Social media managers, influencers, and casual users looking to increase their numbers have been engaged in an ongoing debate: should you be posting on social media every day? There are many factors that inform this decision, so we’ve decided to break down the pros and cons of daily posting. Read on for some insight into the arguments being made, and our advice for your posting schedule.
The pros of posting every day? One school of thought is, the more you post, the more engagement your page will have overall. Each post is another opportunity to increase your reach, so it makes sense that posting more leads to higher engagement. Another argument in favor of daily posting is repetition, repetition, repetition. The more people see something, the more they are likely to remember it. Seeing a post from the same account every day may spark just enough curiosity for them to click on your page to learn more. That conversion is the ultimate goal, and when you post frequently, the chances of achieving that conversion are higher. At the very least, posting every day will keep your brand at the top of your followers’ minds. Our final “pro” for posting every day is, major brands are doing it. In fact, larger brands with hundreds of thousands of followers often post multiple times a day. The average posting rate for large brands is actually 1.5x a day. If your goal is to amass a huge following, doing what the popular brands do is certainly a route to consider.
But wait! Don’t make up your mind just yet, because there are a few solid arguments against posting every day. First and foremost, the biggest downside to daily posting is it’s a lot of work, especially for small business owners. Social media management is a full-time job in itself. If you want to create impactful posts, you will need dedicated time for content planning, creation, publishing, and engagement. Not everyone has the time to devote to social media, so if your business is essentially a one-man show, posting every day can be more stressful than it’s worth. Additionally, there’s the classic mantra, quality over quantity. You want your posts to be eyecatching and engaging. If posting every day means that you’re throwing posts together to meet a quota, it’s probably not going to be as beneficial as taking the time to create quality content less often. Furthermore, fresh, relevant content is always the goal. It’s very possible that there simply may not be enough post-worthy things happening, and that’s okay! Saving social media for when you have a new product launch or an announcement can be even more impactful because it’s something current. Our final argument against daily posting is that if you post too much (more than once a day) it could be considered spam. That’s really only an issue in extreme cases, if you were to post 5 times a day, every day. Either way, odds are you shouldn’t be posting more than twice a day to avoid the risk of annoying your followers with constant content.
So what’s our final conclusion? The best number of posts is what you can reasonably pull off.
Above all else, consistent posting is the most important part of an active social media strategy, though there is room for variation depending on your goals. If your goal is to increase your overall reach, posting every day can certainly help achieve that goal. If you’re looking to boost engagement, fewer, but more interactive posts may be the way to go. We recommend that you pick a frequency that you can maintain over time. Decide your goals and your schedule, then stick with it.
Our social media team understands the importance of creating quality content for your business, and has experience managing daily posting schedules for social media accounts across various industries. If you’re looking to up your social media game but simply don’t have the time, let’s talk about how Paperkite can help.
