How Often Should You Post on Social Media?

Social media is a wonderful way to build a brand, to engage your users, develop loyalty and drive traffic to your website. Get it right, and the world is your oyster. But how often should you be posting to these sites?

Optimal Posting Times on Popular Social Media Sites

For the purposes of this post, we will be concentrating on the big names in social media. These are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Plus and Pinterest.

First, let’s take a look at Facebook.

Facebook

Facebook has specific algorithms in place which filter posts the social media giant feels would be of interest to readers. To put this into simple terms, if users do not engage with your posts, they will stop seeing them altogether.

This may sound kind of harsh, but in reality, it allows you to capitalize on providing only the best content.

Remember, what you THINK your users would like to see and what they ACTUALLY want to see may be two very different things. When you post, always consider the user before you consider what you feel may be relevant.

The general consensus among businesses is that two quality posts per day are enough. On weekends and public holidays, a single Facebook post will suffice. More than that, and you may find a drop in likes and comments.

Of course, the nature and content of posts may vary from business to business.

Some audiences prefer video footage while others prefer humorous pictures. Feel free to play around, but do pay attention to your analytics to monitor the number of likes.

This will not only give you information on which times receive the most traffic, but also what content your subscribers are after.

Twitter

Twitter comes with its own set of rules.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter does not make use of an algorithm in order to filter the feed. For this reason, you should aim a lot higher than the average of two posts per day that is recommended for Facebook.

The average length of time that a tweet remains visible is really dependent on how many people the user follows. A tweet may be visible for around two hours.

Then again, if the user follows a large number of people, your tweet may only hang around for a couple of minutes.

Some experts believe that three Tweets per day are sufficient. I disagree, as do many social media managers. For a business with over 4000 followers, I would suggest a minimum of six tweets per day, but no more than twelve.

Again, as frustrating as the answer may be, much depends on the target audience, their age group, interests, etc.

What may work for one business does not necessarily apply to another. Trial and error is not a bad thing if you pay attention to the results.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the social media site for professionals. Keep it professional. The last thing you want to do on LinkedIn is spam people with too many posts.

According to LinkedIn themselves, the best post frequency is no more than 20 times per month. This means no more than one post per day, Monday through to Friday.

Weekends are not a great time to post on LinkedIn. This is because people who use the site are mostly professionals and they tend to take a break over weekends.

A final note on LinkedIn is that whatever you do, posts must reflect the utmost levels of professionalism.

Do not post a low res image with your dirty laundry in the background. Rather make use of quality images. If you can’t take a fantastic shot yourself, either hire someone who can, or make use of stock images.

Google+

I won’t deny that I am no fan of Google+.

It is a social site that has odd variables which I struggle to get a hold of. For some businesses the sweet spot is around four posts per day. Others find that they can post up to 10 times per day and still get positive results.

Perhaps the reason is largely dependent on audience preferences, as well as what type of content that gets posted. I cannot say.

At the end of the day, I would suggest that one post per day would be sufficient. I certainly wouldn’t be bothered to post more than three times per day on Google Plus.

Pinterest

The rule of thumb for Pinterest is that one should post between four and ten times per day.

As with Twitter, Pinterest has high volume turnover. The fundamentals to having success on Pinterest include posting stunning high quality images as well as vertical images.

Why vertical images? Because these take up more screen space. This means vertical images dominate important real estate and have been proven to receive more engagement.

Conclusion

If all this sounds like a lot of work – you’re right, it is a lot of work.

It’s better to be really effective on one or two social media platforms than to be lukewarm on all of them. If your time is limited, pick two or three sites that best correlate with your business, and don’t skimp on quality and frequency.

How often do you post on social media? Do different frequencies work better for you?