Social media is a powerful tool that should be a part of every business's marketing strategy. Having high-quality, engaging content is only the first step in getting your social media to resonate with your customers.
An effective social media strategy should also include posts at an optimal frequency for maximum impact. There is no magic formula and no single answer. Instead, the proper rate and times will vary depending on who your audience is, which social media platforms they're using, and your own marketing goals.
What Social Media Platform Is Best for Me?
Before you can determine the frequency of your social media posts, it’s important to choose the right social media platforms to focus on in the first place. This means you need to understand who your target audience is. If you have research on your target audience, you can use that information to build marketing personas. Marketing personas are the detailed descriptions of your ideal customer. These profiles help you to identify the wants, needs, and pain points of the customers you are trying to reach.
Your marketing personas give you the insight you need to map the customer journey. As you map each touchpoint, you can start to identify why a customer makes each decision. With that information in mind, you can choose the platform(s) that your target audience spends the most time on.
Demographics can give you a good starting point for which platforms to target, such as:
- Facebook: Popular with baby boomers, it is still a highly used platform by people of all generations, with 2.7 billion active monthly users. 26.3% of those are between the ages of 25 and 34. Gender data shows that 44% identify as female while 56% identify as male.
- Instagram: Instagram is the second most used platform, with 1 billion monthly active users. Young adults love Instagram, as 33.1% of users are between 25 and 34. At 25% of users, teens make up the second-largest group of users, having dropped as they shift to using it is the second most popular with teens, at 25%, only recently edged out by TikTok. Users are 57% female and 43%, male.
- Twitter: With 187 million active daily users, its most prominent group is the 30 to 49 age group, who make up 44% of all Twitter users. Gender data shows only 32% of users identify as female and 68% of users identify as male, making this a very male-dominated platform.
- LinkedIn - There are currently 738 million users on LinkedIn, almost evenly split between females at 49% and males at 51%. It lends itself more to B2B marketing, where the other platforms are B2C.
How Often Should I Post on Social Media?
Frequency is a delicate balance. There is a fine line here. Too few posts, and you won't have enough coverage to reach your audience. On the other hand, most customers will not see every single post you publish, so you want to have enough posts for the social media platform to deliver to your followers. It’s also important to post about a wide variety of topics.
Luckily, some general guidelines can help you reach the optimal frequency on each platform to engage your online audience:
- Facebook: 1-2 posts per day
- Instagram: 3-7 posts per week
- Twitter: 1-5 posts per day
- LinkedIn: 1-5 posts per day
That being said, you don’t want to post for the sake of posting. It’s better to have fewer posts with higher engagement than a lot of posts with very low engagement. If your posts are consistently not getting comments, reactions, or shares — regardless of platform — then you will want to change up your content until your engagement increases. Once you know what kind of content resonates best with your audience, you can begin posting more frequently.
Frequency isn't the only factor to consider for maximizing views. The timing on each platform is also essential. Take a look at the social media analytics for every platform you’re on and identify when your audience sees and engages with your content throughout the week. This data can help you decide the specific days and times of day you should publish posts to maximize your engagement.
How Can I Track My Social Media?
Increasing the frequency of your social media posts is a time commitment, but there are ways to simplify your process. Using a content calendar combined with automation software can simplify your social media efforts considerably, allowing you to create content in advance and schedule it to post automatically.
These tools can also make it easy (and less time-consuming) for you to track the analytics of your social media to see if your posts are successful. Analytics reports give you a detailed insight into the key engagement metrics, like comments, likes, retweets, shares, saves, and more.
You can group these into types of actions. For example, you can create a group of active engagement analytics that include comments, retweets, and shares. You can track applause rates, which track positive reactions such as likes, reactions, or saves. You can also track reach and impressions to see how your audience is growing, especially beyond the people who follow your page. After all, you want to reach new people too!
Working with a professional social media manager is an excellent way to ensure you get the best results. They have the means to post regularly and have a deep understanding of social media to ensure you're reaching your audience the way you'd like to.
If you can’t or don’t want to hire a dedicated social media manager internally, working with a digital marketing agency that provides in-house social media management is a great option. This can also ensure your social media is working well with your other digital marketing tactics.
Social Media Is a Powerful Marketing Tool
Social media is a powerful tool for engaging with customers. Before you get started, make sure that you know your target audience and focus on the social media platforms your target audience spends the most time on. Use a content calendar to plan your social media content and make sure you’re posting regularly on each platform, but not too frequently. Track your analytics and adjust your content as necessary. With these simple steps, you can ensure your business is effective on social media.
Written by Rory Kemerer
With over 9 years of digital marketing experience, Rory Harris is a leader in the digital playing field. Her passion is clear when she is helping her clients identify their goals or challenges and connecting that to a digital strategy to bring them the highest ROI. Her knowledge not only comes from both branding and lead generation solutions but also the experience she brings to the table to help her clients understand that the data tells a story on what is going on with their marketing.
