Did you know that only 3.5% of your Instagram followers are seeing your content? Unfortunately, with the way Instagram’s home feed is laid out, most users are seeing recommended content from accounts they don’t even follow - and the content they did sign up for is shuffled around in an order predetermined by the algorithm.

While you can’t exactly force Instagram to push your content to the top of your followers’ feeds, you can improve your chances of actually being seen.

The best way to do this is to figure out when your audience is most active, and post during those times. And that’s exactly what I’ll be sharing with you today - how to see when your Instagram followers are most active, and the best times to post depending on your content types.

Key Points

• How To Access Instagram Insights (Switch Account Types)

• How To See Most Active Time On Instagram

• When Is The Best Time To Post On Instagram?

• How Do You Increase Likes On Instagram?

• FAQs

How To Access Instagram Insights (Switch Account Types)

Before we get started, you’ll need to have a Creator or Business account in order to access Instagram Insights. It’s completely free and unlocks some useful features, so if you haven’t switched already I highly recommend it.

If you already have access to Instagram Insights, skip ahead by clicking here.

Otherwise, keep reading…

Tap the three lines on the top right corner of your Instagram profile.

Scroll down to For Professionals and tap Account Type And Tools.

Tap Switch To Professional Account.

Follow the on-screen prompts depending on your account type.

Select either Creator or Business (either option will let you view insights).

Complete the on-screen prompts to finish set up.

How To See Most Active Time On Instagram

Start by opening your Instagram profile and clicking the three lines on the top right corner.

From here, scroll down to For Professionals and tap Insights.

Tap on New Followers and scroll down until you see Most Active Times.

That’s it! You now have all the data on when your followers are active on Instagram. Not sure what to do with this information? Keep reading…

When Is The Best Time To Post On Instagram?

Most experts agree that the best time to post on Instagram is when your followers are the most active, and while there are a few general rules for IG posting times it’s still a good idea to personalize it for your own audience.

Once you’ve accessed your followers’ most active times using the steps above, here’s what you should do…

Create A Posting Schedule

Start by saving a screenshot or make notes of when your followers are most active. 

You should use this information to create a posting schedule based on the days of the week that your followers are most active, and the specific times of day they’re online. 

Feel free to save the posting schedule template below, and mark the times your audience is most active based on your personal Insights. 

You don’t have to post every day, just pick at least one active day per week and decide on the best time to post within that day. As long as you stay consistent, you should start seeing results.

Schedule Content Ahead Of Time

Instead of having to remember to manually post content at the ideal time, you should create a few weeks’ worth of content and pre-schedule it. Instagram now has a built-in feature for this right when you create a regular post.

Once you've created your post, scroll down and tap More Options.

Under Sharing Preferences, tap Schedule This Post to toggle it ON.

Select the date and time you want the post to be published. You can schedule content up to 1 month in advance.

Tap Done, then return to the main post options page and hit Share.

Recommended Reading: How To Schedule Instagram Posts

Test & Adjust

So you created your content and scheduled it to post at the most active times - now what?

Well, now you need to see if it’s actually working or if you need to make adjustments.

You should regularly review your Insights to see if your engagement levels increased at all. If they didn’t, consider scheduling content to publish at a different time (maybe you had more than one ‘most active time’ in your followers analytics?).

As you do this, take note of which times worked and which didn’t. You might also need to adjust your schedule depending on the season (people are more active during vacation times, for example).

How Do You Increase Likes On Instagram?

Let’s say you figured out when your followers are most active, you scheduled content to appear at those times, and you still aren’t seeing engagement on your posts.

The problem is likely still due to the home feed algorithm not recommending your content in your followers’ feeds. The most common reason for this is that your posts historically haven’t had much engagement, so the algorithm has no reason to consider it “high value” (high engagement = value when it comes to social media).

Obviously that’s a vicious cycle, because if you don’t have engagement your content isn’t being seen…so you won’t get engagement, and so on.

The best way to work around this (besides posting your content on your IG Story and begging people to interact), is to buy Instagram likes or other forms of engagement, depending on your needs.

Basically you input the link to your IG post, choose the number of likes you want to receive (it’s just a few cents per like), and submit your order. No passwords needed, and all the likes come from real Instagram users.

Once you start gaining more likes, your posts will be noticed by both the algorithm and your followers, which should give you the boost you need to get out of that annoying cycle. 

Frequently Asked Questions