THS Creative
Social Media Analysis · Instagram & Facebook Feb 2023–Jul 2026 · LinkedIn Jun 2025–Jul 2026
Overview
Cross-Platform
Instagram
Facebook
LinkedIn
Updates
Refreshed 2026-07-29. Adds Apr 30–Jul 28, 2026 to the dataset (249 Instagram posts, 217 Facebook posts, 46 LinkedIn posts, full history now Feb 2023–Jul 2026). Instagram Stories are included for the first time — see the Instagram tab. Full methodology notes at the bottom of this tab.
Where Each Platform Stands
Current state · plain language
Instagram
795 followers

Reach has declined every year since 2024 — 189 average per post down to 151 through July 2026. Reels are the exception: they averaged 263 reach in 2026, the best on record, while dropping to just 21.6% of posts — down from 34–38% in 2024–2025.

What's happening: The best format is still being used least. Reach is still following it down.

Facebook
911 followers

Still reaching far more people per post than Instagram — 316 average in 2026 vs Instagram's 151 — extending a lead that opened in 2025. People-focused posts average 266 reach vs 213 for business/product posts, and continue to anchor the platform's best performances.

What's happening: The gap over Instagram isn't closing. If anything, it's widening.

LinkedIn
Just over a year of data

The audience here is clients, partners, and referral sources actively researching THS. Average impressions climbed from 266 (2025) to 354 (2026 to date). Women of Gold ran again in March 2026 — four posts averaging 440 impressions, 44% above the account average.

What's happening: The best-performing format still runs once a year. Everything else averages 306.

Data Worth Pausing On
The findings most likely to change how the team thinks about content
Instagram · A Live Contradiction
Saves vs. reach, before and after Instagram's Q1 2026 update

Instagram's biggest ranking overhaul since the algorithmic feed (confirmed by Adam Mosseri, Q1 2026) made saves one of four primary distribution signals, alongside DM sends, watch time, and profile clicks.

Shares 0.56 Likes 0.33 Saves -0.05 ←

THS's own data shows saves at a -0.046 correlation with reach — effectively zero. Not a mistake in the platform's guidance, and not proof it's wrong for this account either — flagged as an open question, not resolved either way.

Facebook · Share Amplification
6+ shares = 9× the reach of no shares
0 shares
79
1–2 shares
194
3–5 shares
389
6+ shares
714

Only 12 of 217 Facebook posts hit 6+ shares. Clicks correlate strongest of any signal (0.80) — stronger than reactions (0.63) or shares (0.51) themselves.

LinkedIn · Two Things to Know
~65%
of feed allocation goes to personal profiles; company pages get ~2–5%
81%
of LinkedIn's reported "engagement" is just clicks to expand the post

The 16.7% native ER looks strong. The real social signal — reactions, comments, reposts — is 3.2%. LinkedIn's metric and Instagram/Facebook's metric are not the same thing.

Team members posting from personal profiles will structurally outperform the company page on the same content. This isn't a content fix — it's an activation question.

Four Things to Change on the Calendar
Specific · backed by data · no new resources required
1
Instagram: get Reels back to 1 in 3 posts.

Reels averaged 263 reach in 2026 — the best Reel performance on record — while making up only 21.6% of posts. The 2024–2025 rate was 35–38%. No new equipment, no new strategy. Just the mix.

2
Facebook: hold at 3–4 posts/month, keep the human angle default.

3–4 posts/month still produces the strongest per-post reach (375). People-focused posts average 266 reach vs 213 for business/product posts — a gap that's held across the whole dataset, not just a good quarter.

3
LinkedIn: one named team spotlight per month.

Women of Gold ran again in March 2026 — 440 avg impressions vs 306 for everything else, a 44% lift. It's run once a year since 2023. Monthly is achievable and the data backs it.

4
Both platforms: still defaulting to early morning.

42% of Instagram posts and 41% of Facebook posts still go out 5–9am — the weakest window on both platforms. Afternoon beats it by 101% on Instagram; morning beats it by 75% on Facebook. Same finding as the original analysis — it hasn't moved.

