Startups and entrepreneurs alike are always looking for the best advice to building their brand and social footprint. The only problem is, when you do a Google search for

“How to Grow My Brand”

you find out there are guides everywhere. Different sources, different experts, and different opinions.

Some of these social media guides make sense.

Some of them don’t.

 

Some of them are too difficult to interpret.

And some don’t even answer your questions.

Question: How often should I post on Social Media?

You already know the answer to this.

You should post on your social media accounts at least once per day.

Thats it!

 

You are probably looking for a better answer to this question, but I’m here to tell you, you’re probably not going to find it. Unless you click here.

 

Posting once per day on each of your platforms is the general guideline of all of these social media guides you will find online.

 

Why?

 

Because posting great content consistently is difficult to do.

 

You may be able to post interesting content for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, or even a couple of years, but at the end of the day, it’s time-consuming.

 

Doing the research, writing copy, creating pictures, and post editing is a tedious process. Let alone, scheduling these out and adding relevant hashtags is a hassle in its own.

 

In reality, it’s easier to do a Google search of “How often to post on social media” than it is to actually POST once a day on your social media accounts.

 

Quicksnip understands where you are coming from. We’ve been there.

 

But since you’re already here, We will help you with your first step. —> RESEARCH

 

We’ve compiled a list of resources you can use to answer your question about how often to post on your social media accounts.

 

If you are looking for any of the primary platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn etc, you’ll probably find it below.

 

Steps to Posting on Your Accounts

Step 1: Identify Your Audience

Before you read how often you should be posting, you should have already identified who your audience is and how you are going to reach them. For example:

Is your audience based in a single location?
Lets say your target audience all live in Santa Monica, CA.

Your business plans on sharing interesting articles to the residents that live there and want to reach only users in or near this location. The idea is to get your post in front of as many eyes as possible and queue more active engagement.

 

So before you start scheduling out your posts by “# of posts per day” consider how many posts you want to show these users and what time slots you want to deliver them in.

 

Would it make sense to post an Instagram photo at 2:00am PST?

 

Probably not.

Your audience will be sleeping.

 

Another Example:

Are your followers mainly on 1 Social Media Platform?

Let’s say your target audience uses Instagram every single day and spend most of their time scrolling their IG feed.

 

They don’t use Twitter and rarely use Facebook, except to talk to their friends and family.

 

They want to see graphically pleasing images.

 

It would not make sense to post 5 times a day on Instagram, because this isn’t the norm for this audience.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I personally run an account that posts frequently and often. So 5 posts per day is normal for the people viewing my profile. But if your audience sees you posting 5 posts every day, how will they react?

 

Will they engage more?

 

Will they be interested in clicking on your profile and learning more about your business?

 

Or will they click on your profile just to unfollow you?

 

These are all questions to consider before you ask yourself how often you should post on social media.

 

Knowing your audience is key.

 

Understanding the kind of content your audience wants and knowing when to deliver that content is a key to developing your social media strategy.

 

This comprehensive guide on the Quicksprout blog written by social influencer Neil Patel is a great starting point for startups creating their first social media plan or marketing campaign.

Read Stop Guessing: Here’s a Social Media Strategy That Works

 

Here is a great quote from the article to consider:

 

Do you think the average grandparent is on Instagram?

Of course not.

So, if you had a blog targeted towards the elderly, you would be nuts to start building up a following there. You’ll never get any serious traffic even if you do everything right.

The foundation of your social media strategy is to understand who your target audience is and why they use social media. To do so, we need to utilize demographics and psychographics.

Demographics tell you the who: Demographics refer to statistics that describe a group of people. They include:

•  location
•  age
•  gender
•  income
• education level
• religion
• ethnicity
• marital status
• number of children

 

Step 2: Develop Great Content

I won’t go into the details of this one. But pretty much, you need great images, great captions, and overall great content or no one is going to engage with your posts. Try to focus on developing great content before developing great design.

 

Step 3: Schedule Your Content

Consider using a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite to plan out your posting strategy. These tools can help you schedule out what times you want to post, place tracking links, and even repurpose content on different platforms.

 

Expert Advice on How Often I Should Post on Social Media

Keeping to the guidelines of 1 post per day, remember to try to keep your content relevant to your audience. If you have a cooking blog, don’t show your audience anything related to politics. If you have a Justin Bieber fan page, don’t show any news related to Drake.

My Answer:

• Once a day on Facebook.
• Once a day on Instagram
• Once a day on Google Plus.
• Twice a day on Twitter

I suggest only maintaining the 2-3 social media accounts that your audience uses and automating the rest. This will save you time and help you focus on the platforms that matter to your audience.

 

Social Media Accounts to Focus On:

• Facebook – 1 Post Per Day (1 Recommended) 2 High
• Twitter – 1 Post Per Day (15 Recommended) 51 High
• Instagram – 1 Post Per Day (1-2 Recommended) 3 High
• Pinterest – 1 Pin Per Day (11 Recommended) 30 High
• Google Plus – 1 Post Per Day (2 Recommended) 3 High
• LinkedIn – 1 Post Per Day (1 Recommended) 1 High

These are all just recommendations for keeping your profiles/pages filled with content. The real amount of times you should post on your social media accounts should come from what your audience wants.

