How often should you post on social media channels?
Almost every business post updates to social networking channels on a daily basis with some more than once a day but how often should you be posting without becoming annoying?
There is a fine line between posting regular interactive posts and content to the point where you start to lose followers or want to unfollow someone for posting too often that everytime you get an alert it’s from the same company on the hour every hour sometimes two or three times an hour.
Brands and media companies are very different because brands don’t have to post as frequently as they are already established so posting once or twice a day won’t do them any harm, however; media companies have more space and often need to increase their online presence by posting content and engaging with followers and potential followers or customers.
Although there are no set rules on the exact number of times you should post on Facebook per week. Most companies on average post around 2 per day. If you post fewer than 2 posts a week, you are unlikely to engage with your audience enough for you to maintain a social connection and are likely to lose followers or fail to increase your social presence.
According to Buffer, the ideal number to post to facebook is between 5 – 10 posts per week as a brand, and as a media company, this is usually up to 10 times higher, as news is information people engage with all day long.
Buffer Social Bakers studied Twitter, taking a random sample of 11,000 tweets from top brands and concluding that three tweets per day is the point where brands start seeing big engagement. However, if you are engaging with other businesses then you can probably get away with tweeting more. Social media platform, Track Social found that the response per tweet peaks at around five per day before it starts to drop off.
LinkedIn and Google+
Buffer claims that the guideline for LinkedIn sharing comes from the site, with them recently publishing a marketing report claiming 20 posts per month allows you to reach 60 percent of your audience that’s Twenty posts per month, which equalsone post per weekday. Although the post on Buffer doesn’t give us a clear answer it offers recommendations from a reliable range of sources including Buffer’s own strategy for social sharing.
Make sure that you mix up your social networking tweets and posts with interesting, newsworthy topics, pictures and interact with other businesses at least once a day, otherwise you could end up also losing followers if you are not posting enough. Try not to link your accounts to hoot suite or tweet deck as this also looks unnatural and often cuts off half the text on Twitter if you are posting the same thing on all of your social accounts.
Make sure you are posting within the 140 character limit for Twitter with slightly more detailed posts for Facebook, LinkedIn and Google + as each social platform has different audiences.