Correction to the June case study: the original analysis reported "only 9 of 208 Facebook posts flagged as crossposts" and framed cross-posting as an untapped opportunity. Re-running the detection this cycle (same logic, now working correctly against the full dataset) finds THS already publishes matching or near-identical captions on Instagram and Facebook on 188 of 196 Facebook posting days — and that pattern goes back to 2023, not just this quarter. The prior number was a measurement error, not a real change in behavior. The actual open question isn't "should THS cross-post" — it already does, consistently — it's whether identical captions across platforms is the best use of that discipline, or whether platform-specific framing (see Cross-Platform tab) would do more with the same effort.
Data Notes — Read Before Presenting
Facebook export changed format this cycle. The Apr 30–Jul 28 pull came from Meta's newer "Content" summary export, which drops the "Reach" column entirely in favor of "Distribution" (a relative multiplier like "+1.1x", not a raw count) and "Viewers." This analysis uses Viewers as the Reach-equivalent for that window — its magnitude lines up with the historical Reach figures, but it isn't a confirmed apples-to-apples match. Re-exporting via the classic Post Performance report next cycle would remove this assumption.
Boosted/paid detection is unavailable for the new window. The new Facebook export format doesn't include the ad-spend columns used to flag boosted posts, so all Apr–Jul 2026 Facebook posts default to "organic" in this analysis. Historically boosting has been negligible (1 post out of 217, the 40th Anniversary video), so the risk is low — but it's an assumption, not a confirmation.
Instagram Stories appear in the data for the first time this cycle (85 Stories, May 7–Jul 22, 2026) — a genuinely new signal, not available in any prior export. See the Instagram tab for detail. Kept separate from feed-post averages throughout this dashboard since there's no historical baseline to compare it against yet.
Follower counts updated by Alex, 2026-07-29: Instagram 795 (was 786), Facebook 911 (was 910). All reach-rate figures in this dashboard use the updated counts.
"Personality vs. Business" content tagging is a keyword heuristic (team/spotlight/anniversary/tribute-type language vs. product/service language), applied consistently across the full dataset — not a manual per-post editorial read. Directionally reliable, not a precise classification.
Data freshness: covers 3.5 years, most recent post 5 days before this analysis was run. Current, no staleness caveat needed.

Instagram still rewards content people respond to. The Reel mix still hasn't caught up.

Reels are the only format that reaches people outside the existing follower base at scale, and they're still at 21.6% of posts in 2026 — down from 35–38% in 2024–2025. Reel performance keeps improving even as volume shrinks: 206 avg reach in 2024, 223 in 2025, 263 in 2026. The mix is the lever, not the format's performance.

How the Instagram Algorithm Works — Updated 2026-07-29
Q1 2026: the biggest ranking change since the algorithmic feed Confirmed by Adam Mosseri. Weight shifted onto four signals — DM sends, saves, watch time, and profile clicks — while likes and follower count dropped to near-zero weight. Saves went from "future momentum" to a headline ranking signal.
The invisible signal DM sends are still the #1 signal and still don't appear in any export. Watch time and profile clicks are new, meaningful, and also invisible in the standard CSV.
Original content wins Instagram now fingerprints and deprioritizes reposted/aggregated content — original, Instagram-native posts get up to 3x more distribution.
What THS's own data says about it Saves correlate at -0.046 with reach here — essentially zero, despite the update. Not evidence the platform's guidance is wrong; more likely THS's save volume per post is too thin to move the correlation yet. Worth re-checking next cycle as more post-update data accumulates.
New signal Instagram Stories, available for the first time

85 Stories published May 7–Jul 22, 2026 — a data source that's never appeared in any prior export. Averaging 38 reach and 49 views per Story (range: 12–152 reach). Kept separate from feed-post numbers throughout this dashboard since there's no historical baseline yet to compare against.

This closes part of the "what this data can't see" gap flagged in the June analysis — Stories insights normally expire after 28 days on Instagram, so exporting them regularly (not just once) is the only way to keep this signal from disappearing again. Worth building into the quarterly export routine going forward.

Format Performance
Feb 2023–Jul 2026 · 249 posts
Avg Reach
Reel
140
Carousel
104
Photo
103
Posts by Format
Carousel
97 · 39%
Reel
86 · 34.5%
Photo
66 · 26.5%

Carousels are the largest single format by count, but Reels still reach 35% further per post on average.

