How Often Should You Post on Social Media?

We’ve covered how often you should post if you’re operating the social media for your brand, but there’s also much that can be said regarding how often you should be posting from your personal account. Since social media habits are a reflection of your unique personality, this is more subjective. However, there are still some general guidelines you can follow to make sure you don’t garner a negative reputation amongst your followers.

Facebook
The same rules that you’d follow when running a business/brand account apply here as well, although there are fewer requirements. Posting one to three times a day is a surefire way to maintain a balance between being engaging and being annoying. As long as you put up some photos and avoid getting too deep or personal on a daily basis, you can post what’d you’d like to. Just don’t post song lyrics — it’s not 2007 anymore!

Instagram
There are many ways to build a respectable personal presence on Instagram, but you have to make sure that you aren’t cataloging every moment of your life. That said, you can’t check your account once a year and expect your followers to stick with you. Posting once every two or three days is a good way to maintain a balance if you don’t want to commit to posting every day.

However, posting more than once a day might cause you to lose likes and followers. As far as what to post, make sure you mix it up between photos of people (including yourself), cute viewpoints, and some artsy-looking food occasionally, along with some other engaging, interesting stuff that reflects who you are.

Twitter
As we mentioned in our article about social media habits for brands, Twitter posts tend to get lost amongst the masses of other posts in less than an hour, so you’re good to post a little bit more without enraging your following. To be more specific, four or five posts a day is plenty for the average person, and the basic rules for what to post on Facebook and Instagram apply here as well, although memes are perfectly acceptable and encouraged every now and then.

LinkedIn
People aren’t going to be reading LinkedIn posts on the weekend unless they have absolutely nothing to do besides read LinkedIn posts. To make sure that your posts reach the highest number of people possible, stick to posting during the business week, and keep it (relatively) quiet — once a week should be fine if you’re employed. If you’re looking for work, however, you can ramp it up to one per weekday to show that you’re active and enthusiastic about your industry.

However, make sure that you’re participating in discussions and helping out your peers with questions they have about the industry rather than just sharing articles and expecting people to care about news they could find on the Forbes or Time websites.