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Later's Social Media Tools & Features

New Feature: Find Your Best Time to Post on Instagram!


Updated on June 13, 2017
5 minute read

FYI: Later's Best Time to Post feature automatically calculates the top posting times for your Instagram account! Here's how it works.

Published June 13, 2017
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What is the best time to post on Instagram? With Instagram engagement and reach steadily declining, optimizing your posting times is more important than ever before. But considering that every account has a different audience, in different time zones, calculating the best time to post on Instagram 2022 for your account hasn’t been an easy process…until now.

Today we are excited to announce Later’s newest feature, Best Time to Post, which automatically calculates the top posting times for your Instagram account!

How to Find Your Best Time to Post on Instagram

Want to optimize your posting time for Instagram? Later’s new Best Time to Post feature makes it easy to find out when you should schedule your Instagram posts for maximum engagement. If you’re on one of Later’s business plans, your best times will be highlighted in your weekly content calendar, making it easy for you to schedule Instagram posts for when your audience is most active.

The Best Time to Post feature is available on one Later’s business plans, upgrade now to see your best times to post, schedule unlimited posts, and more!

find your best time to post

How to turn on Best Time to Post:

To see your best time to post, you first need to enable it from your Calendar Settings.

Your calendar settings can be found at the top right of your Calendar, it is a little gear icon. Select your calendar settings and toggle to enable your Best Time To Post optimization. Don’t want to see your best times anymore? You can also turn them off in your calendar settings.

Need help setting up your best time to post? Check out our help guide here.

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Why is Optimizing Posting Times For Instagram So Important?

](http://help.later.com/article/283-find-your-best-time-to-post-on-instagram)

Instagram marketing is harder now than ever before. Between the onset of the Instagram algorithm and “Instagram shadowban” making some users’ posts not appear on hashtags, overall reach and impressions on Instagram are at an all-time low. So, how can you fix this? When you post is one part of Instagram that you still have control over, and it can actually make a huge difference with your engagement rate. Here’s why:

Instagram’s algorithm loves posts that generate a lot of engagement in a short time period. If you’re able to “kickstart” your post with a good amount of likes and comments on your Instagram posts shortly after posting, this signals to Instagram that your post is quality, engaging content and your post will move to the top of your followers feeds and be shown to more users. There are a handful of ways to increase Instagram engagement, but one of the best (and easiest) ways is to post when your Instagram audience is most active.

Think of it this way: If you post when your audience is most active on Instagram, you’re more likely to drive engagement on that post. That engagement will translate into Instagram bumping your post higher up on users’ feeds and getting on the Instagram Explore page, which, in turn, will result in even more engagement on your post. It’s a cyclical process: higher engagement leads to more visibility, which leads to higher engagement, which leads to more visibility… and it all starts with when you post on Instagram.

How Does ‘Best Time to Post’ Work?

Later’s new Best Time to Post algorithm is based on your top performing posts from recent months, using the number of likes and comments your posts received. Since every Instagram account is different, we wanted to create a feature that would give you the best posting times that are personalized to you.

There’s a few things to keep in mind when checking out your best time to post:

  • You must have 50 Instagram posts in the last 6 months in order for the algorithm to determine best times. If you’re a new account, check back after you have 50 posts!

  • The more posts you have, the more accurate your best times to post are

  • You will see your top 7 posting times spread out throughout the week, which may result in some days having 2 times and some days having 0

  • Your best times to post will appear in your content calendar relatively soon after you upgrade, depending on the size of your account and  how many posts you have

The algorithm works by using your historical Instagram data, which means that it’s most accurate if you’ve posted at multiple times throughout the day/week in recent months. Since the algorithm uses your previous posts and engagement rates, if you are someone that only ever posts on weekdays at 8pm, then your best times to post will show up as weekdays at 8pm. If you want to A/B test your posting times, check out our blog post The Best Time to Post on Instagram.

Looking for the best time to post on other social networks? Checkout out the best time to post on Facebook, the best time to post on Tiktok and the best time to post on Linkedin.

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