Reaching Your Perfect Social Media Audience
Frequency on social media is a dilemma social media marketers face every day. Am I posting too much? How do I strike a balance between being informative without being annoying? How many times a day should I be posting? The answer is there is no right formula. With social media platforms constantly updating their algorithms it can be hard to know how to connect with your followers and not drive them away. To find the perfect balance between sharing and listening you have to test different variations and see what your target audience reacts to.
A lot of the time companies think the more you post the better. This is not always the case. Don’t just share content to meet a frequency minimum–only share content when it is engaging, entertaining, or useful to your audience. Being consistent in the quality and types of posts you create will deliver much more value to your company’s social media strategy. When trying to reach your audience you have to be much more strategic about what you post. We have put together a complete guide for timing your social media outreach to achieve the best results:
Facebook:
When looking for the sweet spot on Facebook, many companies aim for posting 1-2 times a day during the week, with a maximum of once a day on the weekend.
With Facebook’s new algorithm good content gets rewarded. If your post receives a lot of engagement or clicks it will sit on top of newsfeeds much longer than if it is getting negative results. Posting content too frequently and not connecting with your audience will result in Facebook showing your content to less people and declining your reach.
Twitter:
Twitter is a different story. Every second, on average, around 6,000 tweets are tweeted on Twitter. The makeup of this fast paced platform delivers tweets to a user’s newsfeed in a sequential format. As a result, many can find it hard to break through the noise with such a short lifespan for each tweet.
You can post frequently on Twitter to ensure your followers are seeing the content that you are publishing. The sweet spot could be anywhere from 4 to 16 times depending on your target audience and who you are trying to reach. For local small business it is recommended to share on average 4 posts a day, that’s including retweets.
LinkedIn:
On LinkedIn you have to mindful of who is using the platform. Since it is a professional outlet for content, it is important to focus your posting throughout the work week. We recommend to share roughly one post per weekday on this platform.
Every social network is different, as a result the frequency pattern will be different as well. When planning a social media strategy for your brand don’t try to stick to a perfect formula. Instead focus on who your audience is on each channel and how you can best reach them.
After applying these guidelines and tracking the results have you seen an increase in engagement? Are more people clicking through to your website? Has your reach on posts grown? These are all a great indications that your strategy is working.
