How to Determine the Ideal Posting Frequency on Instagram

Are you wondering how often to post on Instagram? Are you worried about posting too little or too much content? In this article, you’ll discover how to figure out how many Instagram posts per day will generate the engagement and reach you want to see.

As a social media manager, you need to promote your business and reach your marketing goals by making the best possible use of your resources. This means creating content for your audienceeand finding the ideal posting schedule. With the right posting frequency, you’re more likely to maximize reach and engagement and achieve other key results for your team. Posting too much or too little can lead to wasted spending and underperforming content. This goes beyond Instagram ads, Facebook, and other social channels.

What happens if you don’t post on Instagram often enough?

If you don’t post often enough, you risk reducing your account’s reach and engagement. Naturally, posting fewer posts means missing out on some of your potential reach in an average week or month. But the math is a bit more complicated than you might think. When you create too little content, you also miss out on opportunities to engage and interact with your audience. While it’s easy to dismiss engagement as a vanity metric, it’s an important ranking signal for Instagram. Engagement can work to your benefit in two ways.

First, content that generates lots of Likes and comments can trigger Instagram’s popularity ranking signal. Since popularity is one of Instagram’s most important ranking signals, consistently creating engaging content helps get your account noticed by more people.

Second, if followers are in the habit of interacting with your content, it triggers another ranking signal. When ranking content in the feed, Instagram considers how likely it is that the content will be interesting to a single user and how often other users have interacted with the account in recent weeks.

Essentially, not posting often enough can cause Instagram to rank your content lower than it otherwise would. This means the posts, reels, and stories you publish might not generate the engagement or other results you want to see.

What happens if you post too much on Instagram?

If you’re worried about not posting enough, you might be tempted to err on the side of posting too much. While it’s important to keep your business front and center with your followers, creating too much content comes with a couple of downsides you’d want to avoid. If you’re posting just for the sake of posting and your content tends to get minimal engagement, posting more often won’t do you any favors. Content that doesn’t get Likes or comments won’t trigger Instagram’s popularity ranking signal.

Over time, that low-engagement content can work against you, signaling to Instagram that people don’t want to see your content. As a result, you could lose out on major ranking signals, and your reach and engagement could continue to suffer.

Practically speaking, creating too much content can also cost your business. Producing posts, short videos, and stories isn’t free. Overloading your content calendar can quickly become expensive.

To maximize the value your business gets from social media content, focus on finding the types of content that help you reach your goals most effectively. Then make those posts the pillars of your Instagram content calendar.

How to determine the best posting frequency on Instagram

Now you know why posting too much or not enough can damage your reach and hurt your marketing efforts on Instagram. So, how often should you post content on Instagram?

#1: How to apply what Instagram says about post frequency

The official advice from the social network comes from the head of Instagram Adam Mosseri. In a Q&A published on Instagram’s official @creators account, Mosseri advises users to post about two feed posts a week and a couple of Stories every day. How should you interpret this advice and apply it to your business account? Essentially, it’s important to regularly publish posts, carousels, and reels in the feed. Posting daily is probably overkill, but you should aim to publish feed content at least a couple of times a week.

While regular feed posts are important to connect with your audience, Mosseri’s advice suggests Stories are even more crucial for keeping your business top of mind. While you can think of feed posts on a weekly basis, it’s a good idea to establish a daily cadence for Stories.

Rather than translating Mosseri’s advice into strict guidelines for your business, see it as a suggested starting point. In other words, draft an Instagram content calendar with two feed posts per week and two daily Stories. Then review your data and adjust your content plan as needed.

#2: How to apply what your data says about Instagram posting frequency

When you consistently publish content, you can use your data to determine the ideal Instagram posting frequency for your organization. Here are two native Meta tools you can use to check performance and find the right posting frequency on Instagram.

Instagram Insights for posting frequency

Start by opening your Instagram account and accessing the professional dashboard. Open the Account Insights panel and change the time frame to Last 7 days or Last 14 days so you can compare your content’s performance week-over-week.

Next, check the Overview panel to see if reach and engagement have increased or decreased from the previous week. If these metrics are relatively unchanged or have increased week over week, it means you’ve achieved a good Instagram posting frequency or are moving in the right direction.

Wondering if posting more or less content would make a difference? Try adding or removing a feed post or Story each week. Then review the results again. If your engagement and reach metrics drop, return to your previous posting frequency or try moving the frequency in the opposite direction.

Weekly or bi-weekly analysis can give you a solid overview of your Instagram account’s performance and help you identify major frequency issues. But these overviews don’t help you analyze individual posts, reels, or Stories. Below, we’ll take a closer look at these analyses and how they can help create an Instagram content calendar.

Business Suite Insights for posting frequency

With Business Suite Insights, you can easily see if your frequency has changed from week to week and how your content has affected reach and engagement. The only downside to Business Suite is that as of January 2023, it does not support Instagram Reels, so the analysis only works for posts and Stories.

To view these analytics, go to the Insights panel, open the Overview tab, and select a 1- or 2-week time frame. Then scroll down to the reach analysis and select Instagram.

Business Suite automatically compares the number of posts and Stories you’ve published during the selected time period with the previous one.

