How frequently you post on social media will depend on a number of factors, namely, how the platform works and the ecosystem on each platform you choose.
With chronological-based social media platforms, such as Twitter, a high frequency is better. The more you post, the more visibility you get. However, for algorithm-based social media platforms, quality content beats frequency, as too many posts can cannibalize performance. And that’s precisely where we’re going to focus. Specifically with Facebook and Instagram.
If you’re publishing more than five times per week (for most companies, that’s once per workday), the return on investment drops substantially.
For pages with at least 100 followers, the first two posts on Facebook earn a median of a single click on them. After the 10th post, each additional post nets just half a click, and then continues to fall.
Therefore, we suggest publishing between two and five times per week on Facebook.
Facebook prioritizes “fresh” content and doesn’t want to overwhelm users with just one company in their feed. When companies publish more than once per day, their first post can be cannibalized by the second.
Publishing more than once per day won’t just earn you diminishing ROI — Facebook could even punish your page with the algorithm if you don’t get a lot of engagement with your posts.
That said, if your posts are consistently getting many likes or comments — at least more than five on each one — then it makes sense to post more. The key to this platform is engagement.
So as long as your audience likes what you’re writing, Facebook will continue to reward you and show it in the News Feed.
We know that many see Facebook as a dying social media platform, but many people go to Facebook simply to research companies and look for thought leadership. If your Facebook page is incomplete and inactive, they may go with a competitor who is more prominent on the platform.
On Instagram, less is more. Too many posts from one will compete against each other and gain less traffic.
Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, offered more insight during Instagram’s 2021 Creator Weekend where he suggested sharing a couple of in-feed posts per week and a couple of stories per day.
Hootsuite suggests posting on Instagram three to seven times per week. And remember: Don’t post more than once per day.
For most businesses, you’re going to have your Facebook and Instagram feeds linked, so whatever you post on one will likely go to the other. It’s rare that a business’ social media strategy will involve posting to Facebook and not Instagram or vice-verca.
The biggest thing you need to remember for your social media presence is to stay consistent. It doesn’t mean much if you post 5 times a week once a month. You need to make sure that once you pick a number of times per week to post that you can keep that schedule consistent.
It should be simple enough to keep things consistent as long as you are planning ahead and have a solid social media strategy. If you need help with that, you can always reach out to us for a free consultation.