“How often should I be posting on social media?”
It’s a simple question, but the answer can be a little complicated.
If you don’t maintain an active presence on your social media profiles, customers are likely to choose another business when searching for local products and services.
But, posting too often will leave your followers feeling overwhelmed and give you a negative reputation. Do this for too long and they’ll unfollow you.
Neither scenario is good for your business.
So, how often should you post? Plenty of companies have conducted studies to figure out what works best on various social platforms.
We analyzed the data in those studies to give you an idea of how often to post to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.
PLEASE NOTE: Your posting strategy during COVID-19 may differ slightly. This blog includes a general set of guidelines you can follow, but be sure to adjust your strategy based on your business's needs. For tips on what to post during this time, check out our blog 9 Social Media Posts to Keep Your Customers Engaged.
Ask a marketer how often you should be posting on Facebook and they’ll probably tell you two posts per day is the sweet spot. However, the data tells us another story.
Hubspot analyzed Facebook data from their 13,500+ customers to see if posting more frequently would help businesses reach more people.
They found that businesses with more than 10,000 followers were the only ones that saw an increased number of clicks when posting more than once per day.
Businesses with less than 10,000 followers received 50 percent fewer clicks per post when they published twice per day.
Brands that posted just 1-5 times per month, though, saw their engagement nearly double!
How does Facebook's new algorithm affect your Facebook strategy?
Facebook prioritizes content from friends and family in users’ news feeds. That makes it harder for brands to get their content in front of their audience, but cranking up your posting volume won’t help you.
Sotrender looked at more than 3,000 profiles to see what post reach looked like after the algorithm change went into effect, and here’s what they found. For each additional post a brand makes throughout the day, organic reach drops drastically.
My advice: Stick to one post per day or five posts per week.
You can post as often as you want on Twitter. Here's why.
The average lifetime of a tweet is between 15-20 minutes. After this time span, your followers’ feeds have received enough new posts that yours gets pushed to the bottom.
So how do you fight the high turnover rate and get your name out there? Tweet periodically throughout the day, but don't overload your followers with tweets.
Most retweets happen within an hour after they publish, so a higher daily frequency like this can pay off. Still, not everyone has the time to churn out 10 or more tweets every day.
That's why your Twitter posting strategy should depend on your goals.
If you want to see higher engagement on each individual tweet, research says to send between 1 and 5 tweets per day. A study by Social Bakers found that engagement starts to drop off after the third tweet, and has also been determined that response per tweet peaks at around five tweets per day before taking a dive.
My advice: Go for the happy medium with 3-5 tweets each day.
Because it's so dependent on visuals, Instagram can feel a little intimidating for small businesses. In reality, though, even the top brands on Instagram only post an average of 1.5 times per day.
This is another social channel where your audience size factors into your ideal posting frequency. For example, businesses with smaller audiences are better off sharing 1-2 photos a day.
Neil Patel says that frequency might not be as important for your Instagram marketing strategy as consistency.
If your audience has come to expect three posts a day and all of a sudden they're only getting one, you're going to see a drop in engagement. You'll probably lose followers, too.
My advice: Posting once per day is a great place to start.
LinkedIn recommends sharing 20 posts per month, which averages to about once per business day. This makes sense because users typically visit LinkedIn during the standard workweek.
I've experimented with sharing one post each day (including weekends), sharing two posts per day and the LinkedIn-recommended one post per business day. In all three scenarios, I saw good engagement, although I did notice a significant drop on the posts that ran on Saturday and Sunday.
The most important thing to remember with LinkedIn isn't how often you're posting, but the type of content you're sharing. LinkedIn is a professional networking site.
That means that the content you share on LinkedIn should be restricted to industry news, business announcements, job opportunities, etc. The goal here is to educate your audience on the latest happenings in the industry and help make their work lives more productive.
My advice: Share at least one and no more than two posts each day. Make sure they're strictly business-related.
Let's recap. Generally speaking, here is how often your business should post on social media:
Remember, this is just a rough estimate based on industry research and advice. You should do what's best for your business, and that might mean making up your own rules!
My best advice to you would be this — predict, measure, repeat.
Start experimenting with how many posts you're sharing per day and keep track in a spreadsheet. After a few weeks, take a look at your analytics. Use the data to determine whether you need to pump up or scale back on your posting frequency.
The only rule in social media is that you should only post content that is engaging, entertaining and useful to your followers. Quality will always win over quantity in social media marketing.
Here are some more social media-related blogs to check out:
Emily Anthony, Blog Contributor
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