Most businesses would agree that social media activity is important for marketing and general branding, but opinions are divided over how often to post on social media. Some companies are content with the occasional update on LinkedIn, while others seem to be on Twitter every 15 minutes. Is the latter posting too regularly and the former not frequently enough? Maybe, or maybe not.
The fact is there is no hard and fast rule on how often to post on social media, but, nevertheless, frequency is extremely important. If you post too often, you risk irritating or boring your audience, whereas if you post too infrequently you could slip off their radar.
How Do You Make Sense Of All This?
Clearly, some audiences have a larger tolerance for getting social media updates than others, and there are variations between markets. A ‘daily deal’ Facebook update may work for a retail business, while being completely inappropriate for a solicitor, for instance. To hit a good balance we suggest sticking with two golden rules:
1) Consistency – set an expected level of output and stick to it. Your prospects will look forward to receiving your social media posts at a particular time and frequency.
2) Quality – post only as regularly as you can maintain the highest level of quality. If this dips, consider whether the post is worth publishing.
As long as these rules are observed, feel free to post as regularly as required by your industry and target audience. However, there are also differences in best practices between social media platforms, with Twitter and Instagram seemingly designed for more frequent updates than Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
Let’s take a look at average post volumes for each of the main social media platforms:
Twitter
Not every business uses Twitter, but those that do frequently use it prolifically. It’s not uncommon for the most active account to post 100 times a day or more, and this works because individual tweets have an immediate use by date. Most of your 100 tweets won’t be seen by your audience – only those who are checking Twitter at the time – so it’s important to schedule your output throughout the day.
Most users suffice with a lower output, but post volume is still higher than for other social media platforms.
- Average volume: 10-15 tweets per day
- High volume: 30-50
- Low volume: <3
LinkedIn
LinkedIn users expect a lower volume of posts from their connections, but a consistently high level of quality. One to two posts per week is considered an acceptable level of output on LinkedIn, and this should be scheduled on a working day, in the morning or lunchtime.
- Average volume: 1-2 posts per week
- High volume: 3-5
- Low volume: less than 1 post per week
Facebook
How often to post on Facebook depends on your number of followers. Businesses with high-volume Facebook pages (10,000+ followers) might get away with posting once a day or more, but Facebook users are sensitive to spam, and for smaller commercial pages a post volume of 1-3 times per week is more normal.
- Average volume: 1-3 posts per week
- High volume: 7-14
- Low volume: less than 1 post per week
Instagram
Instagram isn’t appropriate to every type of business, but if you choose to use the image marketing platform, it is worth posting at least once or twice a day. Less than daily posting is considered inactive, while three or more daily posts could be too much for some users.
- Average volume: 1-2 posts per day
- High volume: >3
- Low volume: less than 1 post per day
YouTube
As quality is the watchword for video content, publishing frequency doesn’t matter as much for YouTube as it does for other platforms. If you can sustain quality output on 1 to 5 videos per month then do so, but you won’t be penalised by followers for posting intermittently, so long as the videos you upload are valuable and well-promoted on other social media platforms.
Effective Social Media Marketing
Publishing content on social media is no guarantee it will be seen, or that it will have the intended effect! At JDR we help businesses use paid and free social media content to increase engagement with their target customers. For advice on what platforms to use, what to post, how frequently and when to post it, call one of our social media specialists today on 01332 343281.
Image source: Pixabay
