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You can't add links to your Instagram post captions (sorry, sales team). However, if you want to invite your Instagram followers to your other resources to increase traffic to your website, promote products and services, and enhance user engagement, all you need to...
If you are a social media marketer, you might have often asked yourself this question. How often to post on Instagram? Or how many posts are too many posts? Are we posting too much? Or is it too little?
If these thoughts have ever crossed your mind, then welcome to the club!
Various social media users have this million-dollar question etched into their minds. Well, allow me to inform you that you’ve arrived at the right place.
Today, we’ll analyze the industry standards of Instagram post frequency, as well as how you can leverage this information to your best interest.
This simple quote has very easily laid down the importance of communication with your consumers using social media. And when it comes to Instagram, your posts are the medium you use to communicate with your audience.
So the short answer to your question is: Yes, your Instagram post frequency does matter.
Before giving you more details, let me quote Mr. Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google:
Social media is a powerful tool that allows businesses to engage directly with their customers and build lasting relationships.
Now, allow me to explain it. Think of your Instagram account as one person talking to a classmate they just met, which, in this case, is your audience. If you keep bombarding them with texts and messages every day, it is very likely going to annoy them, and they might start avoiding you.
In another scenario, if you don’t communicate with them at all and don’t reply to their texts ever, there is a high chance they might stop talking to you as well. And neither of the above is an ideal situation.
The solution here is to strike a balance in your communication with your new classmate. Don’t scare them away with your waves after waves of texts, and don’t completely disappear either. The same applies to your Instagram marketing strategy as well. If you are unsure of what’s working and what’s not, you can use different social media tools to get a detailed insight into your post engagements and better management.
Achieving an optimal frequency of posts not only gets you more visibility but is also the core of your entire social media strategy. Your social media calendar, post scheduling, and even the time you put into content creation shall vary depending on how frequently you want to post in a week.
In other words, it could be your key to laying down a foolproof roadmap to your social media marketing approach and strategy. Posting too much can overwhelm your audience, and posting too little can make them forget you.
So overall, you need to:
Instagram never laid down a textbook rule on how frequently you should post. However, to our relief, the Head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri, answered the question himself back in 2021 in a Q&A round with Instagram’s creator account.
To quote his words: “A couple of feeds per week, a couple of Stories per day”.
Now that you have a generic idea, here is a breakdown of how much you should post using different features of Instagram to your advantage. Take a look:
Based on a Wall Street Journal report, Instagram users spend 17.6 million hours per day watching reels. This factor alone should make you want to take reels more seriously. Ever since Instagram started competing with TikTok, it has been focusing a lot on short video content.
Based on industry standards, most brands post an average of 4-7 reels per week. However, just meeting the count simply doesn’t work. For best results, you also need to make sure the quality of your content meets the standard. Also, as we have already mentioned, this post frequency is not etched in stone. Based on your content engagement, you can also alter it to get the maximum results.
The master himself has answered this question above. It is best to keep your story frequency to a few times a day. Stories are a great medium for quick engagement with your audience. You can also use them as a promotional tool to redirect them to your new posts, your landing page, or even to your website.
Use them to take polls and get the opinion of your audience, boost engagement, and understand their sentiment. Given the fact that they do not last beyond 24 hours, creators often use them to share their own opinions and experiences as well.
However, it is important to use the stories widely. A common trend is most people skip your stories when they find too many in a row. So, instead of dumping everything at once, create a time-frequency to post your stories and make sure it adds value to the screen time of your audience.
Now, let’s finally discuss the most diverse part of the entire Instagram marketing plan – your feed. This is the place that includes your photos, videos, carousels, and even your reels. Since you already know the frequency of post reels, use this additional information accordingly.
The industry standard for posting on your feed is 2-3 posts per week. For smooth content creation and posting, decide on your Instagram post ideas in advance. For better reach, take inspiration from recent trends, incorporate trending audios, and post content relevant to your target audience. Trying a mix and match of different content types and using appropriate hashtags can further boost your engagement.
Now that we know what the general industry standards are, let me tell you it is still a very generic idea. If you are also one of those people who think one size doesn’t fit all, you may be right.
If posting twice a week on Instagram works for your business, it doesn’t mean it is working the same for someone else or vice versa. The information that we have discussed above can be your starting point to create a strategy, but you should not use it as the final verdict.
Before you decide your post frequency for further use, it is important to get an insight into how your posts have been doing so far. Even if you are a beginner, it doesn’t hurt to keep a watch on your profile engagement from the beginning.
Here are two tools from Meta that you can use to get an insight into the performance of your posts. Remember, these tools work, only if you have a professional account. So, if you haven’t changed your account status, do it right away.
You can find this feature by navigating to your professional dashboard right on your Instagram app.
For a better analysis, you can start experimenting with the number of posts you share or the stories you add. If you see a positive change in the stats, it means you are doing well, whereas a negative change can mean your previous approach was better. If you don’t see any significant change, you can continue doing it for a few more weeks to get a better analysis.
This is another feature from Meta that was launched in 2014 to help businesses manage their Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger accounts in one place. You can use this as your Instagram feed planner to plan and preview your posts, manage your business pages, see notifications, and a lot more.
Once you successfully register on it, you can get insights into how your engagements and reach have changed over the weeks. It also makes automatic comparisons of selected time frames with previous ones to help you make more informed decisions.
It will show you the number of posts you have made in both the time frames and how it impacts your stats. You will also be able to analyze the impact on your total reach. The only downside is that it doesn’t give an analysis of the reels anymore. You can find several tools, like Planable, SocialPilot, and other similar tools online, that give you a complete analysis in one place.
Posting frequently on Instagram can be a great way to consistently appear on the feed of your existing followers and reach new accounts. When you post frequently, it helps you appear higher on the search results with the keywords that you have used, or to even get a feature on another account.
If you are consistent with your Instagram posts, you can always use the analytics to even find the type of content that works and does not work for you. Now that you know the importance of posting frequently and an ideal frequency, it’s time for you to lay down a concrete social media marketing strategy. Keep Posting!
Sankalp Uprit is a digital marketer at SocialPilot specializing in content strategies. Beyond work, he loves gaming, anime, and reading business books. He’s also a nature enthusiast. In the digital realm and the beauty of nature, he finds his true passions, combining them seamlessly in his journey.
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