 

If you want to get a quick visual of what you should be posting to each network, check out these set of graphics from the Nuluo blog.

 

 

 

I also love this article because they stress the fact that you need to know your audience before you actually start posting anything.

 

Otherwise, you won’t know what content they are looking for.

 

Read the full article over at the Nuluo blog: The Best Times to Post on Social Media

 

Take a look at Constant Contact’s guidelines and how often you should post on your profiles and what kind of content you should be posting.

 

Read the full article over at the Constant Contact Blog: What and How Often Should You Post on Social Media

 

Here is a great infographic by Coshedule (a tool to help you curate and schedule posts) showing you a breakdown of how many posts per day queue the best social media engagement.

 

Read the full article over at the Coschedule blog: How Often To Post on Social Media? [Proven Research From 14 Studies] 

 

People like me usually want the simple answers in life. Which is why I love this graphic from Dowsocial which basically sums up all of the other infographics in this post and tells you exactly how many posts per day should be going out per profile.

 

An excerpt from this article breaks down exactly how many times you should post per day as well as what kind of content should be posted on these sites.

 

What Should Be My Posting Frequency?

Twitter – Six Times Per Day

As a fast moving platform if you blink you can miss some great content, therefore we recommend posting content just over once every hour during business hours and interspersing this with engagement on top. Some of our clients gasp at having to post that often initially but with some planning and software such as Hootsuite it is easily achievable

Facebook – 2 times per day

The need to post regularly to gain reach has been scuppered for many by changes to the Facebook algorithm that meant that organic reach has been severely throttled. This means that promoted posts are now almost mandatory to get your message out. The effect of this is that your posts can be less frequent as you know you are going to reach the right audience.

Google+ – 3 Times Per Day

Although Google+ has not broken through to the mainstream it is important to post there regularly to ensure that your SEO is in a strong position with Google. Although there is no firm evidence to suggest posting on Google+ affects your ranking it is unlikely to hurt.

LinkedIn Business Pages – Daily

Posting onto your companies LinkedIn page keeps your business followers in the loop to what you are doing in your company. Use this space to share updates about your company on a daily basis to keep connections engaged but not overwhelmed.

Instagram – Three Times Per Day

You may be thinking “what images can I post once I run out of selfies” however images are popular and highly shareable so posting as often as possible is recommended. However, three times a day is a reasonable commitment to aim for.

Pinterest – Three Times Per Day

Sharing quality content on Pinterest can really get your business in front of your audience, even if you are sharing other peoples pins posting regularly shows you are part of the community and helps build engagement.

 

Mastering posting frequency – and walking that fine line between being informative and becoming an annoyance – is as much a science as it is an art. We want to connect with our social media followers without driving them away.

 

Read the full blog article over on DowSocial: How Often You Should Post On Social Media Platforms

 

Another great infographic resource from Adobe Spark (My personal favorite social media graphic creating tool) gives a visual breakdown of how many times you should be posting on your page as well as what times.

 

Read the full article over at Adobe Spark: How Often to Post to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest

 

“Quality Counts – Finally, it’s crucial to post high-quality content such as vivid images, captivating videos, thought-provoking quotes and useful facts. Indeed, fewer posts are better than dull or repetitive posts (e.g. overly salesy material). When your social-media pages keep delighting people, you could see huge growth in your customer base thanks to positive word of mouth. And you’ll experience one of the great joys of fan engagement: reading scads of grateful and enthusiastic comments.”

 

What Do I Do If I Cannot Post That Regularly

If you were to use every social media platform listed in this article you would need to dedicate a lot of resources to get content of a suitable quality.

If you do not have the resources to implement a social media plan with this much content, then we recommend reducing the number of platforms you are active on so you can post more on the ones you use the most.

It is better to be brilliant at one or two than average at five or six so prioritize the platforms with the most potential for your business and post on those more.

So how often you should post on social media platforms, the ball is in your court, what will work for you?

If your industry is listed below, I’d suggest checking out this informative post from Hubspot breaking down how often you should be posting based on your industry.

If your business is in any of these industries:
1. Real Estate
2. Marketing Services
3. Software / Tech
4. Hardware
5. Nonprofit / Education
6. Business / Financial Services
7. Healthcare
8. Consumer Goods / Retail / E-commerce
9. Manufacturing

Check out this article from Hubspot: How Often Should You Post on Social Media? Benchmarks for 9 Different Industries

 

If you are looking for a more comprehensive breakdown of how often you should post on your social media accounts, check out this very well broken down guide by Nathan Ellering (of Coschedule.com). He pulls in data from multiple resources and should be bookmarked on your browser for future reference. Read this article here: What 20 Studies Say About The Best Times to Post on Social Media

Some of Nathan’s resources include:

1. CoSchedule
2. HubSpot
3. Forbes
4. Buffer
5. Huffington Post
6. SurePayroll
7. Fast Company
8. Quintly
9. Post Planner
10. Later
11. Kissmetrics
12. Neil Patel
13. MarketingProfs
14. Elle & Co
15. TrackMaven
16. Chron
17. Fannit
18. Dustin Stout and more

Whatever you decide is the sweet spot for the number of times you post on your social media accounts should depend on you, your team, and your audience. Try to deliver the best content possible…consistently!

Read more social media marketing articles over at the Quiksnip Blog.