How often should you be posting on social media.

Before we get into how often you should be posting on social media, let’s first establish why people share on these platforms. Understanding the ‘why’ will help you determine the ‘when’.  Understanding the psychology behind why people share their lives online is key to executing a successful social media marketing campaign.

The boom in social media usage is no surprise to the digital world and the fact that more than two-thirds of people online post on one of the social media platforms regularly.  The most popular social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Pinterest.  Studies have been done on how often is advisable to post on all of the major social media sites and indeed each site does differ on what works for their algorithms.

The get a full understanding of all the social media posting techniques it’s advisable to complete a social media marketing course which will give you a solid foundation on social media.

Posting on social media has to be part of any digital marketing strategy, in fact, if a business fails to become active on social media sites, it could spell disaster for that business and these days being able to string a catchy headline and add a few images just isn’t good enough. Knowing how often you should post on social media plays a huge role in the success of social media marketing.

Could oversharing be a problem?

Great, so we’ve learnt that it is an absolute must to post on the social media platforms for any business wanting to build brand awareness, increase customer engagement and increase their conversion rate.

But how often should you be posting?

This has proved to be a tricky question and one that many social media marketing managers continue to ask.  Where do you draw the line on how often you post? Could posting too often actually hurt your business or your online reputation?

Does oversharing really matter?

Once posting on social media creeps into your daily routine, it’s pretty difficult to realise when your posting has become, well, just too much.  The internet is bombarded daily with blogs, new websites, digital marketingads, videos…the list goes on, so understanding when oversharing has become a problem can go a long way to help you get the mix just right of how often you should be posting.  On the flipside, if you post too infrequently your audience will forget you exist and will simply move on to the next post.

Quality posts are key

Part of your social media marketing strategy has include making sure that all, and this applies to ‘all’, of your social media posts being of quality and consistent content.  Often times, internet users basically run out of good quality content and then ultimately end up posting low quality content for the sake of ‘posting.’ This is never a good idea.  Always ensure that you generate relative, interesting and great content for your social media posts.  Remember every single one of your social media posts has to resonate with your audience.

Are all social media platforms the same?

Do the same posting time rules apply to all the different social media sites?  Does Facebook’s ranking algorithms differ from Twitter?  The short answer is – yes.  Social media algorithms rank posts by different requirements set for their platform.  For example, Tweets are organised by the time it was posted and relevance to the user. LinkedIn content is focussed on by engagement and how their users are connected.

Social media platforms average posting rate

As we’ve discovered how often you should be posting on social media sites depends on which social media platform you are posting on and what your marketing goal is.

However, here are a few points to keep in mind for each social media platform when deciding how often you should be posting.

  • Facebook– For any brand it’s ideal to keep posts on Facebook to a minimum of twice per day.
  • Instagram– Ideally, 1.5 times per day.
  • Twitter– Only allowing shorter posts, Twitter has a quick moving newsfeed so anywhere between 5 -10 posts per day.
  • Pinterest– Posts, or pins, on Pinterest depends mostly on content, but aim for at least 5 pins per day.
  • LinkedIn– Once per ‘business’ day is enough for this business platform.