Engagement Signal → Reach Correlation
Shares
0.56
Likes
0.33
Comments
0.06
Saves
-0.05

Shares remain the strongest predictor of reach in THS's own data — see the callout above on why that's worth watching against Instagram's own stated signals.

Content Mix · Feb 2023–Jul 2026 · 249 posts
Business
53%
Personality
47%

Personality = team, people, culture, milestones, named spotlights. Business = client work, products, services. (Keyword-based classification — see Overview tab Data Notes.)

Avg Reach by Content Type
Personality
130
Business
104
Personality content reaches 25% further per post on average. Engagement rate (pooled) runs close between the two — 17.6% Personality vs 18.3% Business — so the gap is in reach, not response intensity.

Personality vs. Business: the reach gap holds, format is still the bigger lever.

This isn't an argument to post more team photos instead of client work — the feed is already 47% personality content, close to even. It's an argument about format: personality content in Reel form reaches further (161 avg) than personality content in Carousel (111) or Photo (114) form.

The one real surprise in the matrix: Business Reels average more reach than Personality Reels (119 vs 161 — wait, personality still leads) but earn a noticeably higher engagement rate (20.0% vs 15.2%). Business Carousels and Personality Carousels land close together on both measures. The clearest gap isn't content type — it's whether the content is a Reel at all.

Instagram's Q1 2026 shift toward saves and watch time raises the stakes on format even further: Reels are built for watch time in a way static posts and carousels aren't.

Format + Content Type Matrix
Personality Reel ★
161
ER 15.2% · n=42
Business Reel
119
ER 20.0% · n=44
Personality Carousel
111
ER 21.1% · n=52
Business Carousel
95
ER 20.6% · n=44
Personality Photo
114
ER 15.9% · n=21
Business Photo
97
ER 14.2% · n=45

Numbers are avg reach (large) and pooled ER% (small). Personality Reels lead on reach; Business Reels lead on ER%. Both outcomes matter — one drives immediate distribution, the other feeds future algorithmic momentum.

Reel Trends by Year
Reach per Reel keeps rising even as the mix keeps dropping
Avg Reach per Reel by Year
2023
22
2024
206
2025
223
2026 ↑
263
2023's 22 avg reflects the account's early ramp-up period broadly (whole-account avg reach that year was also 22) — not a Reel-specific problem.
Avg Reach by Reel Duration · All Years (86 Reels)
Under 15s
82
15–30s
266
30–60s
143
60s+
99
15–30s is the clear sweet spot with a meaningful sample (17 Reels). 60s+ (12 Reels) underperforms — the opposite of "longer always wins."
Post Timing Analysis
249 posts · Feb 2023–Jul 2026
Still the mismatch: 41.9% of Instagram posts publish 5–9am — the lowest-performing window (avg reach 90). Afternoon (2–5pm) averages 181 — a +101% lift from a calendar change alone.
Avg Reach by Day of Week
Thursday
173
Saturday
149
Friday
141
Sunday
88
Tuesday
99
Monday
84
Wednesday
82
Saturday's 149 avg is based on only 5 posts — directional only.
Avg Reach by Time Window
Afternoon 2–5pm
181
Morning 9–12pm
129
Midday 12–2pm
122
Early Morning 5–9am
90
104 of 248 timed posts (41.9%) publish in the weakest window.
Best Day + Time Combinations  — minimum 3 posts per cell
DayTime WindowAvg ReachPosts (n)
ThursdayMorning (9–12pm)26810
ThursdayAfternoon (2–5pm)2469
FridayAfternoon (2–5pm)1838
ThursdayMidday (12–2pm)1777
WednesdayAfternoon (2–5pm)1735
Top Posts by Reach
Feb 2023–Jul 2026
PostFormatReachER%
Material curation reel BizReel1,0102.5%
Simply Southern shoot BizPhoto7623.5%
Halloween costumes Pt.2 PCarousel6785.0%
Team personality trend reel PReel6537.2%
First day of fall PPhoto5712.6%
Content drives sales BTS PReel44413.5%
What to do Instagram · 4 actions
1
Set a Reel floor of 35% and track it monthly.
At 21.6%, the mix is still well below the 35–38% rate that held for 2023–2025. Reels are outperforming every other format by a growing margin (263 avg reach in 2026). Check the mix at the end of each month.
2
Keep Reels in the 15–30 second range where possible.
This is a new finding this cycle: 15–30s Reels average 266 reach vs 82 for under-15s and 99 for 60s+. Not enough Reels in the dataset yet to treat this as a hard rule (17 in the sweet-spot bucket), but worth testing deliberately rather than defaulting to whatever length is easiest to cut.
3
Start tracking Stories deliberately, not just because this export happened to include them.
85 Stories now on record for the first time, averaging 38 reach. There's no historical baseline to compare against yet — that baseline starts now. Export Stories data every cycle going forward so it doesn't disappear the way it has in every prior export.
4
Move the calendar to Thursday afternoon or morning. Still free reach.
41.9% of posts still publish 5–9am, averaging 90 reach. Thursday morning and afternoon both average 246–268 reach — more than 2.5x. No content change required.

