Does posting to social media stress you out sometimes? You’re not alone.

When you’re managing a social account for a brand or business, it can be tricky figuring out what to post and when to post it.

We like to think of social media as digital marketing hygiene – like taking a shower. You know it’s something you have to do, but the frequency is flexible and can depend on a bunch of different factors.

In this article, we’ll outline what those factors are and offer pro tips to help you determine exactly how often you should be posting to social media! You ready? Let’s gooo!

SO HOW OFTEN SHOULD YOU BE POSTING??

We know there can be a lot of pressure to stay ultra-active on social media. You don’t want to be forgotten or drowned out by the never-ending waterfall of content that your audience is exposed to every minute. But you can only post so often, depending on your capabilities.

We wish there was a one-size-fits-all answer for this. But really, it’s different for everyone. So how do you figure out what’s going to work best for you? There are a few methods.

One strategy we tend to recommend is to work backward and think of your goals. Another is to post based on the size of your account’s following. We’ll dive into both below!

1. GOAL-BASED POST FREQUENCY

When you envision your ideal social platform, what is it exactly that you’re seeing? What do the posts look like? What value are you providing? Is your audience eager to engage with your posts? We’ll list out a few ideas here to get you started:

REACH:

The number of unique people viewing your content.

How it’s Achieved: Highly sharable content, a successful hashtag strategy, a high number of followers

Post Frequency: 7-14 times a week. The more you put out there, the more chances you have of being placed higher in the algorithm and having your content shared.  

ENGAGEMENT :

The number of people actively interacting with your content, i.e., comments, reactions, views.

How it’s Achieved: Highly valuable and well thought out content, a well-curated community of followers, audience targeting

Post Frequency: Approximately 7 times a week. However, not every single post needs to be profoundly educational or highly edited. Create a balance of casual and intellectual that matches your audiences preferences.

ENTERTAINMENT :

Content that is attention-grabbing and provoking.

How it’s Achieved: A talented creative team that curates impressive content and an ability to keep up with social trends

Post Frequency: 1-3 times a week. Although this depends on how often your team is able to turn around engaging and high-quality content. The key is not to rush out boring or rushed content.

INDIVIDUAL GOALS OR COMPANY VALUES :

News sites or current event accounts that post as the world changes – not based on a schedule.

How it’s Achieved: Immense flexibility and an ability to create on the fly, back up posts to put out on slow days

Post Frequency: Preferably every day, or at least as often as “news-worthy” events take place. The idea is to keep your audience engaged even on days when not much is going on.

Once you have an idea of what a “successful” social media platform will look like for you, you have to determine how you want to measure that success. AKA your KPIs or Key Performance Indicators.

WHAT ARE KPIS ??

KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS:

a measurable value that demonstrates how effectively a company is achieving key business objectives.

Think of KPIs as the directions your GPS gives you. By watching them and using them to guide you, you’ll always be on the right track. Sure, you can ignore them and go your own way, but chances are you’ll veer off course, or it’ll take you twice as long to get to where you want to be.  

SOME EXAMPLES:

Follower Count: The number of followers you lose or gain. Check frequently to see if there are any patterns or uncharacteristic spikes. Did you lose more followers than usual after posting something? Make a note of these spikes and adjust as needed.  

Number of Shares: The number of users that share your social post with others, either privately or on their public page. Is there a certain kind of post that people tend to share more often? Infographics or achievement posts? Make a note to post those more often if you want to increase your reach.  

Number of Saves: The amount of people who save your post to return to later. This is a sign that your content is extremely valuable, and your followers don’t want to lose track of it. Are you noticing that some posts receive more saves than others? That could be a sign to create similar posts to increase engagement.  

Engagement Rate: The average ratio of people that interact with your content compared to the amount of followers you have. A high engagement rate means that most of your followers are actively involved and interested in your posts.

2. ACCOUNT-SIZE -BASED POST FREQUENCY

Later, a top-rated social media planning company, conducted a study of over 80 million feed posts and discovered an interesting pattern in how often accounts of varying sizes should post. Here’s what they found.  

• Accounts under 1K followers - posting 14 times per week delivers the highest reach and engagement rates per post.

• Accounts that have between 1K - 250K followers - posting 14 or 20 times per week delivers the highest reach rate per post, while posting once per week delivers the highest engagement rate per post.

• Accounts with over 250K followers - posting only once per week delivers the highest reach rate and engagement rates per post.

Of course, these findings could be affected by the types of accounts that were involved in the study. Which brings us back to goal-based frequency. Maybe using a combination of the two is what will bring you the most success!

AT THE END OF THE DAY - JUST DO WHAT FEELS RIGHT

Social media is supposed to be fun! So try not to take it too seriously and have fun with it when you can!

WANT SOME EXTRA TIPS?

MIND YOUR MENTAL HEALTH

If you feel yourself becoming too overwhelmed or overstressed, take a step back and take a breather. Try to determine where the source of the stress is coming from and adjust your strategy if needed! Maybe incorporate a few reposts into your schedule or focus less on the small things like specific edits or perfect captions.

UTILIZE HELPFUL TOOLS

Because there are tonnnsss our there and all of them are designed to make your life easier! There are tools to plan your social media posts, schedule them months ahead of time, and monitor all those KPIs you’re gonna need to be watching! Do a bit of research and maybe try out a few free trials to see which ones work best for you. But trust us: these make all the difference.

TRY TO PLAN AHEAD

We know this can be tricky since it’s easy to push social media on the back burner. But this usually leads to constantly flying by the seat of your pants, a lack of strategic planning, and overall chaos/burnout. The more you can get ahead of your posts, preferably by about a month, the easier your life will be. That way, you can focus on monitoring analytics and adjusting as needed.

ASK FOR HELP

Especially if you plan on posting every day or multiple times a week. A full-time social media account amounts to more than a few full-time jobs. So unless you’re prepared to be a graphic designer, copywriter, strategy manager, analytics monitor, and engagement manager, ask for some damn help. No need to be a martyr.

KNOW THAT YOU CAN ALWAYS SHIFT YOUR SCHEDULE AROUND IF YOU WANT

Nothing is permanent! Try things out, play around with new schedules, new designs, adjust your goals, whatever you want. Yes, this advice may be going against the whole purpose of this article, but at the end of the day, this is YOUR platform! You can be as active or inactive as you want.

And as always, if you can’t do it on your own, you’ve got INDIRAP.