One of the most common questions I hear is – “Dhariana, how often do I need to post on social media?”
The answer isn’t always so clear cut - in this post, I’ll outline some of the questions I ask when determining how often a brand should post on social media, and what's an adequate posting frequency ongoing.
First, let's tackle a key element. Need. Lets eliminate that word.
Why? Because there's no magic number. The number of times you post on social media is determined by many factors, including the niche you're in (and what your competitors are doing) and, of course, what your audience responds to. No two accounts, even within the same industry, will be exactly the same.
The one thing I want you to realize is that you don’t need to post every day, and you definitely don’t need to post multiple times a day. I cringe whenever I hear a marketer suggest that this is an absolute necessity. With the decline of organic reach, spending time to interact, to find and take part in conversations, is just as important as posting. Now more than ever, you need to focus on being social, on social media.
Now that we’ve made that little mindset shift, let’s discuss the top three things which determine how often you’ll want to post on social media.
1. Your Goals
First and foremost, if you don’t have a social media strategy in place, you need to figure out what your social media goals are. This will determine the themes you’ll want to hone in on, and post about, within your social media content schedule.
Your themes can dictate the number of times you post, but you should go through the next two points before deciding if it makes sense to post as often as your themes and goals may require individually.
2. Content Creation Capacity
Your content creation capacity is really important when it comes to figuring out how often you’re going to post on social media.
Based on your social media goals and posting themes, think about how many pieces of content you’ll need per week or month. If you’re already creating big pieces of content (like blog posts or white papers) think about how you can break these down into “snackable” pieces of content that you can share on social also.
Remember, too, that content doesn’t always mean images and videos – which leads me to my next point...
3. The Network(s) You’re Concentrating On
The last thing you’ll want to consider when determining how often you want to post on social media is to take a look at the social media networks you’ll be active on. This is important, because not all social media networks are built the same.
While you can simply write text on Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter, you’ll have to get a little bit more creative when it comes to transforming your text into a visual. Or if you want to be active on, say, TikTok you’ll need to be able to create videos.
One other thing to think about here is that you might post more on one network than another. For example, let’s say your brand is a publisher or media outlet - this usually means that you'll have a lot of content to share. Twitter's great for frequent updates, because of the natural speed of the network, while on Facebook or Instagram, posting too often can causes audience fatigue, and could lead to people unfollowing or muting your updates.
Putting It All Together
The bottom line here is that there is no “right” amount to post on social media - but there is a right amount for your brand and your organizational capacity. Don’t overthink it, and don’t spread yourself thin.
The one piece of advice I’ll leave you with is to try to post at least three times a week. You can use this as a very basic guideline - but note, I’ve worked with clients who only post once a week and still see growth in followers and engagement.
I’d also challenge you to test different post frequencies to see what your audience responds best to.
A version of this post was first published on Dhariana Lozano's blog.