine Journal are 11 AM on Monday and Friday and 2 PM on Tuesday.
When is Instagram most active? When posting videos or stories.
Instagram users can now be seen mostly watching reels. In other words, everyone is doing it. According to Instagram’s latest data, 58% of marketers aim to use reels in 2023.
If you’ve been using Instagram Reels, you already know the app offers mind-boggling exposure. However, as Reels has grown in popularity, there has been an increase in the pressure to publish at optimal times.
In addition to considerations like geography, industry, and target audience, the optimal time to upload Instagram clips also contextual. However, the following average best times can serve as a starting point for optimising reel times.
- Starting on Monday at 3 a.m., 7 p.m., and 7
- Tuesday 12am, 1am, 6am
- Times on Wednesday: 4 AM, 6 PM, 9 PM
- Timing for Thursday: 6 AM and 4 PM
- The hours on a Friday are: 2:00 AM, 11:00 AM, and 1:00 PM.
- Time on Saturdays: 9:00 AM, 4:00 PM, and 5:00 PM
- Sunday schedule: 05:08:0015:00
And, of course, Stories can’t be forgotten! There is no certain time of day when you should publish an Instagram story if you are planning to post spontaneously. However, there is an optimal time to post an Instagram story if you want your followers to view it and click over to your company page.
Posting an Instagram Story between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. on weekdays is optimal, since this time period sees engagement rates that are two-to-three times higher than those of regular posts.
Conclusion
There is nothing more frustrating than seeing zero engagement on your well crafted Instagram photos.
But now that you know about it, you can protect yourself. Using the aforementioned strategies and window of opportunity, you may determine when is ideal to post on Instagram. Efforts won’t pay off immediately, but after a while, you’ll start to observe a rise in the figures.
Engaging with your target market more effectively and gaining the attention of qualified leads more quickly is made possible by this method.
But keep in mind that the optimal time to post will just get you into your target audience’s newsfeed, and from there, the success or failure of your material is entirely up to you.
Without engaging material, even posting at the optimal time for Instagram won’t result in the number of likes and comments you’d ideally like to see.
You need a social media tool if you’re a social media marketer managing many Instagram profiles for different clients.
To save yourself the time and effort of manually posting at the appropriate times, you may use a tool like SocialPIlot to plan several posts and story reminders in advance.