If you consistently produce top-notch social media content for your business, but most of it goes unnoticed or hardly engaged with, it’s likely an issue of timing, not quality.
But what strategy should you choose to decide how often to post on social media while keeping up with their ever-changing algorithms and audiences with different expectations? Don’t worry – there’s a method to this madness.
You’ve probably heard, “Don’t post too often, or you’ll overwhelm your audience; not too rarely, though, or you’ll fall into obscurity.” Unfortunately, that’s not specific enough. If you want to find more precise and reliable suggestions for your social media strategy and skip the guessing game – read on!
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How often to post on Instagram
According to Instagram’s Creators (and Instagram’s CEO, Adam Mosseri), it’s best to post on Instagram daily – one post on the feed and two Stories a day. Instagram for Business recommends that businesses post at least two to three times per week to stay on top of mind with customers.
Additionally, Creators’ case studies suggest posting reels 2 to 3 times per week and cross-posting them to Facebook as an effective strategy to grow your following.
With Instagram’s recent focus on promoting video content, you can expect some extra traffic incoming from the Explore page when posting reels.
Keep in mind that Instagram Reels allow you to tag products, making it a great format to promote a store.
If you’re struggling to produce enough content to post as often, try to keep a less frequent but consistent posting schedule. And in case you have more than enough photos and videos, post them in a carousel – it’s been proven to be the most engaging format.
Experimenting with different posting times and monitoring your analytics is the most reliable way to identify the optimal posting frequency. Pay attention to the type of content that resonates the most with your audience, and refine your strategy accordingly along the way.
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How often to post on Facebook
On Facebook, the ideal posting frequency is similar to Instagram. It’s recommended that you post to your Facebook Page three to four times per week or once every workday, but not more than one time per day.
Publishing multiple posts per day can either make them compete with each other (so that one gets more visibility than the other) or overcrowd the audience’s news feed.
Establish when your audience is most active and schedule your posts to be published in this time window. Maintaining a consistent presence and prioritizing quality content while tracking your metrics and analytics should help you generate the highest engagement for your business.
How often to post on Twitter
Twitter is a fast-paced platform, so frequent posting is much more acceptable compared to other social media.
If your business has a small following on Twitter, you can aim for three to five tweets per day, spacing them out strategically to reach different segments of your audience. After gaining some traction, you can schedule one or two tweets a day.
Twitter is a very conversational platform, which makes it the place to hold conversations with your customers and followers. When you have a substantial following, it’s more than ok to post on Twitter less frequently but focus more on creating engaging threads.
Plus, not every tweet needs to be an original, thought-provoking remark – you can always quote-tweet and retweet other people’s content. Your brand’s tweets can very well be promoting other content, like blog posts and YouTube videos.
Or, high-quality “leftovers” from other social media – e.g., when you have too much content to post on Facebook, you can use it as additional tweets to fill out your tweet gaps.
To lengthen the lifespan of your favorite tweets, consider repurposing them and sharing them on other platforms like Instagram or TikTok.
How often to post on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is not a typical platform for social media marketing. It’s, first and foremost, a professional networking platform, so the posting frequency should reflect its business-oriented nature.
Posting two to three times a week is generally sufficient to maintain a consistent presence.
You might also like: What’s the best time to post on Linkedin?
How to build engagement regardless of when you post on LinkedIn? Prioritize the type of content you post.
- Focus on sharing industry insights, thought leadership content, and valuable resources that could resonate with your target audience.
- Ask questions and respond to comments. Encourage engagement through comments rather than reactions and take the opportunity to respond, as it both rewards those who actively participate and boosts the visibility of your content in the news feed.
- Consider implementing an employee advocacy program – content posted by “real people” is interacted with much more than any business post on social media.
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How often to post on TikTok
TikTok’s algorithm heavily favors frequent posting – most creators and marketing specialists agree that consistency is vital for success on this platform. TikTok recommends that businesses post 1-4 times a day to test the viewer’s response to different types of content, adding a paid boost to the top-performing videos.
As the For You Page is highly personalized, the suggested videos there, while usually very recent, can be months-old. So, the main priority is not to focus on when to post but how often to post on TikTok.
The more often you post, the more chances you get to land on as many ‘FYPs’ as possible. It’s likely that one of the four TikToks you post in a day will have thousands of views while the rest fades into obscurity.
TikToks are one of the most time-consuming types of social media content to create and publish. Especially if you plan to post four videos each day of the week. So, although it’s important to react to emerging trends quickly, consider allocating one day of the week to record all of your content for the upcoming 7 days.
Then, to avoid any mixups and publishing errors, it’s best to schedule! Scheduling TikToks can be super easy if you’re using a social media publishing tool like NapoleonCat. Here’s a video on how to do it:
How to know the best posting frequency for social media
In some cases, the answer to ‘how often to post on social media?’ is more straightforward than in others. For example, if you asked ‘how often should I post on Pinterest?’, the recommendation is simple – one good post a week. Even Pinterest itself tells you so in its guide for businesses.
But for other platforms, it’s much trickier. How often should you post on YouTube? Well, it depends. It depends on the size of your channel, your posting history, the type of content you post (is it educational? is it entertainment? commentary? only YouTube shorts?), the industry you’re in, the demographics of your audience… The list goes on and on.
So, the only foolproof way to establish a good social media strategy is to rely on data. Making data-driven decisions can give you immeasurably better results than trying to fit into a one-size-fits-all formula or sticking to arbitrary rules.
