Best Time To Post On Instagram Reels | Know all the tricks to actually gain viewers

Many of you have asked us this question recently, what is the best time to post on Instagram Reels?

Today, we will finally talk about it, while at the same time share some of the tricks to gain followers and viewers in this new Instagram feature.

One of the running issues in any social media platform is constant improvement and updating.

This is pretty easy to understand and it’s just because social media is one of the most competitive markets in the entire world; nowadays all of us have at least one Twitter, Facebook or Instagram account and we use them on a daily basis.

Instagram has been one of the most interesting and original digital platforms on the whole internet.

It’s the place where both videos and images have joined to gain an unprecedented relevance that you are hardly going to see on other platforms.

When Instagram Reelsappeared, we can safely say that many still don’t know how to effectively use it or when to post, we will talk about it today.

Let’s start…

What is the best time to post on Instagram Reels?

Quick Answer: The most general times that are currently working best for almost any niche are:

• Mondays to Thursdays from 8:00 p.m to 10:00 p.m
• And with a 68% probability of having the highest engagement: Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m

*This is based on our own studies, there isn’t just one answer to this type of questions.

Interesting Fact: 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time is when “the largest number of people in the world are likely awake”, according to FastCompany.com.

Now, if you want to know more about this topic and your specific niche, keep reading as I will also share a few things to help you grow your channel for free.

As Gareth O’Sullivan (2018) stated, “the right time for posting on Instagram really comes down to your target audience and when they are active.”

This is a principle that is also fundamentally true when it comes to working and choosing the best time to post on Instagram Reelsbecause, well, this is an Instagram feature and it has some of the same characteristics that other digital marketing elements and platforms currently have.

What should you have in mind?

Posting on Instagram Reelscan be tricky sometimes, and it comes down to a few things that we need to mention before we even go ahead and analyze each hour of each day of the week:

• Choosing your target audience:

The internet is a worldwide platform, so it’s only natural that you are going to be able to reach people from different countries, cultures, and whatnot. It’s important that you understand that once you select your target audience based on aspects from that community (age, location, etc), you have to adapt your publication schedule to that one of said community.

Let’s break down this idea by the aspects that we mentioned:

Age

Depending on your niche, you will have maybe students (age: 13 to 18) that go to bed early for school.

You have to then consider the time of the year or any holiday that is taking place at the time that you are posting so that you make sure people will actually going to see your content.

On the other side, if your audience is older (age: 18 to 30), maybe they are attending college and working a part-time job at the same time, or simply having a full-time job from 9:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m.

This tells you that late afternoons and nights will be your best time to post.

What if you have older people as your target audience? Or maybe those that don’t work?

Might they be waking up early? If this is the case, then mornings will definitely be the sweet spot.

Think about it: With all this being said, we encourage you to think about who you are trying to reach and see at what time they will more likely be on their phones.

Location

When it comes to location, we mainly mean the country in which your audience is located.

Imagine you posting your videos trying to reach people from the United States when they are sleeping.

You will lose many viewers just for that reason (people will maybe get a notification when they enter the app, but it won’t be the same).

For later (below): You can use hashtags on your videos so they appear in the hashtags section just as any regular post.

The location of your audience will take a bigger role when having this in mind for exposure purposes.

Other

There are definitely more things that will influence how many people will see your videos, and when it comes to choosing your target audience, it can get very stressful to stick to one.

As a rule of thumb, always be testing and think about this question: If you were your audience, how would you find and discover your own videos?

• Be able to balance your own time:

As we previously mentioned, the truth is that the best time to post on Instagram Reels is not going to be an absolute answer; there are compromises that need to take place for you to have success in that regard.

You should consider trying to balance your own schedule with the one that your audience have; perhaps your time to sleep is in line with the time they are awake (as we previously talked about), so that’s something that can play a major role in this aspect.

If you have to change your own routine for the better, then don’t hesitate in doing so.

• Post daily on several parts of the said days:

This is a great strategy to determine what the best time to post on Instagram Reels is.

Why is that? Because thanks to the analytics that they provide (Instagram), you will be able to determine the time of the day that helps your videos get the most attention possible, thus allowing you to have a better grasp of what works and when it works with your very own channel.

Nothing will be able to beat your own analytics.

• Weekends are always a great time (with exceptions):

As you can imagine, when people are not working on their weekends, it’s always far more likely to have a bigger reception when sharing your content (depending on what time, of course). Then that is something that can have an interesting increase for you in views.

Weekends are a bit more complicated than weekdays in many ways.

People go out, and the last thing they might be thinking about is getting on Instagram Reels.

