How Often Should a Small Business Post to Social Media?

How often a small business posts to social media can sometimes be tricky. Post too little and your customers might forget you exist, post too often and they might feel spammed and remove your business from their social media. Even when a business makes the right amount of posts, it’s also important that the content be interesting and engaging to customers, as the more activity posts see, the more exposure a business receives

Many studies have been conducted on this topic, and posting frequency is greatly dependent on the platform. Twitter doesn’t filter results so tweets have a very short life cycle. Given this reality, the concern is that a business’s tweets don’t get lost in the shuffle. On this platform, it’s very difficult to post too frequently. The only other platform where multiple daily posts receive positive feedback is Pinterest. One survey showed positive results with 5-12 pins per day was ideal and that a business had to add more than 30 pins in a day before any drop off in customer interest was seen.

Facebook on the other hand does filter results based on how often a customer likes, comments or shares post. The first concern is getting seen. Once one’s posts are appearing on news feeds, the life cycle of a post can be hours or in some cases, days. Most studies have shown that more than two posts per day on Facebook can be annoying. Hence, the ideal frequency is going to be once a day. This is confirmed by the fact that posts beyond the first post suffered a noticeable drop off in customer engagement. Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) and LinkedIn appear to follow similar patterns to Facebook in terms of posting frequency. The difference with Instagram really appears to be consistency. LinkedIn posting etiquette will also be similar to Facebook, the difference with LinkedIn being that LinkedIn suffers a noticeable drop off in users on the weekends. Google+, the platform arguably most similar to Facebook, is well-served by following Facebook guidelines.

A business benefits greatly with social networking sites that engage the interest of the customer as well as builds and maintains a community that ultimately improves a business in terms of sales and reputation. In terms of how often to post, social media managers must strike a balance between presenting a business as an engaged and respected part of the community without posting frequently enough to cause mass unliking and unfollowing. Businesses who strike this balance well will frequently be on customer’s minds and likely the business they choose when it comes time to buy.

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