Facebook's lead over Instagram widened again in 2026. People-focused posts are still driving it.

Facebook averaged 316 reach per post in 2026 vs Instagram's 151 — a bigger gap than the 2025 comparison (345 vs 181). Personality content (266 avg reach) still outperforms business/product content (213 avg) across the full dataset. The account's single highest-reach post remains the David Faircloth tribute from February 2025.

How the Facebook Algorithm Works — Reviewed 2026-07-29
How it decides what to show Private Messenger shares remain the single highest-weighted signal. Up to 50% of a feed is recommended content from accounts a person doesn't follow — the discovery surface Instagram doesn't offer business pages to the same degree.
Confirmed again this cycle Reels get the strongest algorithmic boost of any format. Multi-image carousels and high-save educational posts follow. No material change from the June review.
The invisible signal Private DM/Messenger shares are #1 and don't appear in exports. THS's own share correlation (0.51, public reshares only) likely understates the true signal.
New in this update Posts inside active Facebook Groups get a distribution advantage the algorithm treats as high-trust. Not actionable for THS today (no Group presence) — worth knowing if a Group strategy is ever considered.
FB Avg Reach 2026
316
34.7% reach rate vs Instagram's 19.0% the same year. The gap has widened every year since 2024, when Instagram briefly led.
Reel Avg Reach
488
vs 280 for Video and 175 for Photo (full history). Reels are now their own tracked format on Facebook, not just "Video" — see Format Performance below.
Top Post Reach
1,959
David Faircloth tribute, Feb 2025 — still the highest single-post reach in the dataset. A one-time moment; the repeatable version of that ceiling is the named-spotlight format (Women of Gold).
Format Performance
Feb 2023–Jul 2026 · 217 posts
Avg Reach by Format
Reel
488
Video
280
Photo
175
Link
43
Posts by Format
Photo
147 · 68%
Reel
33 · 15%
Video
30 · 14%

Reels are 15% of posts but earn the highest reach by a wide margin — the same underused-best-format pattern as Instagram.

Engagement Signal → Reach Correlation
Clicks
0.80
Reactions
0.63
Comments
0.53
Shares
0.51

Clicks now edge out reactions as the strongest correlate — new this cycle. Every signal on Facebook still correlates far more strongly than Instagram's weakest.

Avg Reach by Year
2023
179
2024
161
2025 ↑
345
2026
316
2026's 316 (through Jul 24) is tracking close to 2025's 345 — the platform's strongest two years, both driven by people-focused content.
Avg Reach by Content Type
Personality
266
Business
213
Personality content also earns a meaningfully higher pooled engagement rate — 15.4% vs 9.2%. On Facebook, unlike Instagram, the personality advantage shows up in both reach and response.
Top Posts by Reach
Feb 2023–Jul 2026
PostYearFormatReachER%
David Faircloth tribute P2025Photo1,95914.7%
Spring design tips reel Biz2023Reel2,2793.0%
Content drives sales BTS P2026Reel1,4707.3%
Employee love languages reel Biz2023Reel1,8721.3%
THS 40th Anniversary Biz2024Video1,22530.9%
Design trends reel P2023Reel1,5886.1%

Note: two of 2023's Reels (2,279 and 1,872 reach) now rank above the Faircloth tribute in raw terms once the full 2023–2026 window is included — the June case study's "top posts" table was scoped to 2024–2026 only. Faircloth remains the top post of the account's mature period (2024 onward) and the higher-ER performance by a wide margin.

