How Often Should You Post on Social Media?

Are you interested in increasing your company's social media presence? Here's how often you should post on social media!

How high would you guess the user engagement is on a superstar's social media posts? Maybe 50-70 percent? Would you believe us if we said it was 10 percent?

Well, what if we told you it's more like 1 percent?

When you're deciding how often to post on social media, you should keep in mind that this is a very different metric from how often any follower will see new content. To maximize exposure and game the timing, you need a smart social media strategy.

We'll break it down for you:

User Engagement Percentages

Just because someone is popular on a social media platform doesn't mean any individual post is enjoying a full audience. Social media feeds are filled with a collection of content from lots of different accounts. For a follower to see your post, they'll have to log in at the right time and receive the right mix of posts in their feed.

This is how the social media game works. It's not like a book or TV series, where you can expect the audience to follow along chronologically. It's a bunch of voices vying for attention.

Don't believe the low user engagement percentages? We've crunched the numbers to give you the actual data from some of the biggest celebrities on three social media platforms:

1. The Rock's Instagram

Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson has 192 million followers on Instagram, making him one of the app's most-followed celebrities.

The number of likes on his last 10 posts may seem like a lot—about 5.6 million—but this amounts to an average of less than 1 percent audience engagement per post.

The Rock also posts videos on his Instagram. He got about 27.5 million views on his last 10 videos, but this is still only 1.6 percent of his followers per video.

2. Shakira's Facebook

On her last 10 Facebook posts, Shakira's likes were at 0.1 percent, and her video views were at about 0.9 percent. She has almost 100 million followers, but not even a full percent of user engagement.

3. Bill Gates' LinkedIn

You might think LinkedIn would have higher percentages, as the content is more streamlined to individual job fields. Not so. Bill Gates' user engagement is below 0.2 percent.

The Value of Recycling Content

So what does this mean for your posting frequency?

Well, to know how often to post on social media, you have to understand strategy.

General experts will tell you to post on Facebook twice a day, tweet at least 1-5 times daily, and post on Instagram as much as possible, as long as you're consistent.

But a strategist will tell you to get smart, re-use, and recycle. By posting the same content multiple times, you not only get more mileage out of high-quality posts—you create higher chances of audience engagement.

How a Strategic Social Media Posting Schedule Can Help You

As you can see, even the biggest stars on social media have incredibly low view and like percentages. This is fine for celebrities and CEOs whose claims to fame don't depend on social media.

But for anyone looking to use social media as a driver of their success, you'll need an excellent strategy, like our social media management system. Here's why:

Scenario #1:

Let's say you're an influencer on Instagram who makes money from sponsored partnerships.

You want to be able to show your partners that their product is getting a lot of exposure through your platform. If you're including a custom link for your viewers to click, you want that click number to be as high as possible.

Even if you have an impressive following, you might find that you aren't getting as much engagement as you expected. If you post different sponsored content every day, upwards of 90% of your followers might not even see any given post. So you might think that you should block out a few days to post about the same company, to maximize the number of eyes on your partnership.

However, if you do this, your followers might be turned off by the sense that you're pushing a product at them. And it might not even be the quickest way to get more views.

You need to navigate the Instagram algorithm with a strategy that balances the right amount and timing of exposure to recycled content.

Scenario #2:

Suppose you're a comedian using video-based social media to showcase your jokes and increase your exposure in the comedy field.

For this scenario, we can also look to a real-life example: Ziwe Fumudoh is a comedian who started making live shows on Instagram during lockdown, and quickly shot to some of the highest viewer counts we've ever seen. She's since been written up in Vanity Fair, and the New York Times, and she just landed a book deal.

Ziwe's schedule for new content is usually one show per week. Does this mean she lays low the other days of the week? Not at all.

Ziwe reposts her old videos, uploading snippets and transcripts every day of the week. She spaces them out, but will post the same video multiple times on Instagram stories.

For people whose fan bases are growing rapidly, these reposts are great ways to retain viewers. You and your long-time fans know that you have golden content from the past, but new viewers might not know this yet. Recycling photos and videos can let new fans know that you've been making quality content for a while.

Scenario #3:

What if you're a freelance artist using social media to get clients and develop your personal brand?

Your social media posts will likely be based on images or videos of your work, with some work-in-process posts and how-to demonstrations.

Because you're making art all the time, it might seem to make sense to just keep posting your new work as it comes up. After all, followers can scroll through your profile to see your past work, right?

Well, it's not that simple. If one of your posts gets featured or makes it to the coveted 'explore' page, you'll be receiving attention from thousands of people who have no idea who you are. The same situation will happen on a smaller scale when people share or repost your work.

Will these new followers go through your whole profile to see your body of work? Some will, but most won't. They'll click 'follow' and wait for your content to show up in their feed.

You'll need to impress these new followers by showing them your all-time best work in new posts of old material.

Let's Get Posting!

In the end, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to social media posting frequency.

Sure, you can post new content all day every day to be safe. But if you want to be savvy and drive up audience engagement, a good social media strategy will get you to the next level. You can use our social media software to recycle content at strategic moments and even use dynamic triggers that post content when the right things are trending.

If you have questions or want to see what we can do for you, just give us a call. If you want to start managing your social media accounts like a pro, sign-up for a free trial of our Thrive-Online software.  

Now get out there and strategize!