The right posting frequency can help you keep your audience engaged — but each platform (and account) has its own best practices. “How often should I post to social media?” is a question all businesses ask themselves – big or small.
Of course, there’s much, much more to a successful social media strategy than just posting the optimal number of times: it’s not a magic formula, but there is a method to it.
There’s a lot of pressure on to find that sweet spot of frequency. You don’t want to overwhelm your followers or feel like you’re spamming the news feed. You also don’t want to be forgotten or miss opportunities for exposure. But how much is too much? How much is too little? (And then once you’ve figured that out, when’s the best time to post?)
Well, good news: you can stop your social posting panic spiral. We’ve put together a small timetable explaining how often you should be posting to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to really optimise your reach — without annoying your followers.
We dug into the research and grilled our own social media team to discover the ideal number of times a day (or week) to post for each platform. Here’s a quick summary of what we found, but read on for more in-depth details:
- On Instagram, post between 3-7 times per week.
- On Facebook, post between 1 and 2 times a day.
- On Twitter, post between 1 and 5 Tweets a day.
- On LinkedIn, post between 1 and 5 times a day.
Every social media account is unique, so testing and analysing your results is key. But read on for a detailed breakdown of some general rules of thumb to use as a starting point… then, you can let the great experiment begin.
Remember that, however frequently you’re posting, the best practice is to follow the rule of thirds:
- ⅓ of tweets promote your business
- ⅓ share personal stories
- ⅓ are informative insights from experts or influencers
It is generally recommended to post to your Instagram feed 2-3 times per week, and no more than 1x per day. Stories can be posted more frequently.
During Instagram’s Creator Week in June 2021, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri suggested that posting 2 feed posts per week and 2 Stories per day is ideal for building a following on the app.
To keep up with your competitors (or frenemies!) it’s probably good to note that businesses post 1.56 posts to their feed per day. This might seem like a lot, but a social media content calendar can help make regular posting a breeze!
Think about how often your audience wants to hear from you, focus on building a regular cadence: you can grow your followers by 2x by simply posting every week consistently, compared to those who post less frequently than once a week.
It is generally recommended to post 1 time per day, and no more than 2 times per day. In fact, some studies have even found a drop in engagement if you’re posting more than that… so don’t get too post-happy. Aim for quality over quantity.
The average Facebook Page shares 1.55 posts per day. So, 1 to 2 posts per day is just right. Daily posting will grow followers 4x faster than posting less than once a week. Makes sense: more visibility.
It is generally recommended to post 1-2 times per day, and no more than 3-5 times per day. Of course, there are plenty of power users out there… accounts posting 50 or 100 times a day. If you’ve got the time, we’re certainly not going to stop you.
But to keep your brand’s presence active and engaged on Twitter, you really don’t need to drop everything and commit to a FT gig Tweeting. In general, the average sized business posts one thread of 7 to 8 Tweets daily, plus one other post.
On LinkedIn, it is generally recommended to post at least once a day, and no more than 5x per day. LinkedIn itself has seen brands that post once a month gain followers six times faster than those who keep a lower profile. That pattern continues with more frequent posting: companies that post weekly see twice the engagement, while bands that post daily gain even more traction.
To make sure your posting strategy is aligned with your engagement goals, keep track of LinkedIn analytics with a social media management tool like Hootsuite.
As with all things social, finding the best frequency to post on any platform is going to require some trial and error. In a nutshell: The quality of content matters more than frequency. While posting more content may help to some extent, the more relevant and useful your content is to the audience, the better your social channels will perform.
Comments are closed