Introduction
Throughout 2020 and 2021, social media became more important than ever as a way for people to maintain instantaneous connections, discover new trends and hobbies, and stay current on current events.
To thrive in an unexpectedly rapid digital transformation, brands had to pivot, and social marketers had to fight burnout as the volume of social interactions and messaging demands increased. See our COVID-19 learnings and resources review for more information on the strategies brands used to respond to these changes.
With this in mind, it’s no surprise that our review of the best times to post on social media for 2021 revealed many significant changes in the data, with increased and varying engagement across platforms and industries. Both brands and their customers were constantly adapting their online operations, resulting in new patterns of interaction and engagement on social media. As many of us continue to refine and reimagine strategy for 2021, this data can assist marketers in understanding the current social landscape.
We collaborated closely with our data science team to review findings and trends in social media usage from Sprout Social’s 20,000+ customers over the past year and understand when their content was most and least frequently engaged with, broken down by platform and industry.
We’ve highlighted the best and worst times to post on each social platform, as well as the best and worst days to post overall. Use this data to help inform your publishing calendar’s scheduling, or continue reading for ideas on how to incorporate these findings into your analysis of your specific account’s peak engagement times.
Finally, if you want a quick reference of the best times to post globally across each network, download your copy by clicking the button below. In addition, the best times to post on social media in GMT are included in this quick reference guide.
Disclaimer: Sprout Social data includes users from a variety of plan types, industries, and locations. All time frames are captured in the Central Time Zone (CST). The number of engagements represents the total number of engagements received by a brand on a specific channel during that hour’s time frame. Mid- to high-level engagement times are included in industry-specific data.
When is it best to post on Instagram?
- Tuesdays, 11 a.m.–2 p.m., and Mondays through Fridays, 11 a.m.–2 p.m, are the best times.
- Tuesday is the best day.
- Sunday is the worst day.
Throughout 2020, Instagram stepped up new features like Reels, improved Stories, and pushed discovery on its Explore page. This made it an ideal platform for social media audiences dealing with lockdown measures to discover and share new hobbies—something brands can use social listening to keep up with as these trends emerge.
In 2020, the top times to post on Instagram expanded in comparison to previous years, similar to Instagram’s parent company Facebook. Midday engagement became even denser during the weekdays, with peak times spanning the 11 a.m.–2 p.m. range, and evenings and weekends saw increased opportunities for engagement.
Instagram is an excellent platform for brands to experiment with their content: reinforce your visual identity with high-quality photos, or highlight your brand’s graphic design efforts by displaying what you’ve created for content such as infographics and data reports. Instagram Live, like Facebook Live, exploded in popularity in 2020 as a way for people to stay connected in a more immediate and less curated way. Instagram Reels also allow for shorter, more viral-ready content to supplement your feed. Instagram also dabbled with longer-form content by introducing Instagram Guides as a way to provide more in-depth information on wellness, eventually expanding to other topics.