How many posts and Stories have you published recently? How does this count compare with the prior period? Did any changes in frequency impact total reach? In the previous example, the account published 50% more Stories and increased total reach by over 20%, which is a strong foundation for further testing.

Business Suite also compares your Instagram account engagement with the previous period so you can assess content performance. In the example above, post engagement decreased despite maintaining a steady frequency. Experimenting with a lower posting frequency, posting at better times, or rethinking topics can help boost engagement.

#3: How to optimize your Instagram content calendar

After reviewing your content performance and comparing your Instagram posting frequency with Mosseri’s suggestions, you probably have a few ideas to test. Use the tips below to guide your experiments and optimize your content calendar so you post at the best times for your audience.

Getting your posting frequency right is essential for maximizing Instagram reach and engagement. But it’s just as important to publish posts, reels, and stories at the optimal times for your audience. Meta has several tools you can use to find the best times for your audience.

Instagram Insights for publishing times

With Instagram’s professional dashboard, it’s easy to see when your audience is most active. From the Overview panel, tap to view total followers. Then, scroll down to the Most Active Times chart.

You can switch between daily and hourly charts to see when your audience tends to be online. While you’ll likely notice peaks and valleys in the hourly chart, you might not see a significant difference in audience activity from day to day. Keeping your ideal frequency in mind, try different days of the week to find what works best.

About Creator Studio for publishing times

If you want more detailed data, use Creator Studio, as long as you can still access the tool. Open the Audience Insights tab and scroll down to the ‘When your followers are on Instagram’ chart. You can toggle between the Day and Day & Hour charts to see when your followers tend to be most active.

Hover over any time block to see the exact number of followers who are likely to be on Instagram at any given hour of the day. Then, schedule your posts, reels, and stories for the optimal times for your followers.

About Business Suite for publishing times

Business Suite doesn’t provide an overall overview of when your Instagram audience is online. However, it suggests publishing times based on data from the previous 7 days. To view these recommendations, create a new post or story in Business Suite.

Then, click on the Active Times button at the bottom of the screen.

You’ll see three recommended times to post over the coming week. You can click to schedule your content for one of the suggested times or enter another time you’d like to test.

#4: Analyze content performance

Although Instagram account overviews are helpful for spotting patterns, they don’t provide much insight into individual posts, stories, or reels. With an in-depth content performance analysis, you can better understand when and what to post to get the best results.

Instagram Insights for content performance

To dive deeper into your Instagram content analysis, open the app’s professional dashboard and expand the time period to the last 30 or more days. Then go to the Reached Accounts and Engaged Accounts panels, which automatically sort published content by type and performance.

Start by identifying your best and worst performing posts, reels, and stories.

Next, check your Instagram content calendar and identify how many other posts, reels, or stories you published on the same day or week as your best and worst performing content. The Business Suite planner helps you track how much content you’ve published over a given week.

Did you notice any patterns? For example, you might see that your lowest-performing posts are linked to publishing patterns over consecutive days or multiple times per day. To improve your results, you might consider decreasing your publishing frequency and spacing out campaigns so your Instagram content calendar provides more value to your audience.

Keep in mind that frequency is only one of the factors that can influence the performance of posts, reels, and stories. Timing, topics, creatives, calls-to-action, audience, and other factors can also impact reach and engagement.

Taking follower and non-follower metrics into account can help you extract even more valuable insights. Stories, reels, and posts all show follower and non-follower details to help you understand whether each piece of content is engaging your current audience or helping you connect with new potential customers.

There’s no universally right or wrong way to evaluate follower and non-follower metrics. If your main goal is to improve loyalty, you’ll probably value follower metrics more. If you want to build brand awareness, non-follower reach and engagement will likely be more useful.

Business Suite Insights for content performance

Business Suite is also useful for efficiently finding your top-performing Instagram content. Open the content insights from the dashboard and select any post or story to see how it ranks. Business Suite automatically compares each piece of content with other recent stories and posts, so you can see how it measures up in terms of reach and engagement.

You can use the same steps as above to assess your best and worst Instagram content. Then, incorporate factors from your top-performing content into new posts, stories, and reels, and avoid including elements from your lowest-performing content.

#5: Regularly experiment and try new tactics

Building a brand that customers know, love, and engage with requires consistency. This includes finding the right publishing frequency, posting at similar times, and using recognizable visual elements and tone of voice.

However, it’s important to remember that consistency doesn’t have to be repetitive or predictable. If you feel your content performance is starting to decline over time, don’t hesitate to experiment. Here are a few ideas to try:

• Add or remove posts and stories from your Instagram content calendar to test a slightly higher or lower frequency. Follow the steps above to analyze performance and establish a new frequency for your content.
• Publish content at new times, especially if you suspect seasonal or other changes have impacted your audience’s activity. Since Business Suite recommends times based on recent activity, the platform’s suggestions are particularly helpful for spotting changes.
• Invest more in the content formats and styles that get the best results. Do carousel posts no longer seem to work for you? Try experimenting with shorter videos or a new style to see what gets the results you want to achieve.

Conclusion

The frequency of Instagram posts can have a substantial impact on results, making it a critical factor in your content strategy. With the ideal posting frequency and an optimized Instagram content calendar, you can enhance your results and get more out of the resources your business invests in this social network.

Excerpted from socialmediaexaminer