Why is nobody talking about posting times for different time zones?

I run a small Instagram page about vintage cameras and I post at 7pm EST like everyone says to. But my analytics show half my followers are on the west coast or in Europe. So my posts are hitting them at 4pm or midnight which is probably terrible. I tested posting at 2pm EST last week and my likes from California actually went up by 15%. Am I overthinking this or does the algorithm really punish you for not matching your audience's local time? Has anyone else tried splitting their posts across different time slots?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_tara11d ago

Wait hold on. Half your followers are in Europe? That is legitimately wild to me. I run a small gardening account and I thought I was crazy doing 10am EST for my UK audience but it only bumped engagement by maybe 5%. Your California bump is huge.

avery_lopez11d ago

That 15% bump is interesting but I would not read too much into one test. A week is a really small sample size and could just be random luck or a fluke in the algorithm. I have played around with posting times for my landscaping company page and never saw a clean pattern that held up for more than a month. Unless you are seeing a consistent double digit gain over several weeks I would not go rearranging your whole schedule over it.