How Frequently Should You Post on Instagram? | Ep. 24

Ty Smith0:04

Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Marketing Show. My name is Ty Daniel Smith. With me is TJ and Kylie, and today we are discussing how frequently you should post on Instagram.

Ty Smith0:11

So we are going to discuss what the data says about posting on Instagram, what the data means, and what we have seen ourselves. So let's get right into some stats and numbers.

Ty Smith0:18

Social Buddy, which is an Instagram growth tool, says one to three times per day. And their data shows major brands posting on average one and a half times per day.

Ty Smith0:25

A marketing software company called Dash Hudson broke down Instagram posting frequency versus reach as a percentage relative to average, based on data from 1400 brands.

Ty Smith0:35

So they saw that if you post one time per day, you will see 3.39% more reach than the average across all those brands.

Ty Smith1:06

If you post two times per day, that's 3.12% less reach than average. Three times per day, that's 6.17% less reach.

Ty Smith1:13

Again, this is per post. Four times per day is 13.17% less reach, and five posts per day is 9.26% less reach. I'm curious why that goes up after that, but it doesn't say that.

Ty Smith1:21

They also, Dash Hudson, also graphed the number of posts per day versus total reach. So those previous numbers are percentage reach per post versus average. This is total reach.

Ty Smith1:30

And it's pretty common sense, the more you post, the more reach you have total. But you do have less reach per post, which makes sense based on what we just discussed.

Ty Smith1:37

So interpreting that data basically says that it really depends on your goals. Do you want maximum total reach or maximum engagement and reach per post?

TJ2:10

Right. And just to recap, just because I'm sure it's a lot of figures for the audio version, basically, more or less, you get more reach the less often you post per day on that specific post. But you're going to gain more reach as an entire account overall over time the more often you post.

Ty Smith2:21

Yes, you have to decide if you're okay having a timeline that has less reach and engagement per post, or if you just want general brand awareness, you can post, the more the better basically, because you get a certain number of reach per post.

TJ2:28

I mean, basically like what are your end goals? What is it you're really trying to do and how much, are you playing the long game? How much time do you have to really make it happen?

Kylie2:33

And for those that don't know, reach is just the accounts that have been reached, like reached that post. And engagement are all those people that engaged with the post, like, comment, share, things like that.

Ty Smith2:41

Impressions are the number of times a post was seen. Reach is actually the number of accounts that saw your content. But basically they all kind of point in the direction that posting once per day is probably fine.

Ty Smith3:14

Which is kind of not what I thought honestly before we did all this research. I would think that posting two to three times per day was better.

Kylie3:20

I feel like for us, posting two times is a pretty, it's pretty good. We get a good amount of followers, I think, when we're posting.

Ty Smith3:25

We've been growing quickly and our schedule is what, twice per day? Yeah, it's about once to twice per day depending on. Well, that sounds aligned with what Social Buddy found.

TJ3:31

And so the little bit of the kind of rationale or reasoning behind the reason some of this stuff happens and why people say multiple times a day is because the way specifically on Instagram, the way it works, it's going to be shown to people that are online right then and within recently of when you posted.

TJ3:41

So say you post at 9:00 AM, you're going to be capturing, you're going to have a chance to be shown to people that are going to be on around that time of day. So then you post a few hours later, then that post is going to be shown to people around on that time of day. And then if you posted a third time, same type of thing.

TJ4:18

So the idea is the more times you post a day, the more opportunities you have to gain new followers that are going to interact and see your content in the future, but the less likely you are that your content is going to be shown to all of your followers, if that makes sense.

Ty Smith4:27

Yeah, so all this data is just on actual posts, but there's obviously stories as well on Instagram.

TJ4:31

Well, and that comes into another big thing as far as growing your engagement too. So the idea is like if you're doing each post, that's how you're going to pick up new subscribers most likely. And then staying very active on stories is how you're going to keep those subscribers engaged and increase your engagement rate on each post.

TJ4:43

So it really is a balance of doing both. As many, if you can post, like they said, one to three times a day for an average of one or one and a half, whatever that is.

TJ4:48

But then if you still want to have an active story of probably four to ten posts a day at least on a story, or really like in a perfect world, every hour for 12 hours would probably be great.

Ty Smith5:20

For story you're talking. For stories. Yeah. I yeah, I think a consistent story, constantly having something in your story is important.

Ty Smith5:24

So let's end with a quote from Neil Patel. Neil Patel, who is a social media and SEO, I guess guru, you can explain it, you can call it.

Ty Smith5:32

He says, "If you make a habit of posting several times a day and then transition to only a few times per week, you will start to lose followers and generate less engagement per post. This means that the best posting frequency for Instagram is the posting frequency that you can consistently maintain for the rest of your natural life."

Ty Smith5:42

It's a little extreme how it ends, but.

TJ5:44

Well, no, but I think that's a great point to showing it really is just building new habits and lifestyles and really building because when you first start, people think, like the very first time I started running a story and I thought like, oh my gosh, to have to post one thing every single day and keep something on my story all the time, that seems really hard to do.

TJ5:54

Now, without even thinking about it, I'll have ten things on there pretty much all the time.

TJ6:22

It's about habit. Yeah, same with Twitter. Right, if you tweet five times a day to somebody who doesn't tweet at all, they think that's a lot. To Crypto Euclid, if you somebody says five times a day, that's nothing.

Ty Smith6:29

Yeah. And using tools like Social Pilot and HubSpot, those are really good for scheduling Instagram posts as well.

Ty Smith6:33

So that is all for today. Please remember to rate, review and recommend this podcast. Your reviews on Apple Podcast definitely help us grow a lot and continue to put out content like this.

Ty Smith6:40

Also join us on Slack at coinbound.io/joinslack. We are constantly talking about stuff like this as well as other marketing related things. So join the conversation there.

Ty Smith6:46

And follow us on Twitter at coinbound_io, Ty Daniel Smith, Crypto Kylie, and Young Dumb Crypto.

TJ6:50

And follow us on Instagram.

Ty Smith6:51

And that that what are we? Coinbound on Instagram?

TJ6:54

Yeah, Coinbound.

Ty Smith6:54

Easy enough. Should be. Look us up. All right, that's all for today guys. Thank you.