Share Amplification
Avg reach by share count
This is the mechanism behind Facebook's reach advantage. Shares trigger exponential distribution, not linear.
0 shares
79 reach
1–2 shares
194 reach
3–5 shares
389 reach
6+ shares
714 reach

Posts with 6+ shares average 9× the reach of posts with none. Only 12 of 217 posts hit that tier.

Paid / Organic
1 of 217 posts (0.5%) shows any boost signal — the 40th Anniversary video, 1,225 organic-adjacent reach vs a 233 account average (5.3× multiplier). Below the 20% threshold for a dedicated paid-vs-organic split.

The Apr–Jul 2026 export doesn't include ad-spend columns at all (see Overview Data Notes), so boosted status for that window is assumed, not confirmed. Given how rare boosting has been historically, this is a low-risk assumption — but flagged.

Post Frequency & Spacing
Facebook still rewards fewer, better-timed posts
Avg Reach by Posts Per Month
1 post/mo
401
3 posts/mo
375
4 posts/mo
304
5+ posts/mo
217
1 post/mo is based on a single month — directional only. 3–4 posts/month (9 months combined) is the reliable comparison, and it clearly beats 5+ (24 months).
Avg Reach by Days Since Previous Post
15+ days
499
8–14 days
270
0–2 days
239
4–7 days
188
15+ day gap (8 posts) skews high — likely reflects "worth the wait" content rather than spacing alone. 8–14 days remains the more reliable target at higher volume (29 posts).
Post Timing Analysis
217 posts
Still the mismatch: 40.6% of Facebook posts publish 5–9am, averaging only 178 reach. Friday morning specifically averages 514 reach — nearly 3x the early-morning average.
Avg Reach by Day of Week
Friday
345
Saturday
318
Sunday
226
Monday
223
Thursday
208
Tuesday
207
Wednesday
169
Saturday's 318 avg is based on only 4 posts — directional only.
Avg Reach by Time Window
Morning 9–12pm
312
Afternoon 2–5pm
253
Midday 12–2pm
249
Early Morning 5–9am
178
88 of 216 timed posts (40.6%) publish in the weakest window.
Best Day + Time Combinations  — minimum 3 posts per cell
DayTime WindowAvg ReachPosts (n)
FridayMorning (9–12pm)51413
FridayMidday (12–2pm)43111
ThursdayMorning (9–12pm)4558
TuesdayMorning (9–12pm)4015
MondayAfternoon (2–5pm)3784
What to do Facebook · 3 actions
1
Reels are now a distinct, top-performing Facebook format — treat them as one.
Reels average 488 reach vs 280 for Video and 175 for Photo, but make up only 15% of posts. The same underused-best-format pattern as Instagram, on a platform where it's easy to miss since Photo still dominates volume (68%).
2
Keep the 3-4 posts/month pace and the people-first default.
Personality content still averages 266 reach vs 213 for business/product — a gap that's held steady since the June analysis, not a one-quarter fluke. Named spotlights (Women of Gold) remain the strongest repeatable format.
3
Friday morning is still the single best slot in the dataset.
514 avg reach, unchanged from the June finding. 40.6% of posts still publish in the weakest window (5-9am, 178 avg). This hasn't moved since the last analysis — worth asking why, if it was flagged as an action item three months ago.

LinkedIn is still a research tool, not a social feed — and impressions are climbing.

Average impressions rose from 266 in 2025 to 354 in 2026 to date, on a dataset that's grown from 40 to 46 posts as the export window extended. Women of Gold ran again in March 2026, averaging 440 impressions — 44% above the account average, consistent with the 2025 pattern.

How the LinkedIn Algorithm Works — Updated 2026-07-29
360Brew — LinkedIn's ranking AI Reads posts semantically for relevance, expertise, and dwell time — not just engagement counts. Hashtags carry little weight.
The first 60 minutes still matter A small sample of the network sees a post first; strong early engagement widens distribution, weak engagement caps it.
Company page reach, quantified further Company pages now get roughly 2–5% of feed allocation vs ~65% for personal profiles. Employees posting personally — even with far fewer followers than the brand account — consistently out-distribute the company page.
Cadence 2–3 posts/week recommended for company pages. THS is well under that. Given the reach ceiling above, posting more from the company page alone has limited upside without personal-profile activation alongside it.
~65% vs ~2–5%
Feed allocation: personal profiles vs. company pages
Updated figure, 2026

The structural gap is now quantified more precisely than the June analysis had it: company pages get an estimated 2–5% of what actually surfaces in a user's feed; personal profiles get roughly 65%. Employees posting about work from their own profiles — even with meaningfully fewer followers than the brand account — consistently out-distribute the company page.

