I missed the Argentina vs. Austria match, but as the roars echoed through the hills of my tiny city, I knew—Messi had scored a goal. The next day, even as I started writing this, I was scrolling through a flood of WhatsApp statuses celebrating the footballer. Even with the cultural differences and the language barriers and from thousands of miles away, Leo Messi has a hold over this football-loving population.
And my city isn’t the only one. The footballer has superfans all across the globe—from the paddy fields of rural Bangladesh to the vibrant streets of Buenos Aires.
This has everything to do with the player’s remarkable skills and the beautiful game of football connecting people all over the world. But Leo Messi’s strong social media presence also has something to do with it, as his social media team knows how to engage his Instagram fanbase of 509 million.
From practice videos to matchday stills, the team knows what types of content to post. Better yet, they know the best times to post on Instagram to keep his global fanbase engaged.
In this post, I break down the importance of getting your timing right when you’re trying to reach a global audience. I also share tips and best practices on perfecting your Instagram post timings. Let’s take a look.
Kicking off with the why, we need to have a clear understanding of the role that timing plays in engaging a global audience. It’s a well-known fact that knowing the best time to post on Instagram is important for brands. But it’s even more so for global brands with audiences spread across multiple time zones and geographic locations.
Here’s a breakdown of the biggest reasons why you need to get your timing right to reach and engage a global audience.
The first few minutes after your post goes live are critical. Those initial interactions will help the Instagram algorithm decide whether to boost your content to a worldwide audience or bury it deep in their feeds.
So if you post when your target regions are asleep, your content doesn’t get immediate traction. The algorithm then hides it before your target audience even gets to see it.
This one’s obvious, but posting at times when your target regions are most likely to be using Instagram helps you reach them more effectively. When you understand regional habits, you can time your posts to avoid missing key demographics.
Someone in Kyoto who scrolls through Instagram during their 8 am train ride to work could see the post around the same time as someone in Miami who’s winding down after dinner. But someone in Madrid might miss it because it’s midnight and they’re sleeping. So to reach people in all these cities, you’ll need to time your post for around 9 pm JST.
That way, the user in Madrid could see the post as they do a quick scroll after lunch, while the user in Miami might see in as they check Instagram before starting their workday.
While you’re out here trying to figure out the best times to post on Instagram, remember that every other brand is doing the same. They’re strategically timing their posts to reach audiences when they’re most active.
Although this is technically supposed to be ideal, it also creates a lot of noise. Users are flooded with all sorts of content from various businesses, so your post stands a high risk of getting buried. Catching certain regions during less active times (but definitely not while they’re asleep) can help you capture the initial viewership and engagement needed for your post to get in front of a larger, global audience.
So what is the best time to post on Instagram? While there’s no universal “best” time to post, several studies show that there are certain hours when Instagram posts see a higher engagement rate.
According to Buffer’s analysis, Instagram posts that go out in the evenings (between 6 pm and 11 pm) on weekdays see the strongest engagement overall. This holds true across time zones because that’s when people typically start to unwind at the end of the day. Engagement also sees a slight peak around midday, when users are likely doing a quick scroll during their lunch breaks.
This is where it gets tricky for brands that are trying to reach audiences across different time zones and geographic locations.
Sure, a post that goes live at 6 pm CDT could reach users in Chicago when they’re most active. But what if you need the same post to reach users in London or Barcelona? It’ll be around midnight, which means they’re likely asleep already. By the time they wake up, the post is already buried deep in their feeds because it hardly got any traction when it went live.
So there’s no truly universal best time to post for global brands. Instead, you need to strategically post at a time when audiences in all your target regions are likely awake—regardless of whether or not they’re active on Instagram around that time.
That’s what Leo Messi’s team gets right. They don’t post every day, but they post regularly and strategically. They tap into key moments and hours to time the player’s Instagram posts so it reaches his global fanbase when they’re most likely to see it.
When it comes to frequency, Messi’s team saves posts for days when people are paying attention. For example, they post practice photos or videos on match day to gear up for the event and build anticipation with his fans.
They also share the obligatory post-match content to celebrate the player’s wins.
