PostlyResearchPlatform distribution · October 2026 findings
Platform use: where publishing effort goes
Facebook leads delivery volume, while Instagram reaches more destination accounts. Those are different planning signals.
Source: Postly Research. Anonymized retained publishing data: 72,883 documents inspected; 47,388 posts with verified publications; 165,158 deduplicated destination deliveries; 3,645 destination accounts. Observation cutoff: 2026-10-04 22:35:49 UTC.
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Platform use: where publishing effort goes
Facebook leads delivery volume, while Instagram reaches more destination accounts. Those are different planning signals.
Retained eligible publications up to October 4, 2026; October is partial.
The finding
Facebook represents 62% of recorded deliveries (102,320), compared with 13.7% for Instagram (22,709). Yet Instagram appears across 983 destination accounts versus 893 for Facebook. The largest publishing workload and the widest account participation do not identify the same platform.
Deduplicated successful destination deliveries. Percentages use all eligible deliveries, including withheld categories.
| Observed group | deliveries | Accounts |
|---|---|---|
| 102,320 | 893 | |
| 22,709 | 983 | |
| 9,897 | 383 | |
| Google Business Profile | 9,195 | 481 |
| TikTok | 7,485 | 456 |
| Telegram | 3,715 | 59 |
| YouTube | 3,594 | 162 |
| Threads | 3,405 | 73 |
| 1,596 | 108 | |
| Bluesky | 1,180 | 34 |
At least 30 accounts and 100 observations per displayed group. Account counts overlap. Small groups are withheld; absence from this table does not mean zero usage.
Compare performance fairly
Reach asks how many people encountered the content. Interaction measures a response. A qualified action asks whether the right person progressed toward the business objective. These are different outcomes, and native view definitions can differ. This edition measures publishing activity on each platform; it does not contain a compatible cross-platform engagement or conversion panel. No platform is declared the performance winner. For your own comparison, record the same business action and cost window across channels, while keeping native engagement measures separate.
What this means for marketers
A volume-led channel plan would overweight frequent and recurring publishers. Account participation gives a second perspective, but neither measure establishes qualified reach, sales or suitability for a particular product. Treat these results as a map of observed distribution work. They show why a channel decision needs both an audience hypothesis and a realistic servicing budget.
Recommended actions
Choose one primary channel for the buying question you need to answer and one complementary channel for distribution. Set a destination-specific objective, such as qualified product-page visits or completed enquiries. Budget separately for asset adaptation, publication checks and responses. Review outcomes at the same post age before moving resources to the channel with the largest visible posting volume.
The decision this report supports
Prioritize workflow capacity using delivery volume; evaluate channel fit with your own qualified outcomes. This dataset does not contain validated industry and product categories linked to conversions, so it cannot rank the best platform for a software product, restaurant, retailer or service business. Publishing share is not audience share or platform market share.
Facebook: Community updates and repeat customer communication
Test useful explanations, demonstrations and customer questions. Separate feed, Reel and Story briefs. Compare qualified conversations and destination visits with the time spent producing and responding; a large delivery count is not proof of incremental demand. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
Instagram: Visual explanation and product demonstration
Use a clear visual promise, show the product in context and give the viewer one next step. Distinguish saved placement choices from native publications. Compare the same campaign objective across placements, with reach, interactions and qualified actions kept separate. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
TikTok: Short video ideas and creative discovery
Start with a recognizable problem and demonstrate the answer quickly. Test different openings for the same idea before changing the offer. Compare retention and qualified actions at a consistent post age; do not select only the best-performing videos for a benchmark. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
YouTube: Searchable explanations and deeper demonstrations
Build videos around a specific audience question. Use an accurate title and thumbnail, then evaluate whether viewers stay for the promised answer. YouTube describes recommendations in terms of relevance and viewer response. Tags alone are not a sound growth strategy. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
LinkedIn: Professional expertise and buying questions
Explain a business problem, the reasoning behind a decision and the evidence for the result. A useful case study can be a starting format. Assess relevant conversations and qualified enquiries alongside impressions; a large generic audience is not necessarily a useful buying audience. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
Google Business Profile: Local business discovery and action
Keep the business information and customer action accurate. Match the action destination to the offer: a booking should reach a booking path. Google distinguishes profile interactions such as calls and website clicks; these should not be treated as equivalent to post reactions. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
