There are a lot of factors that go into how many times you should post on Instagram. It can be challenging to keep up with the ever-changing algorithm, so we’ve put together a few guidelines to help you stay on top of your social media marketing game. Follow these rules, and your account will be sure to grow!
What’s the difference between Reach and Engagement?
Before we dive into the results of the study, it is important to understand a couple of terms and how they relate to your campaign success. The two terms that we’ll be focussing on here are reach and engagement rates.
- Reach Rate is the number of unique accounts reached per post/number of followers.
- Engagement Rate are (comments/likes/shares) per post / number of followers.
If you want your campaign to focus on brand exposure and growth potential, look at your reach rate. If you are more interested in measuring audience impact and community value, take a closer look at your engagement rate.
If you run a small business and are just starting out on social media, it is likely that you have less than 1K followers at the moment. We know that not every post you do will be seen by your audience, but with this study recently conducted, these guidelines should be able to help you increase reach and engagement over time.
How often should I post?
Based on the study, the more frequently you post on Instagram per week, the greater your overall reach will be. In line with this, if an account post more frequently, this typically equates to more engagement.
This isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach however, as the reach and engagement rates change depending on how many followers an account has, it will be very different for an account with >205k followers compared to <1k. For smaller followings (<1k), posting 14 times per week delivers the highest reach and engagement rates per post.
How follower numbers and posting frequency impacts post-performance
The study has uncovered some really interesting trends that you can use to your advantage. For accounts with <1k followers, the more posts you share on your feed per week the better. And it’s not just that, reach AND engagement rates per post improve as the frequency at which you post also increases, with the average engagement rate moving from 3.1% to 4.9% when increasing from 1 post to 20.
To put that in context for your small businesses account, if you have 500 followers, the engagement rate will grow from 15 to 500 just by increasing from 1 post per week to 20, which if you’re new to the game, is definitely something you should take advantage of. One of the reasons why this happens is because smaller accounts don’t have a large following as their main source of engagement – they’re more likely to rely on new audiences to engage with their posts via hashtags – and their reach rate grows with each additional post shared.
So, how often should I be posting on Instagram?
Luckily for you, if your business has <1k followers, it doesn’t matter if you are more focused on engagement or reach, the results are still the same. To achieve the best reach and engagement rates, you should be posting 14 times per week. Consistency is key but the reach and engagement rates you could get from your audiences by sticking to this rule could do wonders for your small business.
