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How often should I post on social media?
The famous loaded question, and the honest answer: it depends.
First, it depends on your goals. For example, if your goal is conversion of a specific post to clicks on Facebook, as opposed to total number of engagements on a given day, then the answers will be different. That said, we can make some generalizations, based primarily on the duration of content. The average blog post lifespan is between two-four years, while the average Facebook post lifespan is merely three hours, and the average tweet lifespan is less than two hours. These numbers are important, as they go into the equation of how often you should post on social networks.
Posting on Facebook once a day or twice day will result in higher following rates and higher comment and “likes” rates. (Here are some simple tips to help you increase Facebook page “Likes”.) Posting more than twice a day can actually hurt your Facebook business page more than it will help you. Over posting will cause you to lose engagement. Try to post 10–14 times a week in order to attract followers.
With the average lifespan of a tweet being less than two hours the number of daily tweets increases. There is a lot of noise on Twitter, and you have to be able to rise above it and be seen. Because of this you should post multiple times a day. You should look to post an absolutely minimum of 4 times per day, and ideally 8. If you’re looking for total engagement rather than per-tweet engagement, then the number goes up to 20 times per day! (But don’t worry, it’s OK to repeat-post the same content. In fact, you should, in order to make sure it’s visible to followers who are on-line at different times).
This site caters to a more professional crowd. People who are busy and don’t have time nor want to see the same post from the same poster filling up their news-feed. This group is also a little more picky on who they consider spammers. Be careful to not post more than three times a day as you will be considered not only a nuisance but a spammer. The prime number of times to post on LinkedIn is once per working day (approximately 20 times per month). This will result in higher rates, and won’t get you kicked out of groups or off of peoples news-feeds.
Google+
The same goes here as with all the other social-media platforms. You have to find the line between engaging people and annoying people. This site tends to be a “more is better” site, but many times over-doing it will result in complaints and a loss of followers. Five to seven posts a day seems to be golden. If you have some extremely interesting information that pops up after your seventh posts, post it. Don’t ever ignore an opportunity to share something interesting and valuable to your followers.
While research and professional experience helped gather this information, this is just a starting point for you to go off of. You should start experimenting with it yourself. Social-media is an ever-changing tool — in six months, all of these number may be completely different. Go by this guideline and keep notes, watch your followers, and learn what works best for YOUR company.
How often do you post on social media?
To help you out, here are 3 free tools that will help you optimize your social-media exposure.