One day I was wondering, “Am I Instagramming right? Is ‘Instagramming’ a word? What ARE words…” Anyway, the takeaway was the Instagram thing and so I went to my trusty interwebz and looked it up. And now I shall compile my obsessive search results for all of you!

According to Buffer (Please note that this was posted in 2016 so things may be a tad outdated, as evident by the fact that there are tips for the now defunct Google+):

Number of posts: 1-2 posts per a day (with 3 posts being a high amount).

Recommended times to post: 8-9AM & 2AM (I know, I thought 2AM!? but remember we have international follows…hopefully)

Tips: They say to only post when beneficial to your audience and when you have something distinct to show/say.

Bonus tip: Always give credit if you’re reposting a graphic or photo!

According to Bussiness2Community:

Number of posts: 1 per day. 6 times per week (this is because there is no option for reading/writer so the closest seems to be “education” and “food”)

Tips: The most important thing is consistency!

According to Adobe Spark:

Number of posts: 1-10 per day

Recommended times to post: 2-5AM has the highest engagement.

Tips: The frequency of posts depends on your brand and goals. They suggest experimenting with frequency at first to see which gets you the most engagement.

Bonus tip: Quality is key!

“content such as vivid images, captivating videos, thought-provoking quotes and useful facts. Indeed, fewer posts are better than dull or repetitive posts”

According to Later (Note: this is the most recent post I found and took into account the new algorithm!):

Number of posts: It’s changed post algorithm change. Some content creators are posting up to 6 times a day. Many fashion accounts post up to 30 times a day! (The argument is that their followers are more likely to see one of the posts as they’re on at different times of the day)

Tips:

“If you make a habit of posting several times a day and then transition to only a few times a week, you may start to lose followers and generate less engagement per post.

This means that the best posting frequency for Instagram is the posting frequency that you or your business can keep up with consistently.”

The only exception was posting more specifically because of a special event. So for an author going to BookExpo changing from 1 post to 10 posts per a day is understandable and doesn’t lower engagement when they go back down to 1 post on an average day.

Interesting fact: BEFORE the algorithm change (which I strongly dislike personally) the half-life of an Instagram post was 72 minutes.

TL;DR OVERALL Tips

Everyone says to post at least 1 time per day.

Everyone says that quality is much more important than quantity.

Everyone says that no matter your frequency be consistent.

And remember, Have Fun!

Do you have any tips for using Instagram as an author?