How Often Should a Small Business Post on Social Media?
By IndieAM · · Updated
For most small local businesses, three to five posts a week on one or two platforms is a sensible target. If that's more than you can keep up, two good posts a week every week is a fine place to start. The number you can hold for a whole year matters more than the number you manage in one keen week.
There's no official answer to this question. The platforms don't publish a magic number, and most of the data comes from companies that sell social media software, including the ones we quote here. Their numbers are still useful, as long as you know where they came from and what they leave out.
What the data says, platform by platform
The largest public studies we could find come from Buffer, which sells a scheduling tool. Buffer compares each account with itself in busier and quieter weeks, which is a fair way to do it, though it can't prove that posting more was the cause. Hootsuite, which also sells social media software, publishes its own advice, and says that advice comes from best practices, platform executives and social media managers, rather than from one study.
Buffer studied 2.1 million posts from 102,000 accounts, leaving out Stories. Compared with posting once or twice a week, each post got about:
- 12% more reach at 3 to 5 posts a week
- 18% more reach at 6 to 9 posts a week
- 24% more reach at 10 or more posts a week
Buffer calls 3 to 5 a week the sweet spot, and Hootsuite says the same. For a small business, that's a good target.
This is the weakest evidence of the four. Hootsuite suggests 1 to 2 posts a day, and Buffer suggests once a day, citing a HubSpot study of Facebook users. When we opened the HubSpot page Buffer links to, that study wasn't there. We didn't find a recent large study of Facebook like Buffer's others, so we'd treat daily posting as advice rather than a finding. Start with what you post on Instagram, and add to it only if you have more to say.
TikTok
Buffer looked at 11.4 million posts from over 150,000 accounts and recommends 2 to 5 a week. Compared with one post a week, views per post rose 17% at 2 to 5 posts, 29% at 6 to 10, and 34% at 11 or more.
There's a catch worth knowing. The typical post barely changed. Median views stayed around 460 to 510 at every level. Posting more mostly gave accounts more chances at one post that did unusually well. So don't expect each extra video to pull its weight.
Buffer studied more than 2 million posts from over 94,000 accounts and calls 2 to 5 a week the sweet spot. Posting that often brought about 1,182 more impressions per post than posting once a week. Hootsuite's advice is much higher, at 1 to 2 posts a day, but that suits a company with a marketing team. If you run a salon or a cafe, LinkedIn may not need to be on your list at all. If you sell to other businesses, one or two posts a week is a reasonable start.
Is 2 posts a day too much?
For most small businesses, yes, though not because a platform will punish you. In Buffer's numbers, reach or views per post kept rising at the highest levels on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Buffer's own advice is that gains shrink as you go, and that quality comes first.
The real limit is you. Two posts a day is about 60 posts a month. Unless you have that much worth saying, the quality will slip, and a local business has a small audience who'd see the same faces and offers again and again. That last part is our judgment, not a measured fact.
One exception is Stories, which people expect to be quick and casual. Hootsuite reports that Instagram's Adam Mosseri recommends 2 Stories a day. They're a light way to post more often without planning more.
What is the 5-3-1 rule on social media?
It's folk advice, and it doesn't have one agreed meaning. It's also not about how often to post. One common version is a daily Instagram routine: interact with 5 accounts you'd like to reach, leave 3 thoughtful comments, and send 1 genuine message. Other versions swap in likes or follows.
We looked for evidence that the routine works and found none. The article above offers projected results, but they're built on its own assumed rates, not on a study.
What is the 5-5-5 rule?
The same goes here, and it's even looser. We found three different versions:
- Like 5 posts, comment on 5, and post on 5 people's timelines each day, from a real estate marketer's article.
- 5 posts, 5 comments and 5 Story replies a day, from another real estate speaker.
- 5 minutes a day, 5 new connections and 5 posts, a tip for authors, whose writer calls the number of connections "arbitrary".
None of them offers data. A rule with three meanings and no evidence isn't really a rule.
There's a sensible idea underneath, though. Spending a few minutes talking to people, rather than only posting at them, costs nothing and suits a local business. Reply to customers. Comment on the shop next door. Just don't feel you've failed because you didn't hit a five.
How to set your own number
Here's a simple way to decide:
- Pick one or two platforms. Choose where your customers already are. Two platforms done well will beat four done badly, and the same post can often go on both.
- Count your real time. How many posts could you make in a bad week, when you're short-staffed? Start there.
- Check you have material. If you run dry, these post ideas should fill a few months.
- Plan in one go. Writing a month at a time is much easier than deciding what to post each morning. Here's how to plan a month in one sitting.
- Keep it up for three months. A few weeks is too short to tell you much.
- Then look at the results. If calls, bookings or messages are moving, try adding a post a week. If adding one makes your posts worse, go back. A few numbers worth watching will tell you more than a benchmark can.
If you go quiet for a while, don't worry about it, and don't apologize in a post. Just start again.
If you can't keep up
Most owners don't struggle because they don't know the number. They struggle because they run out of time. You have a few options:
- Batch the work with a scheduling tool such as Buffer, Later or Hootsuite. You still think of and write everything.
- Pay a freelancer to do some or all of it.
- Use software that does the planning and writing. This is what we make at IndieAM. It plans a month of marketing and writes the posts in your voice, you approve each one, and approved posts publish themselves to the Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok and YouTube Shorts accounts you connect. It adds pictures from your photo library, and makes AI pictures where any photo would do, but photos of your real work have to come from you. It doesn't run ads or reply to comments, so it doesn't suit someone who wants all of this taken off their hands. Our prices are on the home page.
Whichever you pick, choose a number you can keep. Three ordinary posts a week, all year, will do more for you than a burst of daily posts in January.