Social media has taken over the world. There is no person or brand that is not using social media to their advantage. Different brands have used social media to boost their brand’s visibility and increase their audience engagement. Out of all the social media platforms, Instagram has become a necessity for brands to have an account in. It is one of the social media platforms that has been able to help brands develop a personal connection with their audience. It has also given the brands a chance to know what their audience likes or dislikes, what their audience need or require, after which they can post accordingly.
Instagram has many features. These features keep on increasing and giving brands new ways to interact with their audience. One of Instagram’s features, Stories, was introduced in the year 2016. Immediately after it was launched it became popular. It has helped brands develop a personal connection with their audience as it has allowed the brands to interact with their audience. What you need to know about Instagram Stories is that, you need to post them at a particular time. This is because if you follow a particular time to post your stories then:
a) More people will have a chance to see your story. This is because posting at a particular time will help you reach more of your followers.
b) You will be able to master the Instagram Algorithm. This is because if more people see your post in the first 15-20 minutes and like it, the algorithm will start to favour you. This means that, if there is a spike in engagement in a rather short period of time since you posted, the Instagram algorithm moves it upwards as it thinks that your content is of good quality. So if your content is moved up, there will be a greater chance for your post to reach more people. It also helps you to know when your audience will give you a response.
c) You will be able to see higher engagement rates. All the brands on Instagram want to have the highest engagement on their posts as well as Instagram Stories. This would allow their brand visibility to increase as well.
In order to post Instagram stories at a particular time, you need to follow the below mentioned steps.
1. Finding the Right Time and right day to post.
First, you need to find out which is the right time and right day to post your Instagram story. In order to do so follow these steps mentioned below.
Step-1:
At the very beginning itself, you need to know the exact time period during which most of your followers are online or the time period during which you receive a higher engagement rate. This is because if you know this, you will be able to utilise this information and post your Instagram Stories accordingly. You can check this by using your Instagram Analytics tool.
In case you didn’t know how to check using your Instagram Analytics tool, below mentioned are the steps that you can follow:
a) Go to your Profile
b) Click on Insights
c) Look at the different metrics
d) Identify the time when you receive the highest traffic.
Now that you have identified the exact time when you receive the highest engagement, all you have to do is utilise this information. You need to prepare yourself in such a manner that you are able to hit these peak times as much as possible. This will ensure that you get the maximum readership.
Step-2:
The second thing that you need to take care of is that you need to keep in mind about the active time zone of your followers. For example, if you are living in the United States but your followers are from United Kingdom, then you need to post according to the time zone of United Kingdom and not of the United States. This is because if you post according to your country’s time zone even though your followers are from another country, then there’s a high chance that your followers won’t be able to see what you have posted in your Instagram story.
Step-3:
Just like you had checked out which time would be the best time to post your Instagram Stories so that it receives the maximum engagement from your audience, you also need to know the right day to post. Like you checked the Time, you can check the Day also through the Instagram analytics tool.
a) Go to your Profile.
b) Go to Insights.
c) Go to Audience
After clicking on the ‘Audience’ option you will have to scroll down a bit to get the required data. You will be able to find the data for both the days of the week and the approximate time during which your followers will be most active on the platform.
However, the time for posting stories on Instagram is not always fixed. It varies depending on your followers and their engagement. In order to be successful in receiving the highest engagement rate, brands need to continue experimenting always. For example, brands should post new, innovative stories that would attract audience. They can also put up polls or questions which would increase their engagement rates with their audience.
Brands also need to keep on using the Instagram analytics tool so that they are constantly aware of the days and times during which their followers are most active. If they don’t keep a track of this, it would become rather difficult to have a high engagement rate.
2. Experiment with posting times
Once you’re done receiving the data of the approximate time and day when your followers are likely to be online, you are done establishing your strategy. The next thing which you need to focus on is to find the most optimal hour. In order to find the most optimal hour, all you have to do is experiment with different posting times, i.e., you need to post on different times in order to find out which is the Most Optimal Hour.
For example, if you find out that most of your followers are online between 4 pm to 7pm, you will have to schedule your posts to appear at 3 pm, 4 pm, 5 pm, 6 pm, 7 pm, 8 pm and 9pm. After you are done posting, you next job will be to start tracking whether there is any different in engagement rates of the different posts. You should note the engagement rates of each post as well as the day and time the post was published. This will also help you pinpoint the time and day when you should post your content and you can post relevant content according to the engagement rates you had discovered.
You should also change the times at which you post every week. This is because if you perform this experiment of switching posting times, you might be able to find a good slot to post where you will get better responses from your audience. For example, if you have published a post at 8 am this Wednesday, next week you can easily post at 8 pm instead. This might help you surprise your followers. You can later check your analytics of your posts so that you can decide on which time works for you (and your post) best.
Conclusion:
Instagram is one of the best social media platforms that helps various businesses and brands to grow. It helps them achieve their marketing goals as well. So it is definitely better if you have a particular time when you can post. All you have to do is find that particular time through the Instagram analytics tool. By performing these experiments, there is a chance that you can easily get loads of data to overview highlight time slots. This would in turn show a higher engagement rate and also show that these highlighted times are the best times to post. Performing these experiments would also allow you to schedule your content according to the analytics provided by Instagram. It will thus provide you with an increase in engagement, followers as well as customers.
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