Are you wondering how often to post on social media? This is one of life’s great mysteries. A good question though! The short answer to this will be “As often as you can post quality content, consistently.”
Quality and consistency are key to social media success. Recent studies and research have shown that there are optimal posting frequencies for the different social media platforms. And the good part is, it’s probably not as often as you may have heard! There is no good and a bad time for posting.
Posting hourly, every 15 minutes; forget about it! Maybe it works for accounts with 100K followers, but it doesn’t work for the average business applying social media marketing. In reality, there is no magical formula. Because what serves for one brand, doesn’t work for another.
Then, is how often you post on social media important?
Neil Patel says,
If you publish excessively, your viewers/audience will forget that you exist and you will quickly fade into the dark recesses of their minds. However, if you are posting too often, you will become a complete bore and they will dread seeing your posts overcrowding their feed. So, instead of seeking magic formulas, let’s focus on a few proven posting strategies:
Posting consistency is more significant than posting frequency.
Content quality is more important than content quantity.
The objective is a must! Without having an objective for social media, you won’t know if your posts are successful or not.
How Often to Post on Facebook
The recent modifications to the Facebook News Feed algorithm aim to reduce noise for its users and encourage real interactions between them.
First of all, get to know your audience with the Facebook Page Insights to see who is viewing and interacting with your content.
Produce quality content that suits the platform and with which you’re comfortable creating. There’s no point in making bad quality videos if you’re more skilled at writing or graphic design. Alternatively, work on broadcasting Facebook Live Videos if you think that suits your brand.
Experiment with your content schedule until you find what suits best for you and your viewers.
Most studies admit that once per day is optimal, with a maximum of two posts per day. At a minimum, you should publish to your Facebook Pages 3 times per week. The time when your audience is online will determine when you should post..Be sure to check your Facebook Insights. You can with ease schedule your posts in advance right on your Facebook Page.
How Often to Post on Instagram
Instagram has also made additions, primarily by deprecating their old API and introducing a distinct API that allows direct publishing of photos to Business Profiles.
Instagram is a visual platform, so what are the best ways to use it for your brand?
It’s generally advised to post at least once per day, and no more than 3 times per day, on Instagram.
Post-high-quality photos and videos that best show your product or service in the best possible way. Absolutely no one wants to see grainy photos or watch videos with poor sound quality. You have to project a professional image for your brand/company. Remember to add hashtags and mentions in your message.
Take your audience behind the scenes.
Give them a taste of what it’s like to work at your company. Or what happens in the canteen/workplace. Bring your brand pictures to life with real-life experiences.
Use Instagram Stories to post fresh content every day, as they have a time limit of 24 hours. Instagram Stories allow you to post more, without slandering your brand’s image.
The stories appear at the top of the newsfeed, so you have an excellent advantage to catch your audience attention as soon as they open the mobile App. Analyze your performance. You’ll only find out what works for you and your clients through testing and monitoring results.
Simply put,
Aim for consistency, not frequency
Create a plan and stick to it. For example, if you decide you’ll post twice a day you know you need to create or curate content to fill that schedule. You need people to start coming to you. And the best way to speed up social media marketing is by attracting them to have something worthwhile for them to digest. Which brings us to the next point …
Quality trumps quantity
There’s only one trait worse than not posting on social media, and that’s posting something pointless. There really is no point in posting something just to fill a slot in your schedule at 1 pm IST, or whatever time you’ve been advised on. If you post bad quality content, you’re more likely to lose fans and followers.
If you post something irrelevant or worse on social media, the pulse slows. If you post something interesting and useful, the vibration grows. This is no surprise that the ever-changing algorithms on social media want to promote the best content.
Set goals and objectives
Consistently posting high-quality content is the right way to go, but you also need to evaluate your overall social media marketing strategy.
If you don’t know why you’re posting, you won’t know if your posts are successful or not. Until you focus and determine what your goals and objectives are, there is no way to measure success.
So take a break and ask yourself: “What do I want to achieve on social media?” Could it be you want to:
-Increase brand awareness?
-Drive traffic to your website?
-Sell a product or service?
Tailor your social media marketing content to suit each network that will attract its audience. It’s no good copying and pasting your Facebook post to Instagram. That won’t work! Yes, tailoring will take a little longer, but remember you have to post quality content so that you gain favorable traction.