Some of the most frequent questions that we get here at Apollo Marketing revolve around social media usage for businesses. More specifically, how often should a business be posting to social media on a regular basis? The short answer to that question is that you actually don’t need to post nearly as much as you may think. Quality of the content matters more than quantity of the content. On many platforms one to two posts a day will suffice if the content is informative to consumers, and what is informative to consumers depends from business to business. Sometimes even two posts is too many.
What To Post?
Many people may see really large global companies posting to social media a ton throughout the day and may think that is what the norm is. There has also been an uptick in the past few years of large companies basically allowing their social accounts to act less like brands and more like actual personal users on different social platforms by be quirky, wacky, relatable, spontaneous, and making jokes that revolve around internet culture.
This is great for these large businesses to appear more consumer friendly and relatable, but it may not actually reflect how a smaller more local business should practice social media. Some of these methods can certainly be utilized in a smaller businesses’ social media strategy such as being more personable when responding to comments or other posts, but we wouldn’t recommend copying their whole methodologies.
Instead find out what information about your business is most relevant to consumers. For example, if you’re a restaurant then some information that would be important for consumers to know would be your daily specials for that day or maybe whether or not you’ll be having a live band at your establishment on a given evening. Find these items for your business and frame your social media posts around these bits of information.
How Often?
Just one post a day telling your customers what is important to them for that day is all you need for most platforms. We found this great infographic online made by Louis Myers at LouisM.com that simply illustrates general social posting frequency habits.
If you notice, Twitter and Pinterest are the only sites that really stray away from the 1 to 3 post area. Twitter at its core is a social media platform focused on conversations. If you’re going to utilize Twitter for your business then you have to go in knowing and understanding that, thus leading you to post a bit more tweets in the form of regular tweets and replies. Pinterest at its core is a image sharing website that is maybe less formal than Instagram. Pinterest is like your businesses’ social bulletin board, it’s a place to post quick images and content that give snippets in to the life of your business.
With platforms like Pinterest and Twitter that involve a higher number of posting it is good to plan ahead what you will be posting and spread those posts out throughout the hours of the day. With other platforms that require less posting such as Facebook and Instagram it is important to post at times where the most people will see them.
When?
In 2018, Sprout Social found for Facebook that early evenings and early mornings had the lowest amount of engagement during the day, while weekdays from 10 am to 3 pm had the highest amount of engagement. They found that Saturday was the worst day of the entire week for social posting on Facebook and that Wednesday at 12-2 pm and Thursday at 1 to 2 pm were the best times of the whole week.
For Instagram they found the best times to post were Wednesday at 3 pm, Thursday at 5 am, 11 am, 3-4 pm, and Friday at 5 am. Pretty early times there! That is where a scheduling tool would do you some good! They found that most consistent and safest times to post to Instagram are Tuesday through Friday from 9 am to 6 pm, so you have a pretty wide window there.
There are different times and customs that are best for each platform. It is interesting how these numbers differ from one another. It gives some us some insight to how these platforms are inherently used by people which helps us analyze how we create our content for them.
A reason Instagram has such early times could be because people wake up for work and just scroll through the pictures on their feed. There isn’t a lot to digest with Instagram, it is just one picture at a time which makes it great for easy scrolling when you’re just waking up and passing the time while eating breakfast or drinking coffee. Facebook has better numbers in the middle of the day because that is probably when a lot of people are hitting that midday work wall and doing a little bit of social surfing. They are more awake now and don’t mind taking in a bit more content.
If you’re looking for more guidance when it comes to social media practices for your best or you’re looking for a full fledged strategy, visit our homepage at https://apollollc.com// to find out what we can do for you!
