How often should you post to social media?
20th August 2018
Table of contents
How often should you post to social media?
This is a popular question we often get asked, and yet it’s actually quite tricky to answer! Mainly because the answer depends on your target audience, your industry and also which social media platforms your company uses. In today’s post, we will detail the most reliable rules of thumb you can depend on which will ensure you maximise your social media presence on these popular platforms.
How Often Should You Post to Facebook?
Facebook – you may already have heard of the “Two posts a day” rule and wondered what this was all about. Facebook has some very sophisticated algorithms that decide who should see which posts based on a number of factors. For this reason, it’s actually quite hard to spam anyone intentionally on Facebook as the platform itself will only show users the posts it believes they will be interested in.
The ‘two posts a day’ rule (some sources suggest three) is really a minimum suggestion to keep your Facebook page alive with plenty of new content creation to keep the engaged users coming back. Facebook is a great platform for sharing company or product news and updates so don’t be afraid to go over this limit if you have something important to share that some of your fans may be interested in!
Facebook uses several metrics to decide who should receive your posts, including:
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Who posted it – friends, family and official news sources will be prioritised higher than others
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The post type – feeds will also be prioritised on whether these are images (photos), videos or links
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Post activity – posts that have more likes, comments and shares (especially if these interactions come from a user you have already interacted with a great deal) are most likely to be featured in your feed
How Often Should You Tweet?
Twitter on the other hand is a different game altogether: all your followers will see all tweets you post (with the exception of direct ‘at’ replies and interactions). This means you should avoid ‘tweeting too hard’. Tweeting regularly without sharing much useful information can clutter up your followers feeds and, in a worst case scenario, may result in them unfollowing you. Getting this balance is the key.
This is where it really pays to understand what motivates your followers, what they enjoy and why they followed your company Twitter account in the first place. This means some initial educated guesswork is needed to guide your decision making here : was it a particular product or tweet that gained their attention in the first place? It’s worth spending some time carefully measuring your activity and the responses (i.e. new follows) to help answer these questions and continue refining your activity, making it more effective as time goes on.
Most industries will likely have a ‘peak time’ in which it is best to reach your intended audience. For some, particularly those B2B services this may be over lunch on weekdays for example.
To help illustrate this: imagine you are a commercial property agent. In many ways, it makes a lot of sense to Tweet whenever a significant new property becomes available – businesses looking for new property will likely
Twitter also has a great way of encouraging people to join topics via trending hashtags. If you see a trending hashtag that relates to something you do (in a positive way) this could be the perfect time to tweet!
Pinterest if you’re a business lucky enough to be in an industry producing visual products, then share as much as you can! Posting a lot of content here isn’t just acceptable, it’s actively encouraged! Being visual means Pinterest is great for boosting your brands: whether you are a restaurant, freelance photographer or a wedding dress shop, sharing images of your work, products and any graphics relating to this always go down well!
Linkedin (the ‘Facebook’ of the professional world) offers it’s own guide here suggesting the ideal frequency for business posting is 1 post per day or 5 posts per week (or 20 times a month), which works out to be roughly once every working day.
Of course there are many many more social media platforms, today we’ve covered some general advice for some of the major ones. Every social media platform will have their own rules, etiquette and best ways to reach those you wish to advertise to. Our advice here is to understand the platform and what drives your followers. Measure your results carefully and always experiment with new ideas.
If you need professionals to manage your company’s social media, why not get in touch with us here?