How Often To Post On Social Media (According To Data From Multiple Studies)

You know that the more you post on social media, the higher your engagements will be, but do you know just how often to post on different social media platforms?

Social media is the most competitive medium in digital marketing. Thousands of brands and influencers publish content in hopes of winning over the algorithm and earning a large following.

In this post, you’ll learn the best times to post on different social platforms based on data from multiple sources.

How often to post on social media

Platform	Posting Frequency*
TikTok	6 posts/week
Instagram Feed Posts	3-7 posts/week
Instagram Stories	5-37 posts/week
Instagram Reels	3-8 posts/week
YouTube Videos	1 post/week
YouTube Shorts	1 post/day
Facebook Posts	1-4 posts/day
Facebook Reels	3 posts/week
Tweets	6 posts/day

*These are the average recommended posting frequencies when taking multiple studies and suggestions into consideration.

How often should you post on tikTok?

Here’s how often you should post on TikTok, according to multiple studies:

TikTok – 1 to 4 posts/day
Metricool – 5 to 6 posts/week
Serve Me the Sky – 1 post/day
Neil Patel – 1-3 posts/day
RivalIQ – 1-2 posts/week

TikTok’s suggestion

In TikTok’s guide on how to make it on their platform, the company recommends influencers to publish one to four videos per day to “test how different types of content are received.”

Metricool’s TikTok study

According to Metricool’s study, which included a six-month analysis of over 87,000 professional and personal accounts, over 1 million TikTok videos, and over 73,000 image and carousel posts, TikTok influencers publish an average of 2.64 videos per week.

Accounts with fewer than 500 followers publish an average of 2.01 videos per week whereas accounts with over 50,000 followers publish an average of 6.32 videos per week.

For this reason, it’s recommended that influencers publish an average of five to six videos per week to compete.

Serve Me the Sky

Serve Me the Sky is a digital marketing agency that specializes in social media marketing.

Emily Hessney Lynch, the owner of the agency, says that while posting three to four times per week is okay for Instagram and Facebook, this is not enough for TikTok.

She advises her clients to publish at least one post per day on the platform to remain competitive.

Serve Me the Sky has testimonials from BBC Studios, Charcoalblue and more.

Neil Patel

Neil Patel and his team analyzed over 332,000 social media accounts over a 30-day period.

They discovered the optimal posting frequency for TikTok to be one to three posts per day.

He specifically said that if you reduce posting frequency to one post published every other day, you won’t be able to gain enough momentum to succeed on the platform.

RivalIQ

RivalIQ publishes social media benchmarks every year for multiple platforms.

In the company’s 2024 benchmarks report, they analyzed over 374,000 videos from TikTok.

In 2022, they discovered the average posting frequency for TikTok to be 1.8 posts per week. That number increased to 1.9 posts per week in 2023.

That means if you want to align your posting frequency with the majority of influencers on TikTok, you should publish one to two posts per day.

How often should you post on Instagram?

Here’s how often you should post different types of content to Instagram, according to multiple sources:

	Feed Posts*	Stories	Images	Carousels	Reels
Later	3-5 posts/week	4-15 stories/week	N/A	N/A	N/A
Spark Social	3-4 posts/week	5 stories/week	N/A	N/A	N/A
Metricool	N/A	30-45 stories/week	3-7 posts/week	2-4 posts/week	3-8 posts/week
Neil Patel	1-2 posts/day	2-4 posts/day	N/A	N/A	N/A
RivalIQ	4-5 posts/week	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

*Feed posts include images, carousels, videos and reels.

Later

Later is a social media management platform.

After analyzing accounts within their own customer base, which meant analyzing over 19 million feed posts and more than 32,000 stories, they found a direct correlation between posting frequency and follower count.

They analyzed accounts that have between 0 and 500,000 followers.

For Instagram feed posts, accounts with up to 10,000 followers publish two posts per week, accounts with up to 100,000 followers publish three posts per week, and accounts with up to 500,000 followers publish five posts per week.

For Instagram stories, accounts with up to 10,000 followers post three stories per week, accounts with 100,000 followers post four per week, and accounts with up to 500,000 followers post 15 stories per week.

Spark Social

Spark Social is a marketing agency that has worked with Nestle, Target, Johnson’s Baby, BAND-AID, Aveeno Baby and more.