Pinterest: Visual ideas linked to products and resources
Publish a clear idea with an accurate destination. Pinterest product Pins can display product information such as price and availability. Compare outbound visits and downstream product actions, and check that the landing page fulfils the promise made by the image. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
Threads: Public conversation and topical explanations
Treat the post as the opening of a conversation. Test a specific question or useful observation and reserve time to respond. Measure substantive replies and relevant visits separately from publishing activity. Review reply and quote settings as deliberate distribution choices. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
Telegram: Ongoing communication with an existing community
Plan useful updates for people who have chosen to follow the channel. Review notification, preview and content-protection settings. Evaluate retention, response and destination actions; repeated delivery alone cannot establish discovery or acquisition. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
Bluesky: Conversation and specialist communities
Start with topics that overlap with the community you want to serve. Use clear context and language choices, participate in replies and track useful conversations. The eligible delivery sample provides no reliable performance ranking for this network. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
X, Reddit and Discord: Conversation channels requiring community context
Use these only when you can contribute to the relevant conversation and maintain the response workload. In this edition, their publishing groups do not meet the public threshold or lack eligible records. That is an evidence gap, not a conclusion that these channels do not work. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
WhatsApp and publishing platforms: Direct communication and longer-lived publishing
WhatsApp, WordPress, Ghost, Hashnode, DEV and Blogger have distinct publishing workflows and audiences. Review templates, visibility, metadata and destination actions where relevant. No comparable performance result is published for them in this edition because eligible evidence is insufficient. Strategy guidance; the observed Postly publishing counts are shown in the evidence table above.
Early stage: establish audience and message fit
Choose one primary channel where you can reach and speak with the intended audience. For a local appointment business, evaluate the local discovery and booking path first; for a professional service, test useful explanations of the buying problem; for a demonstrable product, test visual proof. These are strategy hypotheses, not Postly performance rankings. Your immediate output is evidence that the right people understand the offer and take a useful next step. Do not expand merely because another platform has higher publishing volume.
Mid stage: make one useful result repeatable
When one topic and offer consistently produce relevant conversations or qualified actions, document the brief and publishing checks. Add one complementary distribution channel while retaining a common business outcome. Record the incremental production and response time. Continue only if the additional channel reaches useful people or supports a distinct buying question; duplicated impressions are not evidence of incremental demand.
Late stage: allocate resources by contribution
With repeatable acquisition or customer communication in place, compare channel contribution over a consistent window. Keep paid and organic activity separate and account for production cost. Invest in the combination of channels that serves discovery, evaluation and customer retention, rather than maximizing every platform. Use first-party conversion records to assess business outcomes; publishing receipts cannot supply this attribution.
Advanced stage: test incrementality and resilience
Use planned holdouts or staggered changes where feasible to distinguish extra activity from extra results. Compare matched account or campaign cohorts, record uncertainty and check whether a few large accounts dominate the result. Maintain a deliberate experiment budget and avoid changing several presets, creative formats and schedules at once. Stage labels here describe operating maturity, not follower thresholds, and were not inferred from customer identities or content.
Sources for the teaching sections
- YouTube performance and discovery
- LinkedIn: thought leadership
- Google Business Profile performance definitions
- Pinterest product Pins and shopping
Platform sources support the explanations. Postly data supports the observed counts. Strategic recommendations are editorial judgments.
Source and counting rules
The census reads retained Postly production records in bounded batches from a database secondary. Receipts require platform, destination account, publication identifier and timestamp. TikTok also requires confirmed success. Repeated provider identifiers are counted once per destination. This is a live retained-data census, not a random sample or an atomic snapshot. Deleted records and publishing outside Postly are absent. Small groups are withheld: every displayed row requires at least 30 destination accounts and 100 observations. Accounts are not necessarily independent businesses; their counts overlap between rows.
Citation: Postly Research, Platform use: where publishing effort goes, October 2026.