Why Instagram’s Best Practices (especially Timing) are Necessary to Social Media Success.
The internet is forever.
A rule to live by in our age of the internet and social media, but there’s more to learn from the saying than just not posting inappropriate things. With the number of brands and businesses growing each day on social media, the importance of planning and adhering to the “best practices” of a platform only grows with it. You should never, and I mean never, just post something for the sake of posting. Likewise, you don’t need to be on every social media out there, especially if the content you’re putting out is mediocre at best.
One of the most important practices to conquering social media, and one of the easiest to change, is the time you post at. Something as simple as the time your tweet or Instagram photo goes live has a way bigger effect on its success, engagement rates, reach, impressions, and so much more. If you think about it, the inherent nature of social media incorporates this real-time method of connecting with others. Combine this with the global nature of social media audiences and carrying time zones across the world, and the times we post start to seem more important.
No matter what your goal, whether it’s brand engagement, driving conversions, or maybe building a community, post timing is something to seriously consider. To meet any goal, you need to reach your audience, and with Instagram’s 400 million daily users and growing, that’s getting harder and harder every day. CEO and Founder of the influencer marketing company Mavrck said,
“Today, it’s not enough for a brand to blindly post on social media and expect conversions … As traditional ads take a hit, strategically crafting and timing posts, and activating micro-influencers, will be a crucial way for brands to stay relevant amongst their fan base.”
I’ll start with a personal example. During this semester, we’ve been charged with creating a personal interest social media account and orchestrating its content and growth. For my account, @flfilmproject, I’ve begun using Hootsuite in order to schedule down to the exact minute when my posts will go live. Not only can you base these off standard best times for engagement, which I’ll get to in a little, Instagram also allows business accounts over 100 followers to see time-based data that lets you know when the majority of your followers are active on the platform. Timing is just one of the best practices for Instagram, I’m also employing a few others like utilizing community-specific hashtags, using stories to promote content, and beginning to upload the optimal amount of posts per week to drive engagement. Although I haven’t seen much success thus far, I’m excited to see where following these practices takes me.
One of my favorite do-it-all social media tools is Sprout Social. Not only are they super helpful in providing infographics about post timing like the one above, but they also offer something called ViralPost. This is available for all platforms, but for the time being, I’m going to focus on Instagram. What the tool does is optimize posting for YOUR audience. Rather than just recommending when you post based on platform-wide recommendations, the tool is driven by real-life data from your audience that accounts for the times your followers are most engaged, when they’re most likely to comment, and more. This means you don’t even have to do your research (although you still should!) on what times are right for you to post, and you can still reap the benefits of posting during the best times on Instagram.
If you’re still not convinced the time you post is important, take it from someone else. A Mavrck study looked at over 1.3 million Instagram posts and narrowed down that brands can leverage higher engagement between the hours of 6 am and 12 pm due to the low saturation of posts during that time. Not only does this give your audience a chance to find your post during peak engagement hours, which are most commonly early afternoon to off-work hours, but it also gives them a chance to see it before as well. This could effectively double your chances that your audience will see and engage with your posts.
