Social Media
How Often Should Your Brand Post on Instagram?
Regarding Instagram, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to how often you should post. It ultimately depends on your goals, audience, and content strategy. Some brands and influencers post multiple times a day, while others post once a week.
The key is to find a frequency that works for you and your audience and consistently provide high-quality content.
Frequency of Posts on Instagram
The optimal frequency of Instagram posting depends on various factors, such as your business objectives, audience, and content strategy. However, according to recent studies, the sweet spot for brands is to post on Instagram 1-2 times daily.
Does posting more often translate to higher engagement? Many people post up to six times a day, with some brands posting up to 30 times daily! This strategy isn’t guaranteed to work better than the rest.
How often you post on Instagram depends heavily on what your followers want and how much time you can focus on your Instagram marketing strategy.
Example
Fashion Nova, for instance, posts up to 30 times a day, with new content posted every half hour, to ensure that their global audience always sees something. They use this strategy because they know that everyone will see at least a portion of their posts, and it works because they’ve cultivated an audience that doesn’t mind the high post frequency and gets excited to see the new content. Of their over 8 million followers, each post earns an average of 13K likes and 90 comments, which is why so many people buy Instagram followers.
Your Brand Posting On Instagram
1. Start Small
Does this mean you want to start out posting 10 posts per day? Likely not. You want to build your audience of followers and learn more about what they expect from you first. That’s a lot of content to get ready for – 70 posts a week from the get-go? That would be difficult to sustain over time, especially for small businesses with a limited budget.
The best thing to do is prepare a few weeks’ worth of content ahead of time – regardless of whether you intend to post twice a week, once a day, or only five days a week. You should aim to stay ahead of whatever schedule you feel you can commit to. This way, you are never left with a day at the last minute when you have no content. If this happens, you risk breaking your consistency, which, as you’ll find out, is critical to your success with Instagram.
2. Keep it Consistent
Not your posting frequency matters so much as your posting consistency. The ideal posting frequency for you depends on the amount of time you have available and your business goals. If you start by posting several times a day, then transition to posting only a few times a week, you will lose followers and see less engagement per post.
This means the best frequency for posting is one that you can easily maintain for the account’s life.
Of course, you may want to increase your posting frequency, such as during special promotions and events. That’s to be expected from your audience, and they surely won’t mind seeing a bit more of you during those times and will go back to regularly scheduled programming after the promotion or event is over.
You’ll also want to consider that you’ll have photos and videos to post and that your Stories posts are separate from your feed. If you plan on using Instagram Stories, have different content for this that changes daily because that’s how long one story will last.
3. Watch Your Analytics
When you’re first starting out, the Instagram analytics data you’ll get about your audience and their engagement with you can help you learn about them.
This data can help you see if you could post more often or if you may want to back off some. You’ll also learn the times of the day and days of the week your audience is most active so that you can adjust your posting schedule to boost your engagement rates.
4. Adjust Accordingly
You can always ask your audience what they want from you and see what they say. If you like the idea of increasing your post frequency from twice a week to daily or, say, from once a day to twice a day, you can always create a post that asks your audience if they are ready to see more of you and the kind of content they’d like to see.
Then, you can adjust your strategy based on the consensus. You can always create and schedule content in advance, and once you grow big enough, start using user-generated content to build your content calendar out a bit more.
Types Of Content For Engagement on Instagram
As for the types of content that get engagement on Instagram, visuals work best.
Visuals
High-quality images
Instagram is primarily a visual platform, so high-quality, eye-catching, and appealing images tend to perform well.
Videos
Instagram users love video content, especially short-form videos. Consider creating videos that showcase your products or services, tell a story, or provide value to your audience.
Carousel posts
Carousel posts allow you to share multiple images or videos in a single post, effectively showcasing your products or services or telling a story.
Infographics
Creating visually appealing and informative infographics can effectively provide value to your audience and increase engagement.
Other types of content
For other types of content – let your users provide content for you, and remember, everyone loves a good story!
User-generated content
Encouraging your audience to create content for your brand can be an effective way to increase engagement. Share and repost user-generated content that showcases your products or services. If you have influencers in your network, ask them to create content for you to post on your Instagram or just engage with your content so their followers see it.
Stories
Instagram Stories are a popular way to share behind-the-scenes content, highlight promotions, and engage with your audience in real time.
Final Thoughts
Remember, the key to successful Instagram content is to provide value to your audience and maintain a consistent posting schedule.
What works for one brand won’t work for another. If you want an idea of how many posts you should start with, look at what your competition is doing. You are on the right track if you post at least as often as they are. If you’re posting less often than they are, you may not be able to compete with them.
And if you’re posting too much more than they are, you may end up annoying the audience. Do some market research beforehand so you don’t spend too much or too little time creating content before launching your Instagram profile.