You know you need to post to your property’s social media accounts regularly to keep your audience engaged, but how often is enough? Is there such as thing as too often? And what’s the best time of day to post for maximum results?
There has been a lot written in attempt to answer these questions over recent years. Although audience interactions will vary according to your target guest groups, understanding the basic user patterns of the most popular social networks can help you schedule your posts so that as many of your fans and followers see them as possible.
Perhaps the most fast-paced social platform of them all, the average lifespan of a tweet is around 60 – 90 minutes (although, depending on how many people your guests are following it could be as little as a matter of minutes.) If you want your guests to notice your tweets the best time to publish them is during business hours, with the highest percentage of retweets taking place at around 5pm. Links shared on Twitter tend to garner the most attention at the weekends – perhaps when most users have more time to check out the content properly. When it comes to post frequency, the sweet spot for most small to medium businesses is thought to be between four and eight times a day to engage your followers, build authority on the platform and reach a wider audience.
Facebook is better suited to more in-depth posts and conversations than Twitter, and the pace is a little slower. The average lifespan of a post on Mark Zuckerberg’s social platform is approximately three hours, and it’s recommended that brands limit their posting to no more than once a day to avoid flooding users’ newsfeeds and losing fans. Industry data shows that Facebook shares peak around midday, drop off in the afternoon, then pick up again around 7pm.
Google+
Combining the fast pace of Twitter with Facebook’s capacity for longer posts, Google+ presents a unique challenge for social marketers. Try to create a posting schedule of updating your resort’s page at least once a day, and if you need to share several pieces of news or links, remember to space out your updates throughout the day so your guests’ feeds don’t fill up with a sudden influx of content.
Out of the most used social platforms, Pinterest offers the least structure (and therefore the most freedom) when it comes to how often you should post. The site receives the most traffic in the evening and at weekends, so these are the optimal times to schedule your pins, but as for post frequency, it seems the more the merrier on the web’s favourite image sharing site.
Remember, although industry data helps establish general guidelines for optimal posting times and frequency, it’s vital to test out your campaigns with your property’s own target audience. It might be that your particular followers buck the trend in the way they access and engage with social content. Take into consideration the lifestyles, locations and typical behaviours of your guest personas, and use this info to point you in the right direction when drawing up a social media schedule you can stick to.
How do you schedule your resort’s social media posts? Let us know in the comments below!
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