In general, the company recommends their clients to publish Instagram feed posts three to four times per week and Instagram stories five times per week.

They specifically said to appear on Instagram Stories five days per week, so that doesn’t mean you should post three stories on Monday and two on Friday. It means you should post at least one story on five different days of the week.

Metricool

Metricool published a study in which they analyzed over 5.6 million feed posts, 3.6 million reels and 23.6 million stories from more than 391,000 Instagram accounts.

Unlike the other two data sources we shared for Instagram, Metricool broke their data down into different types of feed posts, specifically images, carousels and reels from feed.

Reels and stories were given their own categories as well.

According to this study, accounts with less than 500 followers publish an average of 1.1 carousel posts every week on Instagram whereas accounts with over 50,000 followers publish 4.2.

Accounts with less than 500 followers publish an average 2.7 image posts per week while accounts with over 50,000 publish 7.0.

Accounts with less than 500 followers publish an average of 0.6 reels from feed and 2.1 reels per week while accounts with over 50,000 followers publish an average of 1.3 reels from feed and 8.6 reels to their profiles each week.

Finally, accounts with less than 500 followers publish an average of 5.7 stories per week while accounts with over 50,000 followers publish an average of 46 stories every week.

Instagram stories are favored most by influencers, but Metricool’s study revealed that reels have the highest amount of reach at 37.87% whereas stories have the lowest at 3.13%.

This is because stories only appear for followers while reels are distributed to all Instagram users.

Neil Patel

With his team’s analysis of over 332,000 social media posts, Neil Patel came to the conclusion that the best posting frequency for Instagram is one to two posts/day for feed posts (including reels) and two to four posts per day for stories.

He says posting more than two posts per day to Instagram has a negative impact on previous posts you published.

He also suggests going live on Instagram at least once a week.

RivalIQ

RivalIQ analyzed over 1.8 million Instagram posts from 2023 in their social media benchmarks report for 2024.

They discovered the average posting frequency to be 4.7 posts/week on the platform, which is consistent with previous years when the average posting frequency was 4.6 posts/week.

This means you should publish four to five posts per week if you want to be competitive on the platform.

How often should you post on YouTube?

Here’s how often different sources recommend uploading to YouTube:

	Videos	Shorts
Metricool	N/A	1 post/day
Wolfpack Marketing	1 post/week	N/A

Metricool

Metricool conducted a study on short-form videos from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

They found very few differences between the sizes of the channels they analyzed and the number of shorts they upload per day.

For example, “tiny” accounts, or accounts with fewer than 500 subscribers, upload an average of 0.27 shorts per day. “Huge” accounts, or accounts with over 50,000 subscribers, upload an average of 0.66 shorts per day.

In spite of how close these figures are, the larger figure associated with larger accounts shows that larger accounts are more likely to stick to a posting frequency of one short per day, so you’re better off trying to get one YouTube short posted every day to ensure optimal growth.

Wolfpack Marketing

Wolfpack Marketing isn’t the only company to offer this suggestion, but as a marketing agency, they have experience in boosting engagement for numerous YouTube channels, so we’re going to credit them as the source for this figure.

And what is that figure? Almost everyone agrees on the same posting scheduling for regular YouTube videos, and it’s been that way for quite some time: one video per week.

This posting schedule ensures you maintain consistency while also maintaining quality. After all, creating long-form YouTube videos is much different from creating shorter videos for TikTok and Instagram.

There are certain factors that may allow you to upload more frequently.

For example, gaming channels can record four hours of gameplay in a single session, then break up that session into five 45-minute videos.

Another example is Linus Tech Tips. Today, Linus works alongside a large media team that helps plan, research, script, film and edit videos, allowing the company to upload one video per day to multiple channels.

However, Linus maintained an active posting schedule long before he started working with a full-fledged team by filming unboxing videos in one take.

How often should you post on Facebook?

Here’s how often you should post on Facebook, according to multiple sources:

	Posts	Reels
Metricool	N/A	3 posts/week
Buffer/BuzzSumo	1-4 posts/day	N/A
HubSpot	1-5 posts/day	N/A
RivalIQ	4-5 posts/day	N/A

Metricool

In Metricool’s study on short-form videos, they discovered that Facebook accounts with fewer than 500 followers post an average of 0.16 Facebook reels per day while accounts with more than 50,000 followers post an average of 0.38 reels per day.

