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My Instagram reach tanked after I started using the 'best times to post' feature
I trusted that little analytics tool for three months straight, posted at exactly 7:15 PM on weekdays like it said. My engagement dropped by half compared to when I just posted whenever I felt like it. Turns out the data was pulling from all accounts globally, not my specific audience. Now I just post when I have something good and ignore the scheduler. Has anyone else found those 'optimal time' tools to be way off?
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gavinlopez8h ago
Wait, it was pulling global data instead of your specific audience?
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lucashart1h ago
Oh wow, yeah that is crazy. It's wild how often tools just default to looking at the entire world instead of drilling down into who actually matters for your business. I've seen this exact thing happen with analytics dashboards where you think you're tracking local customers but it's pulling in all sorts of random traffic from other countries. It completely messes up your numbers and you start making decisions based on junk data. Like if you're a plumber in Austin, you don't care about page views from Indonesia, you need to know what people in your service area are actually looking for. Getting that audience filter right is everything or you're just guessing.
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Read a study that said most of those tools just average out peak times across all time zones, so it makes your actual followers look like ghosts. You basically outsmarted yourself by following bad data.
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