Social media isn’t an option for businesses. To stay relevant and competitive, and connect more with your audience, businesses must be active on social. But being successful at social media marketing takes more than just posting the occasional tweet, image or update.
You have to look at certain metrics, like clicks, reshares, likes, and responses for each post to see if they’re actually resonating with your audience. You also need to make sure you’re eyeballing your site traffic to see if social is driving any new site visitors and helping convert them to new leads. But, comparing that data with how many times you’re posting (or should be posting) to see what the sweet spot frequency is can take up a lot of your time.
For busy professionals, trying to figure out what frequency gets the most engagement isn’t something that’s at the top of their to-do lists. Thankfully, the folks over at CoSchedule have already done much of the legwork for you by compiling a lot of data around post frequency per social platform. Phew.
According to their research, here’s how often you should be posting on each of the main social media platforms every day:
- Facebook: 1 post per day
- Instagram: 1-2 posts per day
- Twitter: 15 Tweets per day
- Pinterest: 11 pins per day
- LinkedIn: 1 post per day
The problem with this list? Who has time to publish that much?! I see those numbers and almost immediately get overwhelmed. With those kinds of numbers, posting to social media would be your full-time job, and that just isn’t realistic.
Here are a few tips for managing your social media activities and still generating results without overloading your already jam-packed schedule.
Be Realistic With Your Capacity
There are many social media platforms out there, but that doesn’t mean you have to be present on every single one of them. It’s far more effective for you to focus your efforts only on those channels where your target audience is likely to be. A quick way to determine this is to look at your website analytics and see which social platform is generating the most site traffic. Another option that is a bit more involved, would be to look at your audience personas, their ages, location, and other demographics, and then compare that information against the user demographics of certain social platforms for overlap.
By only focusing on the social channels your audience is on, you’ll be able to master each of those channels and eventually see more engagement. You’ll also save time by not wasting your efforts where they’re not going to be most beneficial.
Focus On Quality Over Quantity
While the posting frequency per platform listed provides a guideline, it’s not necessarily set in stone. Your goal should be to share content that is useful to your audience. Maybe 15 tweets a day just doesn’t get your company the type of engagement you’re after, and that’s fine. If those tweets are just hanging out there, without any likes and reshares, then consider reducing the amount of time you’re posting each day. The key is to stick with your adjusted schedule so you can track it long enough to see if those changes improve anything. It’s better to publish one or two highly engaging updates or pieces of content than it is to bombard your audience with pointless information just to make a quota.
The same concept can also be applied to fans and followers. Being successful on social media isn’t about how high those numbers climb. It’s about connecting and nurturing relationships with the right people, as those are the type of connections that will ultimately pay off in the long run.
Leverage Technology
Technology is our friend. Especially since finding the time in your already hectic schedule to post on social media several times a day is almost impossible. Since consistency is key when it comes to successfully marketing on social media, let’s all take a minute to thank our lucky stars that there are tons of tech solutions out there to help us get the job done.
Using a social media scheduling tool, like Buffer or Hootsuite, can help you effectively plan out all of your social media posts for the coming days, weeks or even months. Doing so will keep your social channels active, even when you don’t have the time to stay on top of them. What’s more, most of these tech solutions have a way for you to track engagement on your posts as well and can provide you with a comprehensive report on how your social posts are performing week over week.
Repurpose and Curate
You don’t have to produce all the content for your social publishing needs yourself. Curating relevant material from others is a great way to beef up your content calendar, provide valuable articles and content for your audience to check out, and possibly create valuable business relationships in the process. Another idea is to tap into your audience for some user-generated content to boost engagement and access additional material to publish.
If you’re stumped for something to post, go back through the content you’ve already produced to see if there are pieces that could be repurposed. For instance, you could take a white paper and turn it into an infographic, or break down an eBook into several informative blog posts. The possibilities are endless.
Being successful at social media doesn’t have to be a major chore. Understanding the optimal frequency of posting on each of your chosen channels and implementing a strategy that incorporates the above tips can help bring your social media marketing to the next level without wasting a single, stressful minute.