You have to see for yourself and decide whether they will be your best time or not according to your niche.

Remember: None of this is going to matter if the quality of your content is not top notch; this is something most people tend to forget. While a proper strategy is necessary to be successful in any format, quality content is also a must. As O’Sullivan (2018) has stated before, “of course, your content also needs to be very eye-catching and make your audience interested to find out more and maybe leave a comment.”

Best time to post on Instagram Reels by day of the week

We will now talk about each day in specific, but remember something very important: There won’t be a magic solution to this topic, it will be all about testing and developing a personal strategy; each audience is different.

• Sundays:

2:00 p.m to 7:00 p.m to reach people in the United States and Canada.

7:00 a.m to reach people outside of America, for example, a country in the Europe region.

• Mondays:

7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. for an audience living in the United States or Canada.

10:00 a.m. if you are trying to reach people outside of America.

• Tuesdays:

6:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. for audiences located in the United States or Canada.

9:00 a.m if you are trying to reach people outside of America.

• Wednesdays:

5:00 p.m to 8:00 p.m. for an audience located in the United States or Canada.

8:00 a.m for audiences located outside of America.

• Thursdays:

7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. for an audience living in the United States or Canada.

10:00 a.m. if you are trying to reach people outside of America.

• Fridays:

4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. for an audience living in the United States or Canada.

8:00 a.m. if you are trying to reach people outside of America.

• Saturdays:

3:00 p.m to 8:00 p.m to reach people in the United States and Canada.

7:00 a.m to reach people outside of America.

* Using Eastern Time Zone for all days

(google this to know the exact time for your location: *time* eastern standard time in *your location*)

As we said before, at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time is when “the largest number of people in the world are likely awake”. You can try posting around this time and seeing the results you get.

About the rest of the article: I will try to cover as much information as possible about this new Instagram feature Instagram Reels, and at the end, will talk about how you can start growing your channel with hashtags.

What is Instagram Reels?

There is something that we have to say before anything: Instagram is a social media platform that has more than 1 billion active users on a monthly basis, with the vast majority of them using Instagram from their mobile phones (Olson, 2018).

When it came to branching out and reaching a higher degree of success in that particular aspect, the creation of a video tool was one of the platform’s biggest investments.

In that regard, Instagram Reels is a tool they are installing in order to provide their users with a much swifter and capable video experience on their mobiles; this makes all the sense in the world when we consider that teenagers are having an interest increase of 60% when it comes to watching videos (Olson, 2018), that goes to show the importance of them in these modern times.

How does Instagram Reels works?

Let’s develop a bigger picture of how this video tool works so we can make the most out of it. There are many elements that explain how Instagram Reels works and we are going to explain them to you with the following points:

• This tool allows you to upload videos that can be up to one hour long. Due to this being a very recent element in Instagram, it’s still in its infant stage.
• It can only be handled and managed on your Instagram mobile app, the Instagram Reels app, or the regular website version of Instagram.
• Once you have the new Instagram Reels icon on your Instagram, click on the said icon and you are going to be able to create your own Instagram Reels channel.
• It was built to feature only vertical videos. Vertical videos are said to be “much more useful and practical than the horizontal ones” (some people will get mad about this).
• The videos have to be between 15 seconds and 10 minutes long for almost every user, and up to 1 hour for verified or accounts with big followings.
• You will be able to include a title and description. You can put hashtags and links in your descriptions, very useful for other business and marketing strategies (all covered in our blog).

You will also be provided with analytics. They will play a very central role if you are really looking to make the most out of Instagram Reels and find your best time to post. These are some of the most important statistics that you should consider:

• Views: This is the number of people that have been watching your videos so far.
• Likes: Those that have taken a liking to your videos.
• Comments: The number of users that have shared a comment under your video
• Average of length watched: There are people that don’t always watch the entire video, so that is something you should always have in mind. When you know how much of each video your audience is consuming you then will be able to develop other strategies to keep them interested and get their full attention. For example: Having a hook in the first 3 seconds of your content. 
• Percentage of plays active at a particular time: This is a pretty interesting metric that you should consider when using this tool. It allows you to check how many people watched your video in a very specific time mark.

Instagram Reels is still a brand new tool on Instagram and it’s more than likely that they are going to change it as time goes by, but it’s also worth pointing out that, as of now, it has enough quality and importance for you to consider using it as a way to get customers if you are a business or brand, or simply followers as an influencer.

What are the benefits of using Instagram Reels?

