So, I bet you’re wondering just how often should you post on social media in 2019? Well, it’s one of life’s great wonders! As a social media manager or small business owner, you should be focused on achieving the best result from each and every social media post you schedule. But there has to be a good time and a bad time to post, right? Well, today I’ll be answering this notorious question for you…

According to the CoSchedule, here’s how often you should be publishing on each of the major social media platforms on a daily basis:

• Instagram: 1 to 2 posts per day
• Facebook: 1 post per day
• Twitter: 15 tweets per day
• Pinterest: 11 pins per day
• LinkedIn: 1 post per day

Do you know what I think of the above? Get ready for a #truthbomb – THERE IS NO MAGIC FORMULA! Huh? What? My simple answer for post frequency is to post as often as you have engaging, entertaining, or useful content to share. You can jump on google and find hundreds of case studies that identify what has worked for others, but what works for one brand, may not work for you. There is absolutely no point of posting for the sake of it, especially if your forced content is going to risk being unappealing, boring, or useless. Harsh yes, but true. From my experience, I’ve found that consistency is more important than frequency and quality is more important than quantity.

Instead of spending time seeking out the magic formula, try utilising your time by focusing on the following strategies. By doing this, you’ll soon identify what works best for you and your audience.

1. Get to know your audience with tailored insights and analytics. Put simply, your insights quickly identify what posts are popular, who is viewing and interacting with your content, the demographics of your audience, and much more!
2. Post content at different times. By doing this, you will quickly identify what works best for you and your audience (and potential clients). Try posting at 7:00am on one day and 7:00pm on another day and then have a look at your insights to see what time was best received.
3. Use scheduling tools. Busy at your ‘golden’ time? Maybe you’re sleeping when your audience is wide awake? An easy way around this is to use a scheduling tool, where you can post at any time of the day! If you’re keen to go down this path, don’t forget to engage with your audience when you’re available or awake! Look at my blog post from last week for tips on authentic engagement and why it’s so important.

While we are on the topic of scheduling tools, having the right one for your business can help you save time! Take it from me – the more of your social media strategy you can put on autopilot, the more time you’ll have to connect with your audience and clients in real time. However, make no mistake, not all social media scheduling tools are created equal.

In the past I’ve mentioned a number of useful social media tools that I use every single day in my business. One in particular is Plann – a powerful Instagram scheduling, strategy and analytics suite that is extremely straight forward to use and gives you a good idea of how your grid will look. Plann isn’t the be all, end all, but it’s my favourite app and allows me to plan my posts one or two weeks in advance. At the end of the day, it’s all about finding one that works for you and your business in the long term.

There are some other scheduling tools out there, so put some time aside for research. Make sure you look into the specific features that each tool offers. Here are some other scheduling tools to add to your shortlist:

• Planoly
• Later
• Sprout Social
• Hootsuite
• Buffer
• Sendible
• Tailwind

That’s all for today folks! Want an action item? Choose one scheduling tool from above, block out a chunk of time to create your content, and let the tool take care of the rest. This way, you’ll only have to worry about engagement. Winner!

Don’t have time? No worries, you can check out our Social Media Management packages here.