Scheduling Instagram Reels: The Complete Guide
By samaresan@hubspot.com (Swetha Amaresan)
It’s frustrating when I intend to post an Instagram reel on a certain day and time and simply forget. Life happens, and posting to social media isn’t always the priority.
However, it’s devastating if the reel is particularly culturally relevant — i.e., wanting to post something during a company event or at a campaign launch. To avoid missing out on big brand moments, it’s essential to schedule reels.
Read the following guide to learn more about the benefits of scheduling reels and how to schedule them with various tools.
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The Benefits of Scheduling Instagram Reels
If you’re still unconvinced about scheduling reels, I’ll share six major benefits of planning ahead.
1. Posting at the right time garners more engagement.
According to a SocialPilot study that monitored engagement on 50,000 Instagram accounts’ reels across industries and locations, these are the best times (in EST) to post an Instagram reel:
- Monday: 6 AM and 10 PM
- Tuesday: 3 AM, 4 AM, and 9 AM
- Wednesday: 7 AM and 9 AM
- Thursday: 12 AM, 9 AM, and 7 PM
- Friday: 5 AM, 2 PM, and 4 PM
- Saturday: 12 PM, 7 PM, and 8 PM
- Sunday: 8 AM, 11 AM, and 4 PM
Unless you eat, shower, work, exercise, and sleep with a phone in your hands, it’s difficult to stick to these exact time slots without scheduling posts in advance.
If you want the most engagement, I highly recommend scheduling Instagram reels when your audience is most active on Instagram.
2. You’ll be flexible and consistent with content creation.
Inspiration often strikes at the most inopportune times. Just because I have an idea doesn’t mean I should film and post it immediately.
For instance, if I just posted a reel one hour ago and have an idea for another one, I can film it and post it at one of the recommended publish times tomorrow or later in the week.
This way, I won’t confuse the Instagram algorithm with excessive posting.
Hootsuite recommends brands post three to five posts on Instagram per week for the best reach rate per post. If you have the bandwidth to post more, then great!
But, quality is better than quantity, so it’s better to publish three great pieces of content than 10 mediocre posts.
3. You can plan your marketing campaigns upfront.
Having a great idea for a reel is only half the battle.
It’s equally important to choose to either post it immediately as part of a larger cultural trend or wait to tie it into a larger campaign.
If …read more
Source:: HubSpot Blog