This isn't a content strategy change. It's the same activation question the June analysis raised: are team members willing to post, and is there a light enough structure to make it easy to do consistently? Nothing in this refresh suggests that's changed either way.

LinkedIn's engagement rate still measures something different than Instagram's or Facebook's. LinkedIn counts clicking to expand a post as engagement — that behavior makes up 81.4% of THS's reported engagement rate this cycle (was 86% in June; the gap narrowed slightly as impressions grew). The actual social signal (reactions + comments + reposts) is 3.2% of impressions, not the 16.7% LinkedIn shows natively.
What LinkedIn Calls "Engagement"
81%
…is clicks. Reactions + comments + reposts — the actual social signals — make up 19% of the total.
Women of Gold, March 2026
440
Avg impressions across 4 posts — 44% above the 306 account average. Ran on schedule for the third year running (2023, 2025, 2026).
Correlation: Impressions → Engagement
0.76
Likes correlate strongest with impressions (0.76), ahead of comments (0.67) and reposts (0.58). Clicks correlate weakest (0.29) — the opposite pattern from Facebook.
Year-over-Year
Avg Impressions by Year
2025
266
2026 ↑
354

25 posts in 2025 (partial year of data), 21 in 2026 to date. Impressions climbing even as post count holds roughly flat.

What to do LinkedIn · 3 actions
1
Move Women of Gold from an annual event to a monthly cadence.
Three years running, this format only runs in March. 440 avg impressions vs 306 for everything else — the same magnitude of lift as 2025. This is the clearest, most repeated finding across two analysis cycles now.
2
Report the 3.2% true social ER alongside the 16.7% native figure, not instead of it.
The click-inclusive number isn't wrong, it's just measuring something different (81% of it is clicks to expand). Presenting both keeps LinkedIn comparable to Instagram/Facebook engagement rates when the three platforms show up in the same deck.
3
Revisit personal-profile activation — the structural gap widened, not narrowed.
Company-page feed allocation is now estimated at 2–5%, down from the June analysis's framing. If this hasn't been discussed with the team since June, it's worth resurfacing — the case for it got stronger, not weaker.

THS already cross-posts almost everything. The June analysis said otherwise — that was a measurement error.

The original case study reported "only 9 of 208 Facebook posts flagged as crossposts" and framed cross-posting as an untapped opportunity. Re-running the detection this cycle against the same full history finds matching or near-identical captions on 188 of 196 Facebook posting days — a pattern that traces back to 2023, not something that started this quarter. The prior figure was wrong. The real story: THS's cross-posting discipline is already strong. The open question is what to do with each platform's copy once it's there.

BTS Video: Same Content, Three Platforms
April 16, 2026
Reach / Impressions
Instagram (Reel)
444
Facebook (Reel)
1,470
LinkedIn (organic)
720
ER%, Native Formula per Platform
LinkedIn's 17.2% includes click-throughs. Facebook (7.3%) and Instagram (13.5%) are reactions-based and directly comparable to each other.
Instagram
13.5%
Facebook
7.3%
LinkedIn (native)
17.2%

Women of Gold: the series that travels — again, this year.

In March 2026, Women of Gold ran on all three platforms — four posts each. Facebook averaged 434 reach per post. LinkedIn averaged 440 impressions. Instagram averaged 171 reach. The exact same pattern as the 2025 run: Facebook and LinkedIn land close together, Instagram trails at less than half.

The caveat holds too: LinkedIn impressions and Facebook/Instagram reach aren't the same metric, and LinkedIn can count repeat views. But directionally, named-person content still travels furthest on Facebook and LinkedIn — a finding that's now confirmed across two consecutive years, not a one-time pattern.

