How Often to Publish on Social Media for Business? A HubSpot Experiment
With how quickly the internet changes, people can argue all day about how often to post on social media. Which networks should you use? How frequently should you post? And does the time you post really matter?
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Read on to get the answers to key questions about how often to post on social media for business, or jump to the topic or network you’re curious about:
- Should I publish more or less often on social media?
- When’s the best time to post on Twitter?
- When’s the best time to post on Facebook?
- When’s the best time to post on LinkedIn?
- When’s the best time to post on Instagram?
- When’s the best time to post on Pinterest?
Should I publish more or less often on social media?
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.
This rule of thumb corresponds with how businesses have adapted their social media publishing schedules to meet audience demands.
According to HubSpot’s 2022 State of Marketing Report, marketers vary their posting frequency based on the platform.
In this post, we’ll dive deep into different social media platforms. We’ll then share the optimum number of times to post each week
When’s the best time to post on Twitter?
Time generally doesn’t matter. That’s right, read that again.
There’s some uptick in the number of clicks at the very end and very beginning of the day. However, we also see a smaller volume of tweets during that time, so it’s not a statistical trend.
Your focus on Twitter should be on content, not on the time of day. Post on Twitter whenever is convenient for you.
Which is the best day to post on Twitter?
For most tweets, there’s no difference in the day of the week that you post.
For more viral tweets — the ones in the 95th percentile — there could be some benefit to posting on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, but just like the time of day, it’s not terribly significant.
What’s the optimal publishing frequency on Twitter?
Twitter is still mostly a chronological social network. Therefore, the more marketers post, the more visibility and total clicks their posts get.
On Twitter, publishing more is better.
For marketers with at least 100 followers on Twitter, each message should earn marketers a median of 2.5-3 clicks.
Keep in mind that this shouldn’t mean that you publish terrible posts. That won’t do your brand or account any favors. However, as a temporal platform, it’s not as critical to have perfectly polished prose as it is on other social apps.
When’s the best time to post on LinkedIn?
While the median click count has little variation, the 95th percentile of posts shows a drop-off for content published later in the evening after 5 p.m. or so.
You should be scheduling LinkedIn posts during business hours (after all, it is a business networking site), but the focus should be on content, not the time of day.
Which is the best day to post on LinkedIn?
Posts published Mondays, Saturdays, and Sundays don’t perform as well as posts published Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays are especially good times to publish on LinkedIn. They have a generally higher median as well as 95% percentile clicks.
What is the optimal publishing frequency on LinkedIn?
Once you publish more than five times per week (for most companies, this means once per workday), the return on investment drops substantially.
What is likely happening is that LinkedIn doesn’t want users’ feeds to be overwhelmed by posts by the same company, so the second post in a day that a marketer publishes can have a detrimental result on the performance of the first.
For pages with at least 100 followers, the first two posts on LinkedIn per week will typically bring in two clicks each. However, the 10th post in a week for those channels only adds about 0.5 clicks.
The marginal effectiveness of creating content for LinkedIn maxes out at two posts per week.
So, we suggest sharing between two and five posts per week on LinkedIn to get the maximum value from the network for the time spent creating the content.
When is the best time to post on Facebook?
Most posts on Facebook don’t do very well. But at the high end (95th percentile), there’s huge variability at the beginning and end of the day.
Keep in mind since there are fewer posts at the beginning and end of the day, these aren’t statistical trends that marketers can count on. Instead, we’d suggest focusing on the content, not the time of day when publishing.
Which is the best day to post on Facebook?
There is no median on Facebook — and no, that’s not a typo. The number of median clicks for all accounts is actually 0. That’s because only really good content on Facebook gets surfaced highly.
The conclusion here is that there’s no ideal day to post on Facebook. The data does show that it’s slightly better to post on Sundays.
There’s also a natural dip in post frequency and engagement on Friday and Saturday.
What is the optimal publishing frequency on Facebook?
Similar to LinkedIn, 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.
Why publish on Facebook at all?
There are three big reasons to keep publishing on Facebook:
1. Publishing on Facebook shows leads and potential customers that you’re actively in business.
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.
2. It’s easier to go viral on Facebook.
The number of outliers that we see at every level is substantial — which means that when you go viral on Facebook, the upside is very, very high.
The maximum number of clicks that a single Facebook Page received during this time frame was 8K — and the Page published just five times that week.
3. Facebook Ads offer some of the highest ROI of social ads you can buy.
This is especially true if you are doing any retargeting. And once you’ve published on Facebook, it’s the easiest platform from which to boost posts and get more distribution (and followers).
When’s the best time to post on Instagram?
When there’s a break in the day, you may find yourself reaching for your phone to scroll on Instagram. You’re not alone. Some of the best times to post on the platform are during commute, lunch, and after the workday has concluded.
CoSchedule researched 30,000 social media accounts to find the best time to post on Instagram. They found that the best times to publish are right around the start of the work day (9 a.m.), lunchtime, and after work (around 7 p.m.).
Avoid posting in the middle of the night between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m., as data shows that these times can be less effective.
Which is the best day to post on Instagram?
Similar to other networks, it seems that Instagram use peaks as the week goes on. Posts published Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays tend to do better than those published Saturday through Monday.
If your business relies on weekend traffic, you’ll want to continue to post Saturday and Sunday. Restaurants, boutiques, and other shops may fall into this category. If your business offers weekend specials, these posts can prove beneficial.
What is the optimal publishing frequency on Instagram?
On Instagram, less is more. Too many posts from one will compete against each other and gain less traffic.
Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, offered more insight during Instagram’s 2021 Creator Weekend. He suggests 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.
When’s the best time to post on Pinterest?
While Pinterest sits comfortably at the 15th-largest social media network, Hootsuite reports that the platform still boasts over 400 million users daily. These users browse the app at different times based on the type of content they’re searching for.
Different industries and types of content show variation. For instance, if you are a health and beauty brand, morning and evening posts have a higher likelihood of gaining traction, according to CoSchedule.
Likewise, food and beverage companies can gain extra reach by posting around dinner time (5 p.m.) as that’s the time that most people open the app to find a recipe.
However, for most companies, when you post doesn’t matter so long as you avoid posting in the middle of the night.
Which is the best day to post on Pinterest?
The type of content you gather on Pinterest will affect which days you’ll receive the most engagement.
However, research from CoSchedule found that Friday, Tuesday, and Thursday were the best day to post. The weekends and Mondays offered the least amount of traction.
What is the optimal publishing frequency on Pinterest?
Sources vary wildly on how often you should post on Pinterest, but most agree that your organization should be pinning between five and 15 times per day.
You should also avoid pinning more than 25 posts in a day to avoid information overload. Unlike Twitter where more is better, with Pinterest you should be aiming for quality over quantity.
What does this mean for your social media strategy?
When it comes to posting on Facebook and LinkedIn, remember that you may only have between two and five posts per week that will get distribution by the networks’ feeds. With that in mind, focus on the quality of each post.
Your aim should be to get more likes, comments, and shares to make the news feed algorithms work for you.
On Instagram, remember that quality matters more than quantity. You should limit your posts while focusing on the quality and relevance of the images you share.
And when it comes to Twitter and Pinterest, post freely — the timeline updates so frequently that you’re at an advantage posting more often to reach more people.
Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.
