How to Find the Best Time to Post on Instagram

I’m a foodie and I love to share my food photos on Instagram. I love getting likes and I’m considering to try and buy likes on Instagram app. Lately, I have been asking myself: when is the best time to post on Instagram?

Vancouver-based Latergramme did an analysis of 61,000 posts to determine the when photos received the most “likes” and comments. Likes and comments are so important to many Instagram users, which is why some of them try to increase their like counts by purchasing some from www.buzzvoice.com or other websites similar. However, this analysis was able to show what time Instagram pictures do best. They concluded that between 2 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST are the best time to post on Instagram if you want your followers to pay attention to you, without using Instagram automation of course! Wednesday beats the other days of the week marginally as the best day of the week to post.

The analysis conducted by Latergramme was useful for a general audience, but what if you wanted to find out what was YOUR best time to post on Instagram? That is, determining the time in which your account specifically performs the best. If you have someone like upleap.com managing your account for you then you won’t need to worry about this but not everyone uses those services.

There are a plethora of paid platforms to help you answer this question, but I looked at three *free* Instagram analytics tools. Here is my review of the tools and what their analytics said were my best times to post.

Union Metrics

Timeframe: Last 30 days

Measures: Best Time to Post, Community Interactions by Day and Time

Pros: Explanation of the day and time combination for ideal posting; results can be easily shared

Cons: Lack of other measures

Union Metrics has a free “Instagram account checkup” with one section that tells you exactly the best day and time combination for posting. For me, it was Tuesday at 9 pm which has had 55% more engagement than other times. You can export your results into pdf or even share them on social media. I wouldn’t mind seeing the best day and best time to post on Instagram separately. However, for simplicity sake, Union Metrics does tell you what you want.

Simply Measured

Timeframe: Last 60 days

Measures: Best Time to Post, Best Day to Post

Pros: Downloadable results into Excel

Cons: Calculated based on comments only

I like Simply Measured‘s transparency in that all the raw data and calculations can be downloaded into Excel. Monday is my best day to post on Instagram with 27% of all my comments occurring that day. My best time to post on Instagram is 8 – 9 pm with 11% of my comments happening during that time. Unfortunately, Simply Measured does not include “likes” into the calculation of engagement. Because of that, their result does not present the bigger picture of engagement.

SquareLovin

Timeframe: Last 90 days

Measures: Best Day to Post, Best Time to Post, Community Interactions by Day and Time

Pros: Easy to understand dashboard

Cons: Lack of definitions; not exportable data; time zone in your Optimization analytics reflects local time in Germany

For those of you who used Iconosquare before, the analytics interface of Squarelovin is very similar. Go under the Analytics > Optimization tabs and you will find the graphs that summarize the best time post. SquareLovin is a German company and the biggest inconvenience of their analytics is that the time zone reflects local time in Germany. The best days for me are Mondays and Saturdays while the best time is 8 am according to local time in Germany. I receive the most community interactions – total likes and comments – at Monday at 11 pm and Saturday at 1 pm.

Germany is 9 hours ahead, but I can’t tell whether I receive more engagements within Monday or Sunday in Vancouver without looking at the raw data. As a result, the best day to post information isn’t all that helpful. For the best time to post on Instagram, 8 am in Germany would mean 11 pm in Vancouver. The most community interactions happen Monday at 2 pm and Saturday at 4 am Vancouver time. Wow, quite a bit of calculating there!

Although the dashboard easy to understand, SquareLovin show how the measures are calculated specifically. Furthermore, there is no way of exporting the data.

Overall Impression

I liked SquareLovin’s interface the most, but converting all the times to local time seemed a bit of a chore. Simply Measured is limited in that it only takes into account comments only and not likes. Union Metric’s seemed the most straightforward without it being too data intense. There does not seem to be a perfect free tool (hence, the need for paid subscription) but these tools together provide some insight on the best time to post on Instagram.

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