Instagram top 9 2020: How to find your best performing nine posts to share ahead of New Year

This year’s New Year celebrations will look very different to normal, with the Covid pandemic removing the opportunity for many of the rituals we hold dear.

House parties are out of the question, even with the five-day easing of the rules during the Christmas break around the UK, while curfew restrictions mean any pub visits in England’s tier two areas must finish by 11pm (and include a substantial meal).

A winter getaway is also off limits for most people, with overseas travel options still severely limited, but one tradition will be entirely unaffected: the posting of carefully selected inspirational quotes and poignant retrospectives on social media.

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Instagram has carved itself a particular niche in the New Year’s social media arms race with the proliferation of best nine/top nine collages highlighting a user’s most successful posts from the year gone by.

Here’s how to avoid missing the boat this year, and in the process gain some absolutely crucial insight into which of your lovingly-filtered brunch snaps performed best.

How to compile your Instagram Top Nine

Unfortunately (and perhaps surprisingly, given the trend’s popularity) you can’t actually curate your best nine directly through the Instagram app – instead, you’ll have to go through a third party.

It’s very straightforward, though: the two most popular ways to do it are called Top Nine and Best Nine, which essentially do exactly the same thing.

Both have simple websites – you can find Top Nine through CreatorKit here, while Best Nine is here. They don’t require any email, registration or phone number registration from you, just your Instagram handle.

If you supply that, they will assemble your top posts from 2020 in terms of likes to share with your delighted followers, as well as giving you the chance to look at some overall performance statistics from the past 12 months.

They also have apps available for free download on both the App Store and Google Play, which are useful if you run a private account as that information isn’t available on the browser versions.

However, it can take a little while, particularly as the countdown to the New Year grows ever closer.

Best Nine displays a holding message reading: “Please note that now it takes like 10 minutes to complete your request due to a huge demand. Your request is already on our queue, so please come back later.”

Top Nine gives you the chance to have your results sent to you via email, explaining: “Some accounts may take more than a few seconds. We will email you a link so you don’t have to wait!”

As well as giving you that all-important analysis of your winningest Instagram posts (crucial for planning your social media strategy for the coming 12 months), it also creates the opportunity for some slightly sinister comparisons with other users.

So you can not only discover the top-performing nine posts not just for some of the world’s biggest celebrities, but also go down the creepy rabbit hole of comparing yourself with literally anybody you know who runs a public account.

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