Managing social media for a business can be a balancing act. Social media is undoubtedly a key element of marketing activity for any business, but the approach and results can vary dramatically. One of the aspects that many businesses struggle with is when to post and how frequently.
Unfortunately, there is no magic formula. If there was, we’d all be posting at the same time but there are some general guidelines that can be followed to help strike the right balance.
Audience
Firstly, consider you audience. When are they online? It’s also worth thinking about when people are most receptive to your offering. This will be different depending on the organisation, product or service. For example, posts which relate to business services might be seen on a Sunday morning but even if they reach the target audience, the post will be reaching professionals when they are attempting to switch off from work. However, for a restaurant posting about their Sunday lunch a well-timed Sunday morning post could be the perfect time to engage with potential customers.
Frequency
A quick online search will reveal recommendations for the number of posts for each platform. Depending on what you read the advice may vary from once or twice a day on Facebook to anywhere between 3 and 10 times a day on twitter. Once a day on LinkedIn for business seems like a good guide but many successful business pages post more often whilst others can go days without sharing or posting anything.
This sort of information may be a good starting point but frequency varies dramatically depending on the nature of the organisation and the size of the audience. Bigger brands can get away with posting more frequently, as can those that offer advice or information, for example train companies providing information on real-time delays.
Finding the right frequency to post is tricky and can change over time. Post too often and engagement per post will drop. A high frequency of posts can be perceived as spammy and can lead to a sudden drop in followers. Not posting often enough though can also be detrimental.
Value
It can be tempting to set a target such as we will tweet three times a day. In reality the best approach is to tweet when you have something valuable to say. Yes, timing and frequency are important but what audiences really value is consistency, relevance and authenticity.
If you think about each post and ask yourself: is this relevant to my target audience, is it consistent with our brand values and objectives, and finally is it authentic, if you can answer yes to these three questions you can be confident that you have content worth posting.