At Buffer, we’re big fans of using data and research to guide our social media strategy. So when it came to finding the best Instagram strategy, I turned to social media studies.
I read through more than 20 studies on Instagram marketing from companies like Facebook, Simply Measured, and News Whip. Some analyzed the top Instagram accounts while some even studied tens to hundreds of thousands of Instagram posts.
Here’s what I learned from my look at the research.
The studies contain a ton of great information, and I distilled the key findings into eight actionable tips. Here are the eight tips to guide your Instagram strategy:
1. Instagram’s young audience likes current, creative, and useful content
According to Statista, an online market research portal, the largest user group on Instagram in the U.S. as of December 2016 was the 25 to 34-year-olds, which accounted for 25.2 percent of U.S. Instagram users. This is followed by the 18 to 24-year-olds, which form 20.6 percent of U.S. Instagram users.
Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan American think tank, also looked into the demographics of Instagram users in the U.S. They also found that “Instagram use is especially high among younger adults” — to a greater extent than Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Here are some highlights from Pew Research Center’s study on social media use in the U.S.:
- Fifty-five percent of online adults between the age of 18 and 29 use Instagram — the highest percentage among all age groups
- Thirty-three percent of online adults between the age of 30 and 49 use Instagram — the second highest percentage among the age groups
- A bigger percentage of women (38 percent) than men (26 percent) use Instagram
Instagram strategy takeaway:
If your target audience is between the age of 18 and 49, Instagram could be a great platform to reach your potential customers and engage your existing customers.
To help with your Instagram marketing strategy, Facebook interviewed and surveyed more than 12,000 teens and young adults and offered these recommendations on how to maximize Instagram’s potential for your business:
- Showcase what makes you special: If you can share a perspective that only you can offer, you can more likely connect with the teens and young adults on Instagram.
- Blend in to stand out: Instagram users prefer beautiful visual content and often post such high-quality content themselves. To engage them, you have to create similar high-quality images and videos.
- Inspire the moment: Teens and young adults in the study describe Instagram as current (42 percent), creative (37 percent), and useful (32 percent). Hence, they would expect such content from brands on Instagram.
2. Posting frequency is not as important as posting consistency
A common question we get is:
“How often should I be posting on Instagram?”
We previously found that major brands post once or twice per day to Instagram. And some post as many as 10 times per day without seeing a significant fall in engagement.
Tailwind, a visual marketing tool, analyzed more than 100,000 Instagram posts and offered a plausible explanation for the high posting frequency:
The more often you post on Instagram, the more likes and followers you gain.
They found that accounts posting more than seven times per week get more likes and grow their following faster than accounts that post less than seven posts per week.
Tailwind also analyzed the engagement rates of accounts that increased their posting frequency. They found that when accounts posted more frequently, their engagement rate went up.
We’ve monitored accounts that post once an hour, all day long, and they see above-average engagement rates on almost all their content, no matter when it occurs in the one-post-an-hour sequence. Later posts do not decline in engagement.
But this doesn’t mean you should start posting several times per day. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. Union Metrics’ whitepaper mentioned two important points:
- Your audience might not be used to seeing several posts per day from you
- You might not have the time to create so much content and maintain your content quality
Instagram strategy takeaway:
Posting more frequently is great if your audience likes to see multiple posts per day from you and if you have the resources to constantly produce high-quality posts. Otherwise, posting consistently is more important.
If your followers are not used to seeing many posts per day from you, you could annoy them and cause them to stop following you. If you do not have a team working on your Instagram account, it’s likely challenging to consistently put out high-quality content several times a day. When you run out of content ideas and stop posting consistently, you risk losing followers, which Union Metrics discovered in their study.
Like Union Metrics suggested in their whitepaper, “Stick to a regular posting schedule, but generally don’t post more than a few times a day. One or two great posts a day is better than 10 mediocre posts.”
Buffer for Instagram can help you post consistently to Instagram and measure your Instagram marketing efforts. We would love for you to give it a try and see the difference.
3. There isn’t a universal best time to post on Instagram
CoSchedule did a great job rounding up several studies on the best times to post on Instagram. Here are some of the studies and their findings:
- Huffington Post: 2 am to 5 pm is the best time to post on Instagram
- MarketingProfs: 1 to 2 pm is best for engagement
- CoSchedule: Tuesday 2 pm could be the best time for driving traffic
Lifewire also looked at a few research and found several best times to post on Instagram. SumAll also compiled findings from a few sources (Visual.ly, Search Engine Watch, and Social Media Today) and suggested this: 5 to 6 pm on weekdays and 8 pm on Mondays with a sweet spot at 6 pm.
All the suggestions likely worked well for some businesses but certainly not all. This variety in “best” posting times points me to one conclusion.
There isn’t a universal best time to post on Instagram.
Instagram strategy takeaway:
If there isn’t a universal best time to post on Instagram, when should you post on Instagram? How do you make sense of these research?
Here’s my take: These research are great for you to form hypotheses of your best posting time. For example, like Lifewire suggested, “Around the lunch hour is when people get a break to do what they want; that often includes checking…
