Sara Nguyen

Helping Sassy Solopreneurs Reach more people and get more clients

How often should I post on social media

post_to_social_media

No matter what category your business is, if you’re not engaging and sharing with an audience – you’re simply not maximising your reach or building credibility and authority to get more customers and make more sales.

So how often should you post on social media to harness the power of the social web?

Today’s Make it Work Fridays: Open Office Hours question is from Jill Weadick, from Idaho, USA.

Jill’s question is:

How often should I be posting to social media? It seems that the different social media networks require different frequencies. HELP?

There’s no hard and fast rule on what to post and how often you should be posting. In this video what I’m going to do is recommend is a baseline so that you can get started with your posting, keep track of your analytics and adjust the frequency over time based on how your audience respond and engage with you.

Watch this week’s Make It Work Fridays: Open Office Hours now and leave a comment! 🙂

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Video Transcript: How Often Should I Post to Social Media

Hello and welcome to make work Fridays open office hours, my name is Sara Nguyen from socialmediarocketeer.com and in Make it work Fridays I take your burning social media questions and answer them to help you get unstuck so you can rock on your reach and build your brand profitably using social media marketing.

Today’s question is from Jill Weadick from Idaho in the USA. Jill’s question is how often should I be posting to social media, it seems that the different social media networks required different frequencies, help?

This is a very common question that I am often asked from people who are new to social media marketing and there’s really no hard and fast rule on what to post and how often you should be posting, in this video I am going to give you a recommendation so that you can have a baseline to get started, and then you can keep track of the analytics and adjust the frequency of your posting over time. The point of this video is to give you something so that you can get started running and getting some traction using your social media marketing.

Let’s start with Facebook. Facebook is a low volume high value network what does this mean? Basically this means that you don’t want to be posting to frequently on Facebook because Facebook fans tend to get a little annoyed if they see to many posts from you, it really is about quality over quantity with your Facebook content. It also needs to be very interesting and very relevant to your audience, ideally you want to be providing content that helps your audience your target market move towards their goals or move away from their pains.

I suggest you start off with at least 5 posts per week and move towards a maximum of 10 times per week posting a combination of your content and other people’s content.

Now the next social media network that I’d like to talk about is Google plus, Google plus is quite similar to Facebook in the sense that it is once again a low volume high value network, it really is about posting high value content consistently, I would keep your baseline the same as Facebook at least 5 times per week and a maximum of 10 times per week.

Let’s talk about Twitter, our friend Twitter is a little bit different to Facebook and Google plus. Twitter is something we call a high volume network, so that means as opposed to Facebook and Google plus – you tend to share a lot more often on Twitter because Twitter is so fast paced. The life cycle of a Tweet is only about 18 minutes as opposed to lifecycle of a post on Facebook which has an average of about 3 hours. Your content really needs to be relevant on Twitter as well as being interesting too. I recommend that you really look towards posting other peoples content, if you can’t post frequently or you can’t generate content frequently. We are looking at at least 6 times per day and a maximum of 24 times per day.

Yes I did say per day, once again remember Twitter is a very fast moving social media network there are not many characters for you to put into that space and hence the messages are short and sharp and they move very very quickly.

The Twitter feed just buzzes if you’ve ever paid attention to it. Now don’t fret to much as I said it’s all about sharing content that’s relevant, curating content other peoples content that will still help your audience and that they are interested in. So it doesn’t need to be 6 posts a day purely of your own content or 24 posts a day that’s purely of your content, as long as the content helps your audience that’s the main aim of Twitter and posting the content you post on Twitter.

Now let’s talk about YouTube. So YouTube is one of the most powerful social media networks out there and its different of course it’s different to Twitter and Facebook and Google plus, even though it is connected to Google plus.

YouTube is different in the sense that it is video content, so it’s a lot more involved for your reader as opposed to a blog post or an infographic that they can just scroll through. So you really need to be focusing on super high value content and frequency when your just getting started.

I find that if you post once a week on YouTube and you’re creating a high value video once a week, this will start getting you traction if your consistent about it.

Once you get comfortable creating content and releasing video content once a week only then would I recommend you bump it up to two or three videos a week.

