How Often Should I Be Posting to Social Media for My Brand?

Posting to social media in today’s digital marketplace is a must for any business owner who is committed to growing their brand. Yet the question of how often to be posting is not so simply answered. Additionally, the time commitment of posting can be intrusive for many busy brand managers and business owners. Surely there is a better way?

Today we’ll look into social media branding and how often you should be posting to your business profiles. We’ll also explore some of the tools available for making the job of social media scheduling more convenient.

Social Media Posting Frequency

The dilemma that is faced by business owners and social media marketers is how to strike a balance between posting social content too often and not enough. You want to be connecting in a captivating way with followers, without alienating them by being too “in their face”. The last thing you want is to clog up the newsfeeds of your fans; however you also need to make sure you are not forgotten in the realm of social media noise by posting too infrequently. Think of it like Goldilocks: too much is bad; too little is bad; it needs to be “just right”. It can be a delicate balance.

Sharing and Listening

The perfect strategy for social media branding requires an ideal blend of both sharing content and listening to follower responses. You need to find the perfect balance between being interesting or informative and annoying.

You need to make your social presence felt on a regular basis, but you don’t want to overdo it.

Much depends on the nature of your business and your target audience as well. If you’re targeting Millennials who are using their social accounts constantly throughout the day, posting more often is a good idea. If, instead, you’re targeting an older and more conservative demographic who likely follow fewer pages and use social media less frequently, posting too often will quickly become annoying to them.

Many novice brand marketers will believe that more posts get better results. This is not always true!

There have been a number of formal studies undertaken by market researchers into optimal posting frequency, and the results are surprising in some cases.

Recommended Posting Frequency?

• Facebook – post only once per day to avoid appearing to be spamming followers. Posts from others can be curated (or reshared) every second day in addition to your own daily post. Ideally, post your Facebookcontent between 1-4pm. At absolute minimum, post to Facebook three times weekly, with no more than ten posts published per week. Limit weekend posts to one per day maximum, if at all. Highest engagement occurs on Facebook on Thursdays and Fridays, however Saturday can be great as users have time to scroll at a leisurely pace.?
• LinkedIn – the guidelines for Facebook apply to LinkedIn as well: once per day. LinkedIn posts are best published on the platform between 10-11am. According to Buffer, posting to LinkedIn once daily (but not on weekends) will enable you to reach up to 60% of your followers on the platform.?
• Twitter – studies have demonstrated that retweets occur in most cases within an hour of the original tweet being published, so a higher frequency of tweeting is preferred. The ideal number of tweets per day is up to fifteen, set at hourly or two-hourly intervals between 2am and 10pm. Retweet no more than seven tweets per day (around 5pm works best for this). Some sources recommend no more than three tweets per day; regardless of daily number, tweets should be sent out for your business every day of the week.?
• Instagram – recommendations for Instagram state that ideally, one to two posts per day will work best for social media branding for your business. Posts should only be curated if necessary and distinctly beneficial to your brand. Post to Instagram around 8-9am and again mid-afternoon.?
• Google+ – post twice daily, mid morning and around lunchtime, no fewer than three times per week.

(Sources: Ahalogy, Buffer, HubSpot, Dow Social, Constant Contact, Quick Sprout, Nulou, and Localvox)

One way to assess if your post frequency is ideal is the response of followers.

Are your posts being likes, commented upon, and shared? Are your follower numbers growing organically? Are you losing followers? When you get post content and frequency right, your numbers will increase.

Social Media Scheduling

Thanks to an array of fantastic tools, it’s easy to pre-schedule social media posts for your business. This is the most convenient way for most businesses to plan and execute their social media strategy and to organise themselves and their posts ahead of time.

Just some of the social media scheduling tools available include:

• Buffer offers a simple yet smart way to schedule social media content. It is akin to a virtual queue, where you input content then nominate posting times. It allows brand marketers to consistently share social content without needing to pay constant attention to strict posting and delivery times. Buffer offers superior flexibility for scheduling. You also have access to metrics relating to post reach and engagement.?
• Hootsuite is the most popular tool for social media scheduling and management used by millions worldwide. It allows campaigns to be run collaboratively across social platforms including Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Conversations can be tracked and campaign results can be analysed.?
• Tweetdeck monitors and manages your Twitter feeds quickly and easily. It works with Chrome browsers, and Mac and Windows desktops.?
• Tweepi is an innovative Twitter management tool that helps profile owners follow interesting new members, eliminate unfollowers, clean out inactive users, and automatically reciprocate when you receive a new follower. Up to two hundred users at a time may be followed or unfollowed in bulk.?
• IFTTT – If this then that, or IFTTT, is an automation site that allows you to connect to any major channel to automate social media sharing. One example of this is automatically sending a tweet when a new blog post is published. It operates compatibly with both Buffer and Hootsuite to enhance their benefits.?
• SocialBro is a tool to help businesses better engage with and target their Twitter audience. It allows for analysis of follower timelines, engagement tracking, analysis of competitors’ profiles, browsing of your community, identification of key influencers, and more. Perhaps best of all, it helps you determine when best to tweet.?
• Argyle Social is a B2B marketing management tool. Merge social media data with sales data to engage with prospects, identify targets, quantify and qualify leads, and build networks.?

Other useful scheduling tools to explore include SocialOomph, Social Flow, Sprout Social, Crowdbooster, DashBurst, Everypost, Symphony, Postcron, LaterBro, Timely, Buffero, DoShare … and the list goes on. There really is a perfect social media scheduling tool out there for every business.

There is one important thing to keep in mind if you are scheduling your business social posts ahead of time: you need to be committed to checking in each day to respond to comments. Interaction is the key to the success of your social campaigns, and unlike other forms of marketing, social media isn’t just about broadcasting to your audience. If your followers receive silence from your side even when they comment on your posts, they will move onto more communicative pages. You need to be present, post mindfully, and show appreciation for your followers – do so and their appreciation for you will flourish.

About Adam

His second book The LinkedIn Playbook is available now.

His newly released training courses Linkedin2Success and Mentor2Success are receiving rave reviews world-wide as the most innovative approaches to social media and on-line marketing.

Adam Houlahan is an International Keynote Speaker specialising in Social Media for business, and CEO of the highly successful boutique agency, Web Traffic That Works. He lives in Australia's famous tourist destination the Gold Coast Queensland, and is considered to be one of Australia's leading experts in harnessing the power of Linkedin for business. Over 6,200 people globally have sought his skill and insights to leverage the power of LinkedIn for their businesses.

Adam is also an Australian Brand Ambassador for Microsoft. He consults on Social Media to private clients in Australia, New Zealand, North America, The Middle East and Singapore. His work as CEO and owner of 6 successful companies has given him the hands-on experience to understand business from the inside.

Adam believes real and meaningful change comes through the world’s entrepreneurs. His purpose is to provide their businesses with powerful tools to grow and accelerate their global footprint. And that together we make a huge impact!

Through his Lifetime Partnership with the Global Giving Initiative B1G1 www.B1G1.com he is well on track to positively impact the lives of more than 1 million people in need.