When is the Best Time to Post on Instagram in 2022?
According to BTTP’s analysis of 35M global Instagram posts, the best times to post on Instagram throughout the week are:
- Monday: 5 AM
- Tuesday: 6 AM
- Wednesday: 6 AM
- Thursday: 5 AM
- Friday: 6 AM
- Saturday: 6 AM
- Sunday: 6 AM
We also discovered that the best day to post on Instagram is Saturday or Sunday — with the highest average engagement occurring for posts published on Sunday at 6 AM.
The Worst Times to Post on Instagram Each Day
The worst times to post on Instagram per day, according to 35M global Instagram posts, are:
- Monday: 2 PM
- Tuesday: 1 PM
- Wednesday: 10 AM
- Thursday: 11 PM
- Friday: 9 AM
- Saturday: 8 PM
- Sunday: 4PM
We found that posts published on Wednesday between 10 AM – 4 PM and Thursday between 9 PM – 11 PM receive the lowest engagement rates on average.
So… What Does This Tell Us?
As a team, we were quite surprised to see the best times to post were so early in the day. We’ve been studying the best times to post on Instagram since 2018, and this year, we saw a serious shift in the data!
Historically, we believed that posting when your audience was most active was the most effective strategy — and while this does appear to have a positive correlation, it’s not the only factor that impacts engagement.
We know that Instagram’s algorithm takes timeliness into account, but perhaps not as much as it once did. We also know that Instagram recently confirmed that the number of interactions in the first 30 minutes does not determine a post’s ranking in the Home Feed.
So the pressure of having your posts go live the moment your audience is most active has been lifted. Instead, an “early to rise, early to post” engagement strategy came to light.
By posting earlier in the day, accounts benefit from less competition (globally, most posts are shared between 9 AM-1 PM each day), while also tapping into traffic from users during their first scroll of the day — even if that’s a few hours after the post was shared.
By being one of the first to post each day, you’re giving your content the best chance of being seen by your audience, regardless of when they are personally most active on the app.
Instagram itself (and the way we use and interact with content on the app) has changed significantly over the last 12 months, so it’s a good time to adjust your posting strategy.
The Best Time to Post on Instagram by Location
Another factor that can have an impact on the average best time to post on Instagram is location.
Different regions have different audience behaviors and can be heavily impacted by time zone overlaps.
For example, New York is 3 hours ahead of California — but accounts based in New York will likely still have followers spread across both regions.
Here are the best times to post in local times across different time zones:
- US and Canada (Western): 12 AM-6 AM
- US and Canada (Central): 6 AM-8 AM
- US and Canada (Eastern): 4 AM-9 AM
- South America: 4 AM
- UK: 4 AM-6 AM
- Europe (Western): 6 PM-8 PM
- Europe (Eastern): 5 AM-7 AM
- Africa: 6 AM
- South Asia and Middle East: 3 AM
- East Asia and Southeast Asia: 11 PM-4 AM
- Australasia: 11 PM – 2 AM
While these local times are a good starting point, if you want to get the most engagement, it’s best to find your personalized best times to post based on your unique audience.
By doing this, you can actually hack the algorithm to increase your reach and get more likes and followers!
How to Find Your Unique Best Time to Post on Instagram
Here are a few tools and features that can help you discover your personal best times to post on Instagram:
- BTTP’s Best Time to Post feature automatically calculates your top 7 posting times on Instagram based on your historical engagement activity.
- Instagram Insights can be used to find when the majority of your followers are located and when they are most active. This isn’t quite as precise as using BTTP’s Best Time to Post algorithm but can be a great starting point.
- Manually track when you post on Instagram and how your posts perform over time using a spreadsheet.