Of course, we are not going to use a new video tool if is not going to be of any help for us; it would certainly have no sense whatsoever. Therefore, it’s important that we check some of the main benefits that we are going to get by using Instagram Reels, such as the following:

• It serves an increasing tendency. As we previously stated, video content is getting more and more significant and relevant on mobile traffic; it has also been stipulated that by 2021 more than 78% of said traffic is going to be video-related (Sweaty Wisdom, 2018). So the best time to post Instagram Reels is, pun intended, now because this is something that is going to become very common as time goes by and more people are aware of it.
• Instagram attracts mainly the young audience. It’s no secret that our kids and teens are the future of this world, so it’s always important to have their interest from the beginning. Instagram is a platform that draws the youth with ease and, quite frankly, why shouldn’t be that way? Having a young target audience makes for a much more active community, so Instagram Reels plays a big role in getting this type of attention.
• We can all use it. This is one of the main benefits and reasons as to why you must know the best time to post on Instagram Reels: we are talking about a video tool that we can all use, regardless of our status, our country, and many other things. This is something that is quite useful when you are starting out because videos can provide a much more instantaneous reaction than, say, images or written content.
• It can stretch you as a digital marketer. Digital marketing is an ever-changing field and it’s always important that you consider all the possibilities that may arise in the future because they can provide a lot of variety and originality to your content. Which is why Instagram Reels can be so helpful to you; it can stretch you as a digital marketer and provide much more quality content in many different formats.
• It can also be quite lucrative. Let’s not avoid one truth from this: we all want to make a profit out of our own digital marketing campaigns, so it’s only natural that we want to invest time, effort and resources in only the best of the best –in that regard, Instagram Reels has our back. It has been stated that Instagram can earn up to $5.48 billion in U.S. ad revenue in 2018 due to the rise of Instagram Reels (Donnelly, 2018). So, this is a platform that has been worked and designed in a very meticulous manner, thus making it much more appealing to digital marketers everywhere due to the possibilities of making a big profit off it. Choosing the best time to post on Instagram Reels is not only necessary in terms of your brand’s traffic success, but now also in terms of monetary gains, so always keep that in mind when working on this field.

See: Can you make money with Instagram Reels? | Things to do before is too late

Instagram Reels is going to be one of the biggest video platforms in the coming years in the world of digital marketing, so do your best to seize this little intelligence from now on before everybody starts using it, making you fall back on the competition.

How to grow your Instagram Reels channel with hashtags?

Is amazing how many people don’t know that you can actually put clickable hashtags on your video descriptions. Your Instagram Reels will also appear as if they were regular posts on the hashtags sections of Instagram. Just like this:

This is what we wanted to mention when we talked about your audience “location” and growing your channel for free.

Because now a big part of your video exposure in each hashtag section will depend on how many people are actually active at the time, thus having a close relationship with the actual location of each one of those people (if everyone is sleeping, who is going to discover your videos through hashtags?).

Just like people have been doing with Instagram by posting the 30 hashtags in the comments, you can do that with Instagram Reels.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlWUPo-nt8e/?taken-by=charleeatkins

In this post by @charleeatkins, we can see from her first comment that she is using Instagram Reels hashtags to drive traffic to her channel.

Her caption is as well encouraging her followers to watch her videos.

Just as we talked before, you can use both your regular posts and Instagram Reels videos to get featured on the hashtags section so more people can see your videos.

Pro Tip: Use hashtags in your regular post to both get new people to notice your content, and convert your already followers into viewers, and use hashtags in your Instagram Reels videos to directly get new people to view your videos.

In this video by Alexa Golden, she goes over what to post on Instagram Reels and other things to be aware of when starting.

I encourage you to watch it since she mentions a lot of very important things that will be extremely helpful for any niche.

She mentions something really interesting when it comes to the competition with YouTube.

Is not about Instagram Reels vs YouTube, but Instagram Reels and YouTube.

They should be considered just as tools to accomplished your desired goals. For example: Maybe getting more people to know about you.

Conclusion

Instagram Reels is here to stay, like you or not.

It’s a new platform, dedicated to bringing the best creative minds together in one place and to create a new tool that can rival that of YouTube when it comes to the world of videos.

Can it rival YouTube as the king of video platforms?

Only time will tell.

As for you, all we can say is that you need to seize Instagram Reels while it’s still in its infant stage; now is your time to get ahead of any competition.

It is definitely going to get much more significance and attention so today use what you learned, including the best time to post, so you can be more successful than ever.

Before you go

We are a website dedicated to providing the best hashtags for any market or niche.

If you like what we do, make sure to bookmark our homepage so that you can easily access our content anytime you want to.

Thank you for reading,

The Hashtagie Team