So the other social media network that we will talk about is Pinterest so Pinterest is a high volume high value network – now what does that mean? It really is a social media network that you need to posting very frequently on and the content needs to be of high value, unlike Twitter which is a high volume lesser value network because Twitter moves a lot faster, tweets move a lot faster than Pinterest Pins, so with Pinterest you want to be getting a lot of leverage from Pinterest you need to be pinning very frequently.

I am talking about five times per day at least, it really needs to be content that uses large quality images and I think if you aim for five times a day on Pinterest and you do that consistently over a month and then continue that on from month to month you will really start to see traction. Of course the content needs to be relevant to your audience, it needs to be visually appealing and ideally you want to be having a combination of your own curated content your own content and curated content of other people’s content too.

So there you have my recommendations unfortunately posting content on social media is not a set and forget type of task, you need to start doing it and then you need to start checking the analytics of each relevant social media network to make sure your hitting that sweet spot of how much you should be posting.

Posting content is an important way of using social media because it expands your reach and it increases your authority. It really contributes to building your social proof, and helps you to amplify your message and build that credibility, particularly if your just getting started.

The real power of social media comes from creating and engaging with an audience so your communication needs to be done intentionally. It needs to be done deliberately and it needs to be done consistently.

This effort is about leveraging Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Goggle plus, Pinterest and whichever social media network that are relevant to your audience as a whole, as a social platform.

If you need help with your social platforms strategy click on the link in the description to apply to work with me and we will have a chat and if you have a question and you’re on my list watch out for the Email with the link to submit a question to make it work Fridays, if you’re not on my mailing list and you have a burning question you want to ask about social media, click on the link to sign up in the description to get on board.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed Make it work Fridays open office hours I will see you next week for another episode.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Jill Weadick says

    Sara you are amazing and completely answered my question! Now I have a much better idea of how often to post in each network, which really helps me strategize and plan as begin this new business start up. THANKS A MILLION!

    Reply

  3. Robin Rue says

    I think this a great post. I am always wondering how much I should post and when and this was definitely helpful!

    Reply

  4. Rochkirstin Santos says

    I have read other articles suggesting that Wednesday is a good day to post. In terms of frequency, it’s okay to post like 3 times in a week just to keep readers updated.

    Reply

    • Sara Nguyen says

      @rochkirstinsantos:disqus, I have heard that Wednesday is a good day to post also. I guess it’s a matter of testing and seeing how people interact with your content when you post. Frequency is less important than quality…but you still need to be consistent. 🙂 Thanks for the comment.

      Reply

  6. Franc Ramon says

    I agree that different social media network requires different frequencies. I usually try to post in Facebook by checking which part of the day most readers are available. Quality over quantity is important. The same as it is in google.

    Reply

  8. Liz @ A Nut in a Nutshell says

    Thanks for the recommendations on how often to post. I always wonder about those kinds of things.

    Reply

  9. Debi @ The Spring Mount 6 Pack says

    Great post. Social media is a really difficult thing to maneuver. There’s so many different rules for so many different outlets.

    Reply

  11. Meeks says

    Great tips and I always use my analytics as my bench mark as well. I like to share different things that will help each of my reader’s as well. Thanks

    Reply

  16. Rebecca Swenor says

    Excellent advice. These are awesome tips indeed about how often to post on social media when you are first starting out. Thanks for sharing.

    Reply

  18. Joyful Gifts by Julie says

    Very true about facebook and to much posting is not good. I know if I post to much I have lost followers. Wow on the twitter information too. That’s a lot of posting on twitter. Your pinterest info is valuable too. Thank you for this information. I’ll be more cautious on how much and what I post where.

    Reply

  20. FeliceRaina says

    I so needed to watch this video!! I’m currently working at this beauty company and her social media engagement is relatively non existent, so I’ve been really struggling with social media and finding the right content and times to post. Thanks will def pass this on to my boss.

    Reply

  22. Emma Tustian says

    It’s so hard to get it right, and get the interaction with frequency, but also with the right content for the audience on each type. Good summary of the different networks

    Reply

    • Sara Nguyen says

      I agree @emmatustian:disqus, different audiences require different frequencies…It’s all a matter of test and learn, and then modify. Thank you for the comment 🙂

      Reply

  24. Sean Drayton says

    Thanks Sara. It was a very insightful video. I am in the process of linking my blog with my social media sites, so this has certainly shown me that I now need to become very active 🙂

    Reply

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