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Smart Post Times

AI-powered posting time recommendations based on your audience's engagement patterns.

What Smart Post Times does

Smart Post Times analyzes your audience's engagement heatmap (when they're most active) and recommends the best times to post on each platform. The recommendations appear everywhere you schedule posts — calendar, composer, queues, and AI chat — with transparent explanations.

How it works

  1. Aidelly collects engagement data from your posted content
  2. It identifies patterns: which day/time your audience engages most
  3. When you schedule, you get AI-powered recommendations with confidence scores and sample sizes ("based on 24 posts over 30 days")
  4. You can accept the recommendation or manually override it

Where recommendations appear

Calendar

When you click an empty day in the Content Calendar:

  1. The schedule modal opens
  2. The recommended time is pre-filled based on that day's heatmap
  3. A quiet hint shows the platform name and confidence ("Best time for Instagram: 6:00 PM")

Composer (Create Post)

When you schedule a post:

  1. Click the time picker to see recommended slots per platform
  2. Hover over any recommended time to see a tooltip with:
    • Why this time (reason and confidence level)
    • Sample size (number of posts analyzed)
    • Platform name if showing a "platform-typical" fallback
  3. Click to accept the recommendation
  4. Or type a custom time to override

Automation Queues

Queues can auto-optimize scheduling times for each slot:

  1. Open a queue and toggle Auto-optimize slots (default OFF)
  2. When enabled, the queue manager uses recommendations to automatically fill posting times
  3. Slots stay consistent with your best-time heatmap
  4. Toggle off to return to manual editing
  5. The best-time explanations appear in the queue preview

AI Chat

Ask the AI for posting advice:

  • "When should I post on Instagram?" — the AI returns explained time slots with timezone info
  • "What's the best time for LinkedIn?" — includes confidence levels and sample summaries

Understanding your confidence and data

Confidence tiers:

  • High: You have 20+ posts on that platform over the last 30 days
  • Medium: 5–20 posts, enough to spot patterns
  • Low / Platform-typical: Fewer than 5 posts; the recommendation falls back to a platform-wide average

Data-poor platforms show "platform-typical time" (e.g., "LinkedIn users typically engage at 8:00 AM") when you don't have enough history.

Precedence: what overrides what

Best times are calculated in this order (first match wins):

  1. Manual optimal times — if you set a specific time on an automation rule (optimal_posting_times)
  2. Smart Post Times — the engine recommendation based on your data
  3. Quick-schedule pills (in the composer) — default times
  4. Platform default — if no data exists yet

This means:

  • Your automation rules always take priority
  • Smart recommendations fill in when no rule is set
  • Brand profile text is used for AI context only, not scheduling

When recommendations refresh

  • Daily refresh: Every day at 6:00 AM UTC, Aidelly recomputes recommendations for platforms with >7-day-old data
  • Auto-optimize queue refresh: If you toggle auto-optimize ON for a queue, it uses the freshest recommendations immediately
  • Manual refresh: The recommendations update instantly when you post new content

Common questions

Q: Why doesn't the recommendation have data?
A: You need at least 5 posts on a platform in the last 30 days. Keep posting, and recommendations will improve.

Q: Can I change the recommended time?
A: Yes, click any recommendation and type a different time. Your override sticks for that post.

Q: Do auto-optimized queues change every day?
A: Auto-optimized slots update daily if recommendations change significantly. Manual editing is always available.

Q: What timezone are recommendations in?
A: Recommendations use your browser's local timezone. Check your browser settings or Account Settings to confirm.

Q: Does this work for all platforms?
A: Smart Post Times works best for platforms with API access (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). Mastodon and other platforms may have limited data.

What to do next