These numbers may seem almost identical at first glance, but what it really means is that accounts Metricool deems as “tiny” tend to post around five reels to Facebook every month while accounts the company labels as “huge” post 11.5.

This works out to around 2.9 posts/week, or 3.0 if you round up.

By uploading more than twice the amount of posts as smaller accounts do, these “huge” accounts are more likely to appear in the algorithm on Facebook.

Buffer & BuzzSumo

According to a study of over 43 million Facebook posts, which was conducted in a partnership with Buffer and BuzzSumo, publishing at least one post to Facebook everyday appears to be optimal for engagements.

The publishers of the study came to the conclusion that posting five times per day is optimal based on how much engagement dropped between five to nine posts per day range and the more than 10 posts per day range.

However, the study’s true findings proved that the less you post per day, the highest your engagements are per post:

Less than 1 post/day – 3,127 engagements per post
1-4 posts/day – 2,990 engagements
5-9 posts/day – 2,466 engagements
More than 10 posts per day – 1,202 engagements

HubSpot

HubSpot’s study on Facebook still holds up.

The company analyzed posts from their own customer base, which was just over 13,000 at the time.

They discovered that unless you had more than 10,000 followers, posting on Facebook one to five times per day resulted in the most consistent number of indexed clicks, specifically around 100 clicks per post.

However, even when accounts did have more than 10,000 followers, clicks only increased to as high as 130 per post.

RivalIQ

RivalIQ’s social media benchmarks report for 2024 included an analysis of over 1.9 million Facebook posts from 2023.

They discovered the average weekly posting frequency on this platform to be 4.7, which is lower than previous years.

According to the company’s previous reports, the average weekly posting frequency for Facebook was 5.0 in 2022, 5.9 in 2021 and 5.5 in 2020.

Nevertheless, this means you should post four to five posts to Facebook every week to remain competitive.

How often should you post on Twitter (X)?

This how often multiple sources recommend posting on Twitter:

Neil Patel – 3 posts/day
Candid – 10 posts/day
RivalIQ – 3 posts/week

Neil Patel

Neil Patel’s analysis revealed the optimum posting frequency for Twitter to be a minimum of three posts per day.

His official recommendation is to post “3+ posts per day.”

He stated that text-based posts perform the best on Twitter, which means you shouldn’t waste your time coming up with exclusive video content for Twitter. Just repurpose videos you’ve published to other platforms.

Candid

Candid did an experiment on their own Twitter account.

They found a lot of success by increasing their posting frequency from two to three posts a day to 10 posts a day and wanted to see if they could find even more success by posting 20 times a day.

However, they discovered that while they received a higher number of engagements by posting 20 times a day on Twitter, the amount of engagements they received per post decreased.

At the end of the study, Candid stated they’re sticking with their original posting schedule of 10 tweets per day.

RivalIQ

RivalIQ analyzed over 800,000 tweets from 2023 in their 2024 social media benchmarks report.

They discovered the average weekly posting frequency on the platform was 3.3 in 2023, a pretty large decrease from 2022’s 3.9 posts/week and 2021’s 5.0 posts/week.

This means if all you want to do is remain consistent with industry standards, you can safely take a step back from Twitter by reducing the number of posts you publish per week to three.

How often should your brand post on social media?

The thing to remember about these studies and experiments is that they’re either anecdotal or quite broad.

Following these recommendations for your own social media calendar is fine if you want to align your posting frequency with industry standards, but you should take a few more considerations into account to determine your own optimal social media posting frequency.

For example, if you work alone, an active social media publishing frequency that includes social media accounts is pretty overwhelming.

Consider focusing on a maximum of three platforms until you’re able to spend more of your time and budget creating content for other social media platforms. This posting strategy will also allow you to find your target audience better.

To spread your content across multiple platforms, focus on one platform, then repurpose content you post to that platform for other platforms.

For example, you can post a TikTok to Instagram and Facebook Reels and YouTube Shorts, or break up a YouTube video into multiple short-form clips.

You can also turn a blog post into a shorter format by posting it to Twitter and Facebook or creating a carousel post for it on TikTok and Instagram.

Use a social media scheduling tool like SocialBee to manage your posting frequency across multiple channels.

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