How to find your best time to post on Instagram in 2021

Hi there, 

Happy New Year! 😊 Excited to be back with you all. I hope you've been able to take some time off for some much needed rest and self-care.

I wanted to take some time to acknowledge the heartbreaking events that happened over the past last week in the US. Please take care of yourselves and do what feels right, listen to your body and your heart and take the steps that are going to be most healthy and sustainable.

In light of this situation, we paused our scheduled social posts all last week. Here’s how to pause outgoing posts if you ever find yourself needing to do the same in the future.

In today’s newsletter:

• Our secret to finding the best time to post on Instagram in 2021
• Tips to establish your brand voice via tweets
• Maria Thomas joins Buffer as Chief Product Officer
• And much more!

Let’s get started! 👇

• Facebook introduces a new Pages experience

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• Twitter provides tips on establishing brand voice via tweets
• Facebook introduces a new "Access Your Information"
• LinkedIn highlights B2B customer engagement strategies for 2021
• 10 video marketing trends to guide your online strategy in 2021
• TikTok launches 'Black Creatives' program to foster new talent
• Facebook shares new insights into emerging shopping trends
• YouTube announces first participants in its #YouTubeBlack Voices Initiative
• 21 influencers share top tips for 2021 digital marketing
• Twitter permanently bans President Trump
• Facebook's response to the violence in Washington
• YouTube launches new hashtag search results pages
• LinkedIn adds swipe-up links to LinkedIn Stories

Though Instagram has changed a bunch over recent years ( Reels, IGTV, Stories), posting times for your feed content still matter and can have a big impact on your engagement.

We just published a new guide on how to find your best times to post here and I wanted to share a quick interview we did for this article. We spoke to Emma Ward, marketing manager for the New England smoothie bar The Juicery.

Emma has a two-pronged approach for finding the best times for The Juicery to post:

• She reserves the time when most of The Juicery’s followers are on Instagram to post about promotions, news, or other exciting content to share.
• She considers when her brand’s products are most relevant to its followers’ daily schedules. For The Juicery, mornings are a great time to get in front of people who are thinking about what to pick up for breakfast. She posts about smoothies and other menu items first thing in the morning—around 7:30 a.m. every weekday and just past 8 a.m. on the weekends, even if the number of followers online is smaller.

Here's the interview with Emma:

1. How do you decide what time(s) to post to Instagram?

With our product being in the health and wellness + food industries, I find the best time to post a majority of our content is in the mornings. I decide this through really one big science experiment. For each new type of content, I'll try it at different times. A post with an enticing acai bowl will be at a different time than a gift card giveaway.

With each type of content, I've gotten to know what content performs best and at what time through hypothesizing, testing, and trying again.

The predictive "best time to post" feature on the Buffer Analyze tool is also a game-changer! Especially for my smaller accounts, I really look to this tool to see what is suggested times based on when our followers are online and when they're engaged.

2. Do you try to consistently post at the same times each day?

I do try to post consistently at the same time. I would say I post around 7:30 am every weekday, and just past 8 am in on the weekends. With our industry, I want to be the first thing that our followers see when they open their phones in the morning. I want our smoothies to be on top of mind when they head into a workday.

On the flip of that, if I'm promoting a giveaway, a new location, or something that isn't menu specific, I'll post in the evenings. For this type of content, I want to get the most eye on the content and therefore post at a time where the most amount of people are online.

3. Does data from Buffer analytics help you to find the best times to post?

Yes! The Buffer Analyze tool works well for finding the best time in a few ways. Like I mentioned, finding the best time to post is really like one big science experience. Analyze gives me the ability to easily keep track of those posts and gives me a super quick glance at what was shared, what time, and how it performed.

The other awesome feature is the Answers section. I'll look at this tool for a few reasons. Sometimes, I'm looking for reinforcement in knowing that what I'm doing lines up with what is suggested. This is especially true with my bigger accounts.

The other way I use Answers is when I'm working with my smaller accounts that I don't know the audience as well yet. I'll look to the answers section for help on understanding best engagement times, best reach times, and best posting times, all based on how my own content has performed in the past.

How do you find the best times to post on Instagram? And do you refresh your posting times often? Reply to this email with your answers! 💌

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There are many factors to success on Instagram. One of the most important is timing. In this guide, we'll walk you through a step-by-step process to help you find the best times for your business to post

In July, we shared that we were looking for a product leader to help us take Buffer forward in our next phase.

After speaking to an incredible group of talented folks in product, we're happy to share that Maria Thomas has joined us as our new Chief Product Officer.

Corporate transparency is the belief that all organizations should be honest, open, and straightforward with their customers, their competitors, and themselves. The Org has compiled a list of the world’s most transparent companies in 2020. 

Woohoo, you made it to the end! 

Thanks for reading this far. If you ever come across a neat article or a cool trend, I'd love to hear about it. Feel free to reply to this email directly to get in touch or DM me on Twitter.

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