Instagram Engagement in 2026

Instagram Engagement in 2026

Hubspot put out a report on Instagram engagement. While the report is focused on B2B (business to business) and B2C (business to consumer) Marketing and not creators, there are a few interesting stats even for us bookish creators.

  • Reels rank #1 for reach, likes, and shares (read on to learn more about reels and how to optimize your engagement with them)
  • 56% of Marketers are posting daily
  • For B2C, the best time to post is weekday mornings, especially Tuesdays between 9am-12pm (let's see if that's true. I'm sharing mine a bit further down below)
  • Once you reach 1k followers, your strategy has to adjust. Start focusing on engagement tactics that encourage the audience like, comment, and share your content. Think about it as a two-way conversation.

Instagram metrics to look at

The most important metrics to track for Instagram are watch time, like rate, and share rate -> aka, everything that shows how engaged your followers are with your account and your content. But overall, Instagram uses multiple different factors to decide what to show to whom:

  • User engagement -> likes, shares, saves, and comments
  • Content performance -> how many people like a post and how quickly
  • Account performance -> how many people have interacted with the account
  • Relationship performance -> how accounts interact with each other, not just one-sided engagement (meaning, how much you engage with others as well)

Where to see when your followers engage?

To see when your followers engage with you, go to Dashboard > Insights > Account > Most active times (on your desktop) to see hourly and daily engagement breakdowns specific to your account.

For me, 9am-12pm was true for every day, not just Tuesdays - see screenshot of Mondays from my account here (the other days looked very similar).

Instagram Most Active Time My Account

Buffer also put out a best time to post on Instagram heatmap and they are aligned on the weekday mornings, specifically, Thursdays at 9am. (btw, I have no idea why their heatmap goes backwards - 10pm to 6am 🤷)

Buffer Best Time to Post on Instagram Heatmap

So, how does the algorithm work on Instagram?

There are 3 important aspects to Instagram: Feed and stories, explore page, and reels.

Feed and stories are designed to help you keep up with accounts you already know (in addition to seeing new accounts with similar content). The more you like a post from a specific account or comment on it, the more other posts from that same account you will see on your feed.

Interaction is the sign for the algorithm to push more of the same. So, if your followers reply regularly on your posts and stories (and you respond in return), the more likely it is that your followers will see your posts again and again and again.

The explore page is about discovering new accounts. The posts shown here are based on what else you tend to look at, save, or interact with, not based on if you follow that account.

Your posts will be shown here if they match a person's interests. To be shown, your existing posts popularity signals have to be strong as well. That includes likes, shares, saves, and comments, and ideally all of those early on after you posted.

Reels are meant for entertainment. And the more you watch a reel, the better. Important here are watch time, rewatches, shares, and audio clicks. If the algorithm sees strong engagement across these four, it will push your reel to new audiences (similar to the explore page). Important to note, reels are the best way of growing your community right now.

Let's talk reels

Reels get 36% more reach than carousels and nearly double the reach of a single image. As mentioned before, interaction is key. Instagram looks for the engagement of users with the reel, their history with the account (you), if it uses a trending audio, watch time, etc. Here are some additional thoughts on what types of reels perform better:

To show up on the explore page, keep reels to 90 seconds or less. Longer videos will be shown to your followers, but for growing your audience, 90 seconds are best.

Videos that include human speech in the first 3 seconds drive better responses (more than music). Additional text-overlay is best left for music videos though. Retention goes up by 9.8% for videos with music but down by 4.5% for videos with speech (suggesting that when a person is speaking, excessive text may distract from the human connection). Keyword being excessive - some text explaining what the video is about helps with the user experience.

When a person appears for at least one second within the first three seconds of a reel, the 10-second retention improves by about 10%. Viewers are also 4.3% more likely to watch the video with sound on when a person appears in the video (remember, audio clicks are important for reels). On the flip side, videos featuring people have a lower replay rate (-4%) and a lower engagement rate (-2%).

If you prefer really short videos (up to 7 seconds), reels that function as a loop increase the replay rate by 18.7% and the engagement rate by 16.1%.

The format is important too. Vertical videos see 20.9% higher reach.

And finally, reels shared via DM are the most heavily weighted signal for distribution.

There's more than reels

In addition to reels, carousels and original content that uses trending audio are still better than static images.

Carousel posts are image posts that show multiple images. The user has to slide through them to see them all. Instagram just upped the amount of photos you can include in a carousel to 20. While reels get the highest reach, carousels see the highest engagement of all posts types - 12% more than reels (no surprise, given you have to click to the next slide to see the rest of the post).

Adding audio to a static image or carousel not only helps with engagement, it then also shows up under reels (which an image without sound doesn't - you only see those in the feed).

Also, check out Instagram's ideal image size (see my very first Book* Creator Guild newsletter here) to avoid cropping of your post.

By the way, sharing your own image or reel to your stories doesn't change your overall reach. Instagram knows that this is your on post that you published already, plus, the feed has a higher reach than stories.

What hurts your reach?

Post whenever and whatever you can, right? Nope! While consistent posting is rewarded, posting too often can hurt your reach (we're not on Twitter... excuse me, X...). 

Content that Instagram doesn't want to recommend, such as low resolution, mostly text, logos or watermarks from other platforms (aka, don't share your TikTok video on Instagram, upload the original) will not help you grow.

And for Instagram it's still true that the more specific you are with your content, the better for the algorithm. Think of it as a match making service. Instagram is trying to match your posts to other book lovers, ideally those that love the same genre. That's the easiest, if your posts and reels are all about the same topic.

Not to forget, anything that goes against the community guidelines, such as sensitive topics, adult content, regulated goods, or false information will be ignored by the algorithm.

To summarize: what to do

  1. Be you! Original content from a real person is key.
  2. Post regularly. As long as you're consistent, Instagram will reward you (and it doesn't matter if you post daily or weekly, as long as it's consistent).
  3. Vary your post types -> stories, reels, carousels, images.
  4. Check when your followers engage with you and post during those times.
  5. Include keywords naturally in your description (note: hashtags are not that important anymore - but don't forget them either), so Instagram knows what it is about.
  6. Have fun.


Sources

Hubspot Instagram Engagement Report: https://offers.hubspot.com/instagram-engagement-report

Buffer The Best Time to Post on Social Media in 2026: Times for Every Major Platform https://buffer.com/resources/best-time-to-post-social-media/...

Buffer How the Instagram Algorithm Works: Your 2026 Guide https://buffer.com/resources/instagram-algorithms/

Buffer Data Shows Instagram Reels are Best For Reach — But Not Engagement https://buffer.com/resources/instagram-reach-engagement-anal...

Hey Orca How the Instagram algorithm *actually* works (2026) https://www.heyorca.com/blog/how-instagram-algorithm-actually-works-2026

Social Media Today Human speech and presence help drive Reels engagement https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/human-speech-and-prese...

Social Media Today Instagram chief debunks popular engagement hack https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/instagram-chief-debunk...

Emplifi What keeps viewers watching Facebook Reels? [New data] https://emplifi.io/resources/facebook-reels-data/

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