Women of Gold 2026 · Avg per Post (4 posts per platform)
LinkedIn reports impressions (can count repeat views). Facebook and Instagram report reach (unique viewers). Shown together for directional context only.
Avg Reach (FB/IG) · Avg Impressions (LI)
Facebook
434
LinkedIn
440 imp.
Instagram
171
Video Format Drift · Both Platforms
IG Reels % vs FB Reel/Video % by year — same shape, different timing

Instagram Reels held at 35–38% for three years before dropping to 22% in 2026. Facebook's Reel+Video share tells a related but not identical story — it's been more volatile, and 2026's combined rate sits around 29% (15% Reel + 14% Video), still above Instagram's video share.

Both platforms show the same underlying pattern: the format that performs best (Reels specifically) is consistently under-posted relative to its own performance data. That's an organizational output pattern, not a platform-specific algorithm quirk — it shows up on both platforms, in both directions of the swing.

Video Format as % of Total Posts, 2026
Instagram Reels
Facebook Reel+Video
2026 (through Jul 24)
IG Reels
21.6%
FB Reel+Vid
28.6%

Facebook now tracks Reels as a distinct post type separate from Video, unlike in the June analysis — the two are shown combined here for a fair comparison to Instagram's Reels-only figure.

Questions this data raises Not conclusions, starting points for discussion
?
Does any of this connect to leads or business outcomes?
Still unanswered from June. This analysis measures how far content travels and how much it resonates — neither tells us whether social activity drives website traffic, client inquiries, or new business. That link requires lead-source data not present in any export used here.
?
If cross-posting is already near-universal, is identical copy across platforms actually the right call?
This is the new question this cycle, replacing the old "should THS cross-post more" framing. THS already posts matching captions on 188 of 196 Facebook days. The June dashboard's own recommendation — adapt the caption per platform — was written assuming cross-posting was rare. It wasn't. The real test now: does THS's identical-caption approach leave reach on the table the way generic cross-posted content typically does elsewhere, or does it work fine here? This dataset can't answer that without a controlled comparison (same content, platform-tailored copy vs. identical copy, run side by side).
?
The most important signal on all three platforms is invisible in this data. What are we actually missing?
Unchanged from June: DM sends and Messenger shares are each platform's highest-value signal, and none of it appears in any export. Our visible correlations (Facebook shares 0.51, Instagram shares 0.56) capture only public reshares.
?
Should THS team members be posting from personal LinkedIn profiles instead of only the company page?
The structural case got stronger this cycle, not weaker — company pages are now estimated at 2-5% of feed allocation vs ~65% for personal profiles. If this hasn't been raised with the team since June, it's worth raising again with the updated numbers.
What to do Cross-platform · 2 actions
1
Test platform-tailored captions on a handful of upcoming cross-posts.
Since cross-posting itself is no longer the gap, the next test is whether adapting the caption per platform (Facebook: lead with the human angle; LinkedIn: lead with context/expertise; Instagram: write toward a reaction) measurably outperforms the current identical-copy approach. Pick 3-4 upcoming posts, write platform-specific copy, and compare reach/ER against similar identical-copy posts from the prior month.
2
Build Women of Gold into a monthly (or at least quarterly) cadence on all three platforms.
Confirmed two years running now: 434-440 avg reach/impressions on Facebook and LinkedIn, 171 on Instagram, all meaningfully above each platform's own average. This is the single most consistently repeated finding across both analysis cycles.

Two Platforms Moved the Right Direction This Quarter. One Didn't.

This tab checks the prior cycle's recommendations against what actually happened next: everything published before this refresh's cutoff (Apr 29, 2026 and earlier) against everything in the new Apr 30-Jul 28 export. The goal is simple. Know whether the work is changing outcomes, and if not, know why and what to try instead.

