How often should I post on Instagram for optimal growth? Is posting for the sake of posting a terrible tactic? Is posting too often even possible? Will I see a noticeable higher reach if I post twice a day? If those are the questions you keep asking yourself – luckily, we have the answers, so let’s figure them out!

 

We know a lot of people are afraid they post too rarely. ‘Shouldn’t I post as often as I could, even four times a day?’ Many times, that’s not such a great idea. When people follow you, they’re with you for your personality, for your sense of humor, for your industry knowledge, from the tips from your niche, for the advice—in other words, they expect content that gives them something valuable: good laugh, education, inspiration, motivation, hints, meaningful questions, and insights. Don’t be afraid to post a little bit less frequently, but provide more value. Serve your audience and honor your followers by being of value so they will feel like the time they spend with your content gets rewarded!

Now, how often should you post new content? That’s a question we will answer today, so hang tight and read on!

 

The trap of posting too often 

Let us tell you: there’s too much noise and shoddy content out there on the ‘Gram. Let’s be practical: you need to come up with something engaging to stand out, not contribute to the noise with an attitude: “I have to post something every day, no matter what is the quality of posts I’m providing, I just need to post twice a day.” This attitude will not attract your dream followers/dream clients and sell your future products/services!

The truth is, we see far too many creators used to posting without the strategy. They post pretty but very generic photos with overly popular quotes or insert an almost 1:1 copy of what someone else has written. That’s not the way – it works for some people (celebrities, actors, and creators known originally from other platforms or famous for being famous), but it definitely won’t help you get where you’re going. Because we’re not the ones from the Kardashians family, right?

 

 

You want your audience to feel inspired, educated, and motivated through your content – that’s the way to make them stay. Always ask yourself if people are benefiting from your post – if the answer is “yes,” the chances they won’t stop following you after a while are much higher. And a loyal audience is a key to Instagram success. You probably already know that. Do you have to provide value everyday? Many times, it’s almost impossible as creating engaging, packed with knowledge captions is really time-consuming. 

 

Our research shows that posting every second or even third day is more than okay. Show off yourself more spontaneously on instastories, but post on your feed when you’ve prepared something really beneficial – and don’t forget about captions!

Consistency and quality over frequency!

 

You might be thinking:

• “But hey, I don’t like being forgotten, and I feel like if I don’t post twice a day, it will happen.”
• “I don’t like changing my strategy, and I promised myself to post as often as I can.”
• “Fewer posts but with longer captions? I’m not good at writing long forms; forget about it!”
• “I don’t want to be seen as someone who doesn’t care about the community. I just want people to enjoy my ideas, so I’m going to show them off really often.”
• “I don’t want to put time and effort into longer captions and more valuable posts; I prefer to post most often but with less time-consuming to create posts.”

Look, WE HEAR YOU, but what you post matters much more than how often you post. You don’t have to post everyday or twice a day to make people remember you! Is it better to post every two days with valuable posts with well-thought-out captions or post random content with cliche quotes twice a day? The choice is yours, BUT captions absolutely matter. Why? The app measures the time people spend reading your posts. It knows precisely how many minutes or seconds people spend looking at your content. Extended, engaging captions with a CTA = more benefits for you, as the algorithm notices people see your posts as the ones worth reading. 

I’m posting really often, but something is off!

What if, after a few months into posting consistently, you’re stressed out because you’re not getting anywhere business-wise besides spending too much time polishing your captions, thinking about better first liners, and scrolling your feed for ages, looking for inspiration?

Well, it may be time to rethink your content strategy.

You might be consistent, but maybe you’re just not doing the right, strategic things?! Let’s work on that!

Let us ask you: 

• Are all those long hours you’re spending on Instagram worth it for your business/your account’s growth? Is there a way you could optimize your time, so you won’t have to face burnout soon?
• Haven’t you fallen into the trap of “posting as often as you can,” neglecting other marketing activities and different parts of your Instagram content marketing strategy?
• Are you getting any return out of the content you painstakingly create? You may have posted every day or even twice a day, but at what cost?

 

 

What can you do to save time and see faster growth of your profile?

Oftentimes, people are craving more substance.

One of the best ways to see differences in your stats and improve your reach is to create more content that encourages your audience to tap the save button. Believe us – it’s a game-changing tactic. What exactly does it mean? “Saveable post” is anything you know your followers will want to revisit at a later time because it will seem valuable enough. They may feel like they will need this in the future.

The proven way to see a pleasant number of saves in the Instagram insights? Carousel posts – an easy-to-use format to share interesting tips and knowledge from your niche. Will people save it every time? It depends on many factors (we’ll teach you how to create irresistible carousels in the next post!), but the chances are that your audience will feel the need to refer back to this post when they want to act on your tips, so yeah, they will save it.

From our perspective, carousel posts do wonders – and they always get a significant number of saves on our profile! Additional benefit? Many hashtags will make your carousel posts more discoverable, and people looking for go-to knowledge from your industry will find you much easier and quicker. Sounds promising, huh? 

 

I’ve got nothing valuable to post about!

Oh, you surely have. You just need a little help to notice that and make it work for you!

Posting personalized and data-driven content is a big trend in 2021, and it really helps drive engagement – so when you feel like you don’t have a specific idea for new content, you can tell your stories! Your expertise and your experience are the two most precious things you own – so make them work in your favor. You have many more inspiring stories to tell than you think! 

Whatever you do and whatever your niche is, share a lot of knowledge and practical advice that people can use in their life. What’s the ultimate goal? To be an authority/an inspiration. We bet you’re really good at telling stories – let’s use that skill! And if you feel otherwise – well, it’s more than worth it to practice it when you can. What’s especially important: make your stories not only about you – but also about your audience. Provide them critical take-aways from your cases. 

 

Create a hashtag repertoire

Preparing content is time-consuming, and so is looking for the right words, right photos, right everything – it comes more naturally with time, but still, it demands your complete focus. 

Would you like to make your life a little bit easier?

The good idea is to improve hashtag research tactics to save your precious hours and have more time for content creation. 

Hashtag research doesn’t need to feel daunting — in fact, it can be effortless to conduct. We’d like to share a profitable trick from our own experience – we outsource our hashtag research in a way. Many online tools can help you with that; the one we use is IQ Hashtags. It shows you relevant hashtags from your niche (based on the keywords you provide) and how big they are (as the size of hashtags matters and it should match your profile’s popularity). It also filters out banned or not working hashtags.

 

 

What do we like the most about it? You can arrange researched hashtags by different, practical categories and then insert them into posts with one smart click. Just create separate lists of hashtags relevant to the different types of posts you make. It means no more looking for the lost notes in your phone’s notepad, switching between different apps, or thinking about new hashtags for hours! To be honest, we find it extremely helpful: it’s such a supportive repertoire, and we have many lists there to reduce the time typing hashtags in repeatedly. This gives us extra time to focus on the content and engaging captions – so we think it’s such an intelligent solution. It has the power to take us from being busy all the time to being crazy productive so we can stop playing hooky and procrastinating while other meaningful parts of content creation keep piling up.

 

 

 

 

To wrap-up

It’s mostly not about the frequency of posting itself. Here’s the thing: your audience and the Instagram algorithm need to know that you create valuable content that positively influences people. That you create something, people REALLY NEED. That you help someone. Inspire someone. Make someone laugh. Make someone think deeper about some topic.