How often should we update Social Media?
27/11/2020
Whether you're new at operating social media channels for your business or have been running them for a while, knowing the best times to post and how often, can make or break your channels' success. The timings and regularity all depend on your audience and which platforms you are posting on, as they each have different requirements. If you leave posting for too long, or do the opposite and spam your feed, these could be detrimental to your following.
Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform that businesses take advantage of, according to a study by HubSpot. It also shows the most investment from businesses and reports the highest return on investment.
The algorithm Facebook uses to decide what content to show you tends to prioritise content from friends and family, followed by pages you interact with regularly and pages with significant numbers of followers (e.g. over 10,000 for example). So what happens if you run a page with fewer followers? A study found that posting once a day, or around five times a week, seemed to work better for smaller Facebook pages in getting their posts exposed to followers than posting a lot more often. In fact, it seemed that the more often smaller pages posted, the less organic views they received. There was even evidence to suggest that posting just one to five times a month almost doubled their engagement!
Facebook provides you with metrics on how many users each post has reached on your page organically, so keeping an eye on how these vary with content, times of the day and how often you post will provide invaluable data. You can find this by viewing your posts, and underneath you should find a bar showing you each post's reach.
Paying for ads on Facebook could also be beneficial to getting your name out there, as the study found that it provided the highest return on their investment for social media marketing, and could be a good kick-start to gaining a following and sales on this platform initially. It's worth remembering also that creating engaging content on Facebook is the most significant way to receive follows and likes, boosting your reach and engagement overall.
Instagram’s algorithm is based around how active you are as a channel on their platform, so the more you interact with your followers and other accounts, the more likely Instagram will start moving your content up your follower’s feeds.
Posting once or twice a day to your grid should be more than enough to keep you in the “active” category and adding to your story at least four times every day will also help with this too. Even some of the biggest brands post on average 1.5 times a day, so there is no pressure to keep up with them. Try to avoid posting more than three times a day and try to spread your posts out over the day for more of an impact. Consistency really is key when it comes to Instagram, so decide how often you are willing to post on the platform and stick to this for the best results.
You can find your engagement details by visiting your profile on Instagram and tapping the Insights button. Here you will find your statistics for your posts, including the days you are performing best. Generally posting fairly early in the morning and then again in the evening works well, as this is when users have the time to browse, but again there is some trial and error in this to find your sweet spot for posting days and times.
Twitter is a bit of an oddball when it comes to posting frequency. The way Twitter shows posts in mainly a chronological order means there is no specific frequency to which you should post, as the newest tweets will always be nearer the top of your feed. The length of time a Tweet is visible on average before moving down in a feed significantly is between 15-20 minutes, which is not very long at all. Therefore, to stay fresh in people’s minds, it is better to send tweets as often as you can.
Do not tweet for the sake of it though; keeping your content relevant will still be an important part of your social strategy, and could result in losing followers if you go off tangent for the purpose of just posting often.
For optimal results on Twitter, posting anywhere from 5 to 20 times a day can help ensure you get seen by your followers throughout the day, but as mentioned before, do not let the quality of your posts suffer because of this. If you fail to post quality content your users enjoy, they are 15% more likely to unfollow you within 3 weeks, which is something to monitor and also something to be mindful of when creating content for your Twitter audience.
While LinkedIn is not the ideal social media platform for every business, it works particularly well for industry news and more corporate organisations. There is a good rule to follow for LinkedIn which is to post at least twice a week, and no more than one post a day. The best time to post is generally the mornings while people are settling into a day of work.
Users of LinkedIn are also more inclined to read longer posts, compared to the other platforms, so you can really expand on your content here if you want to provide as much information as possible. LinkedIn is much more about networking between employees and companies, rather than a place to promote your good and services to the masses, like Instagram and Facebook for example.
Overall, being consistent and posting at least once a day on your chosen platforms is the key to getting views. It may take a while for algorithms to begin working for you, but with some persistence and patience, you should start seeing an upward trend of organic growth.