Read this as an early check-in, not a verdict. The "after" window is 9 to 16 posts per platform, a few weeks of publishing. Small samples move around on their own. Treat single-digit percentage shifts as noise; treat the Facebook early-morning finding below as real, since it repeats a pattern already flagged twice.
Working
3
Instagram's early-morning share dropped, Facebook's Reel mix and reach both rose, and personality content grew as a share of posts on both platforms.
Reversed
1
Facebook's early-morning posting got worse, not better, the same finding flagged in the original analysis and again in June.
Too Early To Call
3
Instagram's Reel mix, LinkedIn's Women of Gold cadence, and the personal-profile activation question all need more time or haven't started yet.
Recommendation Scorecard
Before = through Apr 29, 2026 · After = Apr 30-Jul 28, 2026
RecommendationBeforeAfterVerdict
Instagram: grow Reel mix toward 35%+ 34.8% (81 of 233) 31.2% (5 of 16) Watch
Instagram: move off the 5-9am slot 42.2% of posts 37.5% of posts Working
Facebook: post more Reels, the best-reaching format 14.9% (30 of 202) 20.0% (3 of 15) Working
Facebook: shift off 5-9am toward Friday/Thursday morning 39.6% of posts at 5-9am 53.3% of posts at 5-9am Not Working
Both platforms: lean into personality content IG 46.4% · FB 45.5% IG 50.0% · FB 53.3% Working
LinkedIn: move Women of Gold from annual to monthly Ran once, March 2026 Zero posts since Not Started
LinkedIn: activate personal-profile posting for leadership visibility No prior baseline Top post of the window (921 impressions) was a personal-leadership story Early Signal

Instagram: reach is up, timing is improving, Reel volume needs another cycle to read.

Average reach climbed from 114 to 142 across the new window, and the shift off early-morning posting (42.2% down to 37.5%) is moving the way the June recommendation asked for. Reel mix dipped slightly, 34.8% to 31.2%, but that's five posts against eighty-one. The five Reels that did run averaged 250 reach, nearly double the 133 average from before. The lesson isn't "Reels dipped." It's "the Reels that ran worked even better than before." Run more of them next cycle before drawing a conclusion either way.

Instagram, Before vs. After
Avg Reach
Before
114
After
142
5-9am Share of Posts
Before
42.2%
After
37.5%

Facebook: reach and format are improving. Timing went the wrong way twice in a row.

Average reach rose from 233 to 299, and Reel mix grew from 14.9% to 20.0%, with the Reels that ran averaging 607 reach, up from 476. Personality content also grew as a share of posts, 45.5% to 53.3%. But the early-morning share of posts rose from 39.6% to 53.3%, the opposite direction of a recommendation now made twice. Friday morning still averages 514 reach against roughly 178 for the 5-9am slot, nearly three times the reach for the same effort. This is worth raising directly with whoever schedules Facebook posts, since two cycles of the same finding haven't changed the calendar.

Facebook, Before vs. After
Avg Reach
Before
233
After
299
5-9am Share of Posts
Before
39.6%
After
53.3%

LinkedIn: impressions keep climbing. Women of Gold hasn't moved off its annual slot yet.

Average impressions rose from 299 to 338 in the new window, consistent with the broader 2025-to-2026 climb (266 to 354) already documented on the LinkedIn tab. Women of Gold ran once, in March, and hasn't run again since, so the "move it to monthly" recommendation from June hasn't started. One informal positive sign: the single best-performing post of the new window wasn't a campaign post at all. It was Larry Boyd's announcement that he'd been selected as a judge, a personal-leadership story at 921 impressions, the exact kind of content the "post from personal profiles" recommendation has been asking for. One post isn't a program. But it's a real data point in favor of raising that conversation again.

LinkedIn, Before vs. After
Avg Impressions
Before
299
After
338
Sample size: 9 LinkedIn posts in the after window, against 37 before. Directionally consistent with the year-over-year trend, not independent proof on its own.
What to change Updates · 3 actions
1
Ask directly why Facebook's early-morning share went up instead of down.
This is the one clear reversal in this cycle. The Friday-morning finding has now been repeated twice with no change in the posting calendar. Either something is blocking the switch (a scheduling tool default, a person's routine) or the recommendation hasn't reached whoever sets the calendar. Find out which before the next cycle, since a third repeat of the same finding stops being useful data and starts being a process problem.
2
Give Instagram's Reel mix one more cycle before treating the dip as real.
Five posts is too small a sample to call a trend, and the Reels that ran reached nearly double the prior average. Keep posting Reels at the same or higher rate and re-check next cycle with a larger "after" window.
3
Use the Larry Boyd post as the opening example for the personal-profile conversation.
The structural case (company pages at 2-5% feed allocation vs. roughly 65% for personal profiles) has been made twice without a decision. A real, recent, high-performing example inside THS's own data is easier to act on than a general industry statistic.