A question that many people who intend to make professional use of Instagram ask would be: how often do you post on Instagram?
Almost every company with presence on the social network wants to know how to position themselves in the right way to grow their influence, and there are certainly several strategies to achieve this goal. We can safely say that the frequency of posting is one of the most important of them.
To help you in this task, we’ve separated some information you need to know about how often you should post on Instagram!
Read also: 10 facts about Instagram’s algorithm you should know!
Posting with consistency and frequency is fundamental to be successful on Instagram
Why the frequency with which you post on Instagram is important?
It’s very common for veteran users to mention that the usual recommendation is to post on Instagram at least once a day and no more than three times. If your goal is to get quick and real results within Instagram, don’t forget to make your daily posts!
For example, if you make a post today, but during the rest of the week you forget to follow it up, right away your audience’s engagement with your profile will drop significantly in a frightening way.
One of the most important tasks you can give yourself is to study the time when your audience is active and able to participate in your posts. This will definitely create a constant userbase ready to engage with your content.
Talking about frequency, you need to keep it steady at all times with your posting schedule, and don’t forget to show clarity in your posts. What do we mean by display clarity?
We know that 98% of users expect to see the real-life behind-the-scenes of an influencer, so they stay active during hours when they already know they’ll have access to that content.
However, some people don’t like the process of showing the day-to-day, of showing a lot of intimacy with the followerbase through the Stories, but there is a consensus that this is necessary for the growth of any profile.
Accounts that classify themselves as companies or content creators will give you access to the insights of your page, making your entire posting process easier.
Insights are nothing more than all the information within a profile.
Information such as: time when you have the most active audience, age group of your followers, their location and so on. It is always necessary that you properly pay attention to this feature and learn it thoroughly, so that you won’t end up creating your content randomly, with no strategies in order.
Remember to post on Instagram new and surprising things, as they tend to drive engagement, improving your standing in the algorithm and sometimes even pleasing your followers.
Social media professionals who advise posting at least 3 times a week understand that the relationship with the audience is the key part of growing a page.
Therefore, avoid making posts without any reason, and about things that are not associated with your brand or business. If you want to grow on Instagram and make your brand achieve good results, the best way is to plan ahead.
In addition to keeping your frequency high with your followers, you make your brand spread further and be much more recognized.
Some simple tips that can be applied are:
- Always have an idea of what to post on Instagram, plan them ahead during the week.
- Make sure the images you are using are the proper size.
- Choose the right hashtags to help give your posts the exposition they deserve.
- Your Instagram Stories can be posted more frequently. As we stated here before, followers usually like seeing behind-the-scenes, so the more the better!
How many times per week should you post on Instagram?
According to a Later analysis, the more you post during the week, the greater your reach will be. This also means that the probability of you getting likes and comments increases.
However, the range and engagement per individual post may vary accordingly to the posts made. Keep in mind that this might change depending on how many followers you have.
- For accounts with less than 1k followers: posting 14 times per week will bring higher reach and engagement.
- For accounts with 1k – 250k followers: posting 14 or 20 times perk week offers the highest reach, while posting only once per week generates the most engagement.
- For accounts with more than 250k followers: posting only one time per week offers the highest reach and engagement.
Even though not many take it in consideration, your reach is a valuable indicator for your brand exposition, as it point how well your content is spreading.
How the amount of posts per week affects follower count?
Users who post on Instagram more often usually have more followers. There is an obvious relationship between post frequency and the average number of followers an account has.
However, it is important to note that this is related to the type of accounts that are posting most often.
How does follower count and post frequency affect the performance of a post?
The ideal reach and engagement rates per post are around 14 posts made per week, which would average twice a day.
For accounts with less than 1,000 followers, the more Instagram feeds you can post per week, the better.
Based on Later’s analysis, reach and engagement rates per post improve as frequency increases per week, with the average engagement rate rising from 3.1% making one post per week to 4.9% for 20 posts per week.
For profiles that have between 1,000 and 250,000 followers, the reach rate per post still improves with more posts, but engagement rates can show a significant decline.
The reason for this could be due to public exhaustion, a drop in the quality of the content as the volume increases or the fact that the Instagram’s algorithm prioritizes the most recent post for followers to see.
For accounts that have more than 250,000 followers, reach and engagement rates per post significantly decrease as more you post on Instagram per week.
This drop in reach rate could be linked to the fact that profiles with more followers are less likely to rely on hashtags as their main source of reach, for example.
Instead, they rely on their own community to generate engagement with the content, so for this group, posting more per week results in a big drop in the engagement rate per post.
Another reason could be that accounts this size work more with Instagram Stories to engage with their community.
Stories can be informal and therefore more engaging, making them ideal for everyday interactions and relationship building.
How to organize the frequency of posts?
1. Choose the variety
We must remember that in Instagram there are several ways to attract people’s attention. When we say that the ideal is that you make a plausible number of posts per day, we don’t want to focus only on feed posts.
Stories for example, are a simple resource that incentivizes your connection with your followers, and it also has a series of tools that help even having more followers engage with your profile.
Sketches, question boxes, and other tools are ideal points to help with interaction and spontaneity in your communication.
Make sure you make full use of the resources available to you in order to effectively post on Instagram!
2. Make your schedule
We’ve talked a lot about consistency, stating how essential this is to ensure positive results in your profile, and the smartest way to do this is to establish a schedule.
In other words, you need to create habits that make your audience have an idea of what to expect from your profile.
3. Always go for analysis and testing
As you already know, there is no magic formula that works for all users.
That’s why we always say that the ideal basis for knowing how to make it work is testing.
At first don’t start aiming for big results, start small, do everything within your time and you will find out how your audience will react.
To find out if these results and tests are working, you will need to analyze your profile daily.
If you see that it didn’t work, change your strategy. Redo at different times, try to understand how many posts your followers can absorb and keep testing.
So, do a well-done analysis of your Instagram profile metrics and look in Insights for the best information to discover the best times and days for you to post on Instagram.
From there, you can define a schedule according to your planning and pre-established frequency.
You can work within the weekly recommended post limits, create 5 posts within that week and define the days, alternated or not.
You can also alternate times, whether during the morning, afternoon, or even at night. So, if you see through the metrics that a certain time is the best time for your audience, stick to that!
Conclusion
Focus on your pace and keep to it, so your followers properly understand what they’re in to absorb within your profile.
Never lack consistency, it is the key to attracting and retaining followers. But of course, high quality content is mandatory.
Nobody likes anything random and dull.
So, were you able to follow our article about the recommended frequency to post on Instagram? Leave us a comment down below telling us what you think or if you have anything to add to this list!