This is perfect timing because it’s when fans who watched the game are excitedly turning to Instagram to tune into relevant conversations while adrenaline’s still running high. So seeing their favorite player’s post immediately as they open the app will make them want to engage. The following post got over 21 million likes.
As for the specific timing, Messi’s team focuses on hours when his global fanbase is awake (even if they’re not actively on Instagram around that time).
For example, they shared the following Instagram on the hours leading up to Argentina’s match against Austria. The timing tracks because it’s around the time when key football regions and the player’s biggest fans are awake.
The strategic timing allows Messi to effectively engage his fans from all over the world. But when it comes to post-match celebratory posts, Messi’s team doesn’t wait until the next day. Posts go live soon after the match ends so they can engage audiences when their excitement is at its peak.
They know that even if it’s 3 in the morning for his Indian fans, they will be active and ready to engage because they were up all night watching the game.
So what can you learn from Leo Messi’s team? And how can you perfect your post timing for engagement on Instagram? Here are some best practices to get started.
When it comes to global audiences, you can’t pick a time when everyone’s active at the same time. That’s why some brands might resort to posting at a time slot that mainly works for their specific location.
But relying on a single publishing time slot when you’re trying to reach global audiences is one of the easiest ways to get left behind by the Instagram algorithm. You may want to post at 7 pm CDT because that’s where you’re located, but you could risk not reaching audiences in certain regions if it’s a time when they’re asleep.
It’s best to consider major audience clusters and optimize your timing accordingly. Where are your audiences located? Pick out the top 3-5 locations and time your posts to reach those audiences when they’re most likely active or awake.
The initial traction you gain from reaching those larger audience clusters will give you enough visibility to reach users in other locations.
If you’re going to optimize for audience clusters, it’s also important to figure out the timings that work at those key regions. This involves understanding how Instagram posts perform in a specific region when you send them out at various times. You’ll be able to pinpoint the performance windows you should be targeting.
You can look at native Instagram analytics to see how your own posts perform at specific times. But this makes it a little hard to narrow down region-wise performance windows. If you’re running a global influencer marketing campaign, you can use the opportunity to track how influencer posts perform across different regions.
And you don’t even have to manually track down every post and keep messy spreadsheets to note down their performance. Influencity offers automated content tracking tools to simplify this process.
This will automatically collect and analyze influencer posts in a centralized dashboard. It will show you which influencer posts are performing well, so you can align their performance with specific posting windows.
To support the above strategy, you’ll need to take a structured approach to influencer rollouts across different time zones. Focus on influencers in your key target regions so you can effectively engage audiences in various time zones.
You can even experiment with a different posting window for different influencers to see what timing drives the best engagement. For example, two influencers in Spain post at 6 pm and another two will post at 9 pm local time. Meanwhile, one influencer in Tokyo posts at 8 am local time, while two others post at 7 pm and 9 pm respectively.
Switch the timings up occasionally to make sure it’s not just the influencer that’s affecting those engagement rates.
While you have designated windows for your regular posts, don’t rely on them too much that you miss out on key cultural moments.
As we saw in the Messi case study, the team pushed out content quickly after a winning game. They tapped into the post-match excitement of fans to drive in-the-moment engagement, even if it was at a time when fans in certain regions would typically be asleep. This made sense at the time because it was not a typical day, and most fans would be awake because of the game.
Similarly, look out for these in-the-moment engagement windows. Don’t wait to post until the next day after the excitement has already died down.
The fact that there’s no universal best time to post on Instagram doesn’t cancel out the importance of timing in your content strategy. You need to perfect your timing to gain that vital initial traction to get your post in front of a larger global audience. Make the most of the tips and case study highlighted above to guide your Instagram publishing schedule.
Lunch breaks (12 pm to 1 pm) and evenings (6 pm to 9 pm) are typically the best times to post on Instagram. However, this also varies based on industry and region.
While there’s no single best hour to post on Instagram, posts that go live at 6 pm on Wednesdays tend to see high engagement globally.
9 pm is a good time to post on Instagram because it’s when people typically do a quick scroll before bed.
You should post on Instagram during the 6 pm to 9 pm peak engagement window. Then experiment with different post timings to see when your specific audience is the most engaged.