Everyone wants to know as if there’s some secret formula of how often you should post on social media to elevate your performance on each platform and yield the best possible results.
(Spoiler alert: There isn’t!) The truth is the answer depends on many factors. While research does suggest a certain number of times per day or week that you should post to a certain social platform, the kind of business you have will also influence the rate of how much you should post. For example, a B2B SaaS company whose offerings include digital solutions rather than a tangible product will not have the same needs when it comes to how often it should post on social platforms as compared to a company in the consumer sector that sells a consumer product of some kind.
Still, you can’t deny the pressure to pinpoint exactly what your frequency of posting should be since it can ultimately make or break your engagement with your audience on a social platform. And engagement is everything to using a platform effectively, helping build a following, gain stronger brand awareness and convert more potential customers. You don’t want to bombard your audience with too much content at a rate faster than they can consume it, and which will honestly at the end of the day, also probably just irritate them. You also don’t want to post too infrequently that you lose traction with your following, hurt your engagement and even worse, miss out on opportunities to capitalize on that when used effectively can dramatically accelerate your performance in the platform.
And if you can determine the sweet spot of how often to post that works best for your company, you will be more likely to build momentum on the social platform, and steadily increase your following over time, which can also mean tremendous growth for your company in general.
In today’s post, we will be exploring the recommended amounts of times per day or week that a business should post on different social media platforms. That being said, again as mentioned before, how often you should post does depend on the type of business you run, so take these numbers with a grain of salt, and adjust as needed to meet your company’s individual needs.
Recommended Posting Frequency For Each Social Platform
Ok, so let’s get to those juicy numbers. We know you’re waiting to know what they are.
Based on research, the recommended amount of times per day or week to post on the major social platforms are as follows:
Instagram: Post between 3-7 times per week.
Facebook: Post between 1 and 2 times a day.
Twitter: Post between 1 and 5 Tweets a day.
LinkedIn: Post between 1 and 5 times a day.
Seems easy enough, right?
Again, the best thing to do is take these numbers and test them to see if this amount of frequency works for your company. This will require some experimentation and monitoring of your results to analyze if that level of frequency will be the most effective for your company or needs to be adjusted. And just like every company is different, everyone’s social media account is different too, as well. But these numbers are a good reference point for you to start with, and modify as needed from there.
Now, we will dive deeper into each platform separately.
How Frequently to Post on Instagram
It may come as a surprise that the rate of how often to post on Instagram is on the less frequent side of 2 to 3 times per week and no more than 1x per day. You don’t need to drive yourself nuts creating a bunch of posts on the platform everyday. The content would likely just go over your audience’s heads, and your hard work to constantly create valuable content will ultimately not serve you well if it doesn’t reach or resonate with your audience.
Stories are excluded from this and with those, you have more leeway to post more frequently. Since they only live on your page for 24 hours anyway, it makes sense to update your stories frequently, but also at a rate in which you have valuable content to share in a story format for your audience.
According to sources, businesses post 1.56 posts to their feed on average per day. That gives you a good idea then of how often you should post to keep pace with your competitors. It may sound daunting to post everyday, but if you use a social media content scheduling platform, it’s much easier to keep track of your content and optimize your content schedule at a rate that works for you.
How Frequently to Post on Facebook
For Facebook, the suggested number of times to post per day is 1 time per day, and no more than 2 times per day. According to sources, the average Facebook page uploads 1.55 posts per day. Again similarly to Instagram, you shouldn’t be madly posting 5 times per day, throwing hordes of content at your audience. 1 to 2 x per day is a manageable amount, people! Studies even show that it can be detrimental to over post on Facebook with engagement being hurt by posting too frequently. However, you definitely want to keep up with posting at least one time daily to get your business more exposure in front of your followers and potential followers, and gain stronger visibility on the platform.
How Frequently to Post on Twitter
It is suggested to post on Twitter 1 to 2 times per day and not exceed more often than 3 to 5 times per day. It makes sense that the recommended frequency of posting on Twitter is on the higher side since it is the network in which people have been known to post updates of their activities all-day long to the point of sharing even what sandwich they’re eating.
Now, some accounts even post up to 50 or 100 times per day. If that’s your jam, and you got a lot to say literally all-day long, and the time to execute it, Twitter would be the platform to do it. But according to the research, that amount of frequency really is not necessary.
In terms of what you should be posting on Twitter, it’s recommended to find a balance that divides your content between posts about your business, personal stories and retweets from experts and other influencers in your industry.
How Frequently to Post on LinkedIn
For LinkedIn, it is suggested to post at least 1x per day on the platform and not exceed more than 5x per day. In general however, it seems that the more frequently you post on LinkedIn, the more traction your company will get, also increasing your rate of engagement with your audience.
However often you are posting, it is important to make sure you are always sharing valuable content with your audience and shooting for quality over quantity, no matter which platform you are using. Content that will resonate with your audience is content they find engaging, and useful, sparks further interest and encourages them to take action to learn more about you and your offerings, potentially converting them into customers. At the end of the day it is always more savvy to focus on creating the best quality of content possible, and devising an overall effective social media strategy for your company rather than banging your head against the wall trying to figure out the exact number of times to post per day or week.
Are you ready to take your social media game up to speed to accelerate your performance like never before? Well, it’s time to level up, baby and partner with the digital marketing experts at Firon. Reach out today for a free audit.
