Lists of «best posting times» are compiled from other channels with other audiences in other time zones. Your readers may live on a different schedule, and the only way to find out is to test.
What actually matters
- What the audience does. A channel for accountants and one for students peak at different hours.
- Time zones. With readers across several, «nine in the morning» means several things. Aim at where most of them are.
- Competition for the feed. If everyone in your field posts at nine, your nine o'clock post sinks in ten minutes.
How to test
One variable at a time, for long enough. Move the publishing time, keep days and format as they were, and look at reach over the first day — not the first hour: posts accumulate at different speeds.
Five or six posts per variant is the minimum for the difference not to be noise. One post proves nothing.
What to look at
Reach relative to subscriber count, not in absolute numbers: the channel grows and raw figures grow with it regardless of timing. And count reactions and replies separately — a post that was read and a post that got a response are different events.
When timing is not the problem
If reach is low at every hour, the schedule is not the issue. Look at what you publish and for whom — keeping the channel human.
How Neurogram does this
Everything above is manual work that runs into the number of hours in a day. Neurogram does it on your own accounts and without you: it collects channels and audiences, writes comments and replies with a language model, and keeps limits and quiet hours so the accounts survive. See pricing or look at your case.