Social media platforms, their rules, algorithms, and people’s preferences are constantly changing. It’s crucial to monitor your analytics regularly, tweak and experiment, watch the results, and adjust your posting frequency based on the data you collect.
Let’s say, for example, that you notice a spike in engagement when you post on Instagram three times a week. But, posting more frequently doesn’t generate the same levels of interaction. Also, posting photos four times a week drives likes, but posting one video gets you more followers and shares.
This is where advanced social media analytics tools, like NapoleonCat’s analytics feature, come into play. It allows you to analyze both your social media profiles and your competitors, too.
Analytics empowers you to stay agile with valuable insights into the performance of your social media content and tracking engagement metrics.
Most importantly, they help you delve deep into your audience’s behavior to better understand what resonates with them..
By tracking key metrics (such as follower growth, engagement rate, reach, and impressions) and monitoring them over time, you can identify patterns and trends that will help you determine the best posting frequency for your niche.
In addition to analyzing your own performance, NapoleonCat allows you to monitor your competitors’ social media activities. By tracking their posting frequency and engagement metrics, you can benchmark your own performance against the rest of the industry. Seeing what works for other brands and what doesn’t might inspire you to change your content strategy and stay ahead!
And if you need regular, easy-to-understand reports with helpful recommendations for growing your (or your client’s) social media presence or improving customer support – you can schedule, send, or download professionally designed and branded data reports.
Social Media Analytics & Reports
Analyze your social media performance & track your competitors, too! Generate in-depth social media reports within seconds – with an all-in-one social media tool.
How to schedule social media posts
Now that you know how to figure out your optimal social media schedule, let’s talk about how to schedule posts.
But before we get to the hows, let’s start with the whys.
Why you should schedule your social media posts
Scheduling social media posts ensures that your content reaches your audience at the right time. There are many more benefits, though:
- Manually posting different types of content on various social media is time-consuming and demanding. Scheduling in advance means you can dedicate focused time to curate and plan your content, schedule it to be automatically published at specific times, and eliminate the need for constant manual intervention.
- Scheduling allows you to plan and maintain a consistent posting frequency, providing your audience with a steady stream of content. This, ultimately, helps establish brand trust, keeps your audience engaged, and strengthens your online presence.
- Scheduling posts streamlines your entire social media workflow, simplifies content management, and gives you a bird’s-eye view of your social media calendar.
- When managing multiple social media profiles, mixups and mistakes can happen. Especially when posting in real-time. Scheduling minimizes the risk of errors, like posting on the wrong platform, using incorrect captions, or missing important announcements. By planning and scheduling, you (and your team) can review and double-check everything before it goes live. It ensures accuracy and helps you avoid any embarrassing mishaps.
- Scheduling your posts gives you flexibility. If something unexpected comes up, or you need to make adjustments, you can easily reschedule or modify your pre-scheduled posts without disrupting your entire workflow.
All these benefits allow you to focus on creating high-quality content, engage with your audience more frequently, and ultimately achieve your social media goals with ease.
Scheduling social media posts
Scheduling is by far the easiest part of social media marketing. All you need is a social media publishing tool (like, for example, NapoleonCat ;)).
The process, in a few simplified steps, goes like this:
- Connect your accounts to NapoleonCat.
- Go to Publisher and select a date in the calendar.
- Select the account (or accounts) you want to post to.
- Create the post – add captions, emojis, hashtags, tag other users, etc. Adjust platform-specific settings (i.e., disable Stitches or Duets on TikTok, or schedule the first comment on Instagram).
- Add your content (photos or videos).
- Select the perfect publishing time for your post.
- Click “schedule” and voila! Your post is queued and ready to go live on your selected date.
You can take an in-depth look into how Publisher works here:
Or, check out platform-specific tutorials on how to schedule and publish:
The process works almost the same for each platform and is super easy every time.
With the optimum posting frequency in mind, you can organize your online presence, strategically plan and automate your content, and maintain cross-platform consistency with ease. It’s a game-changer for maximizing efficiency in your social media marketing.
Want to see it in action? Start scheduling your posts today and unlock the full potential of your social media strategy.
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It’s the optimal time for a conclusion
To sum up – finding the right posting frequency for each platform is crucial for realizing your content’s potential.
Remember to take the “once per week” or “four times per day” suggestions with a grain of salt. Making informed, data-based decisions (which are, by definition, tailored to your target audience’s preferences) on when to post on social media, planning out and scheduling your posts accordingly will reward you with much better results than any pre-imposed frequency rule ever would!
We highly recommend you test NapoleonCat for free – no credit card required 😉
You may also like:
- A Quick Guide to Social Media Publishing
- The Best Times to Post on Social Media
- Here’s The Best Time to Post on TikTok
- Best Time to Post Reels on Instagram
- Best Times to Post on Instagram
- Best Time to Post on TikTok
- What’s The Best Time to Post on LinkedIn
- What’s a Social Media Scheduler, and Why Do You Need One?
- 10 Free and Paid Social Media Scheduling Tools for Teams
- How to Schedule Instagram Posts in Advance
- Schedule and Auto-Publish Instagram Carousels with NapoleonCat
- How To Post On Instagram From PC (the easy way)
- How to Create an Instagram Content Calendar
- Top 10 Social Media Analytics Tools for Teams
- How to Analyze Competitors on Social Media
- What Is a Social Media SWOT Analysis?
- Social Media Audit: Step-By-Step Guide
