Scroll-Sleep-Wake-Repeat
- Elisabeth Ric Hansen
- May 26
- 5 min read
The social publishing platform LATER released data earlier this year on the best social media publishing times - or more specifically, as with most things on LATER - the best time for Instagram.
From the data, it seems that most "grammars" are waking up to their feed and going to be with their feed - not surprising right? We are probably all guilty of "scroll-sleep-wake-repeat". So what happens on Instagram is likely a good indicator for most channels and behaviours at a high level.
What's good to know for B2C brands, and even B2Bs, is that overall many people are open to engaging with your content early in the morning and late at night.
When we first started social media marketing, we were careful to keep everything in business hours, but that was when shopping used to happen during store hours. So why not catch your users when they are most focused and open to new messages - in the morning - or most likely to click the "buy button" - late at night.
Over Christmas I surveyed my LinkedIn followers about B2B posting over key holidays and weekends. I was surprised it wasn't an overwhelming "bugger off and leave me alone" from everyone to be honest, but I guess when you're operating across multiple time zones and different cultures, the "right time" starts to blur.
So what did LATER suggest?
Newsflash: The overall best day to post on Instagram is Monday at 5am!
With LATER stating that the highest average engagement occurring for posts published between 12 AM and 6 AM on a Monday morning. Not the best time to get your social media army ready to take fire, but of course LATER scheduling can fix that. If you forget to post your Monday morning content, they also reassured us that Monday at 11 PM is also a strong time for engagement.
When it come to specific days of the week for Instagram?
It seems the morning trend continues. Although whose morning it is anyway? That's still a question mark.
Friday 3 AM to 6 AM.
Saturday 5 AM.
Sunday 12 AM, 5 AM, and 11 PM.
Either Way, Engagement Rates are Down - Big Time!
I have been hearing and reading this everywhere, especially from businesses that have personally built themselves on Instagram. Engagement rates fell off a cliff last year. Like lemmings.
From SMK News: TikTok reportedly continues to dominate organic engagement, with an average engagement rate of 2.5% per post. Its algorithm prioritises content that sparks conversation and sharing, which has resulted in higher levels of interaction. TikTok posts receive an average of 3,092 likes and 66 comments, reinforcing the platform’s role as a key space for audience engagement.
Instagram, once a leader in social media engagement, has seen a 28% decline year over year. Engagement now sits at just 0.50%, with fewer users liking or commenting on posts despite a 13% increase in impressions. This suggests that while Instagram’s content reach remains strong, users are shifting towards more passive forms of engagement such as Stories, saves, and direct messages.
Facebook remains a challenge for organic engagement, with an average engagement rate of just 0.15%. Organic visibility continues to decline, making it increasingly difficult for brands to achieve success without paid promotion. However, Facebook Groups remain a valuable space for deeper audience interactions.
So Where to Next?
Everything started changing last year, mostly in response to this exactly - the success of TikTok. With TikTok rewarding and favouring the content, not the creators - and of course dominating the video content scene - the other channels have quickly followed suit. Which is why you are constantly being encouraged to follow content creators on Facebook.
After advising brands and creators to keep Reels under 90 seconds for better engagement, Instagram shifted its approach to video content now actively promoting and recommends Reels up to three minutes long.
YouTube Shorts benefitted enormously from a) lengthening its content formats and b) inadvertently grabbing a whole host of creators as their preferred distribution channel when TikTok almost shut down in the USA in January this year. The jury seems to be out on what the next steps are with this one, but it was enough to scare off some of their monetizers.
What this does mean, is that you as a brand, can now feel a lot more comfortable investing in video content with a plethora of channels taking this content on - and audiences lapping it up. Outside of Instagram, the need for that content to be super slick and of high production value has seriously plummeted - good news or bad, this does create less barriers-to-entry and costs for video content.
In a Nutshell?
Social media, in my opinion, is a bit of a mess right now. These changes have made the user experience unpleasant over the past year as all the things you used to love seem to have changed overnight, and then changed back again and changed again - a lot like Donald Trump's Tariff announcements.
In an open letter to Meta on LinkedIn last year I wrote: "Social media has never been more exhausting than it is right now. Half or more of my time is spent scrolling through my social feed trying to reeducate your AI on what and whom I am interested in".
Perhaps this is a key reason for the drop offs in engagement? Yes, the AI bots and Algorithms (this seems to have become a proper noun in my mind) have run rogue as they scramble to understand their new learning curve. But also, the audiences are not stupid - or immune to the chaos - and they have an innate sense that they are once again being "pushed into" a lot of these changes without a voice - and we know most humans don't like change.
Simply by liking a post, we are now even more aware that this could bring an onslaught of unsolicited copycats and advertisers to your next scroll ("look-a-likes" being the official term). Try telling Google and Meta you are not interested in TEMU, only to find they have reformatted their ads, changed their country locations, profile channels and ad servers to jook you into seeing their ads just one more time ... or ten.
So when I wear my personal hat, and then my marketing hat, I am finding the whole thing a bit of a hard-(to)-sell set of platforms for marketing. Albeit the one positive being the reduced barriers -to-entry for video content.
So what are we doing about it? It seems we are all caught by the short-and-curlys. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. At the mercy of the tech giants. Too legit to quit. I could go on. So we keep our ears out, listen to what others are saying, follow forum conversations and press releases, keeping on our toes to see where to next.
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Sources:
Social Insider
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