How Often Should A CEO Post On Social Media? A Guide
If you’re not spending all your time on social media—congratulations! You have a life (and a business to run).
However, if you’re a CEO who’s not spending any time checking out and posting to your feeds, you’re missing out on a potentially hugely beneficial opportunity.
So how do you find the right balance? The good news is that there’s an optimal amount of time and number of posts for CEOs investing in social media.
“From employees to investors, key stakeholders are looking for executive leaders to not only own their presence across digital channels, but to proactively use those channels to guard against misinformation, share industry insights and speak to their vision for the companies they lead,” according to H/Advisors Abernathy’s Social in the C-Suite 2022 report.
The report goes on to say that “active leaders posted at least once-per-week on social media channels. The top 5 most active CEOs on LinkedIn posted 12 times per month, while the top 5 most active CEOs on Twitter posted 40 times per month. That post cadence proved fruitful, as they all exceeded average engagement rates among their peers by at least 2 percentage points.”
In this post we’ll help you find the sweet spot between engagement, visibility, and time investment while effectively leveraging social media for personal and professional growth.
H/Advisors Abernathy Social in the C-Suite 2022 report.
Understanding platform dynamics
The first thing you should know is that what works on one platform might not capture the same attention on another. For example, accounts on real-time, newsy channels like Twitter/X thrive via frequent, though often brief, updates. LinkedIn’s professional class, however, require fewer but meatier posts.
Some of this is due to the audience, some to the nature of the platform, and some to the algorithms that are churning behind the scenes to ensure that users stay on social media long past what the Surgeon General recommends.
So let’s breakdown some of the most popular platforms and what pleases those ever-changing algorithms. Just a note, hard-and-fast rules are hard to come by on social media and different authorities offer different guidelines on post frequency. For clarity, we’ve offered our general suggestions as a guideline in the bold headings.
Instagram: Post 2-3 times per week
Instagram for Business recommends that businesses post at least two to three times per week “to stay on top of mind with customers.” According to Hootsuite, most active brands post 17 stories per month. Meanwhile, IG CEO Adam Mosseri recommends two stories per day.
For CEOs, those numbers may be a bit lower, considering the time investment required to craft copy and curate images and video for an effective Instagram post.
For example, Simran Kaur, investor and founder of the brand Girls That Invest (podcast, platform, and book) posts three-to-four times a week. Kaur has 20.3K followers and her posts generate hundreds and sometimes thousands of likes.
Experts advise mixing media (carousels, reels, static posts), especially for those who are posting more than three times a week. Posting frequently increases chances of showing up in the Explore feed, being featured on another account, or appearing in the top search results for keywords you commonly use.
TikTok: Post 3-5 times per week
The social media gurus at TikTok recommend that businesses post one-to-four times a day, although three-to-five posts/week will put you in front of followers to begin with.
For CEOs specifically, this cadence may prove challenging to sustain. Effective TikTok posts require a significant investment of time to create engaging, video-based content, which often ties into current memes and trends.
For example, Simon Squibb, investor and founder at HelpBnk, posts daily—sometimes twice. He has 2.3m followers on TikTok and his videos are seen by millions of users.
In general, the more you post on TikTok the better, because more posts will improve your chance of landing on a user’s For You Page, a personalized page where people are fed content based on their likes.
Facebook: Post once every workday
Those who know recommend that users, including businesses and CEOs, post one-to-two times a week, or once every workday, on Mark Zuckerberg’s 3b-strong platform.
This will help you stay present in the minds of your audience, but not go so far as to overwhelm your followers’ feeds. “Daily posting will grow followers 4x faster than posting less than once a week,” according to Brayden Cohen, Manager, Social Marketing at Hootsuite. “Makes sense: more visibility.” Multiple posts may compete with each other or overcrowd the audience’s newsfeed.
For example, entrepreneur Brian Scudamore has a following of 36k on Facebook thanks to his personable personal brand and inspirational content.
Twitter/X: Post multiple times per day
Time flies and so do ideas on these news-centric platforms—blink and you might miss something, although there are always those eagle-eyed social media traffic cops looking to dig up some dirt (right, James Gunn?).
Although quality over quantity is a rule of thumb for most other platforms, on X and Threads sometimes it’s better to say something even if you have little to say. “The more you post, the more likely you are to show up on the constantly growing feed,” said Hootsuite’s Cohen. According to the H/Advisors Abernathy report, CEOs with the highest tweet counts on Twitter were among those most followed.
For example, Kara Goldin, Founder of Hint Inc., posts almost daily to her 134.3K followers on X. Her posts are seen by hundreds of thousands of people—particularly pics of her dog.
LinkedIn: Post 2-3 times per week
Two to three posts per week is enough to maintain a presence on the professional networking site, and LinkedIn says that companies who post weekly see twice as much content engagement as those that don’t.
A bonus for keeping up with the LI Joneses is that LinkedIn has tweaked its algorithm to resurface older updates as “suggested posts” according to their usefulness to new users. On LinkedIn, 6 in 10 of all CEOs have an above average engagement rate, with the top 12 percent netting more than 10 times the amount of likes, shares and comments than their peers.
For example, Ragini Das, co-founder of leap.club, posts and shares multiple times a week. She has nearly 296k followers on LinkedIn.
Creating a calendar
Unless you’re an influencer or social media pro, it’s easy to let days or even weeks slip by without posting, thus poking holes in your reputation for consistency, a quality valued by both users and algorithms.
Thus, it’s advisable to create and use a content calendar to specify times and days to post. This will save you time in the long run, as well as encourage you to prepare, or at least plan, posts in advance. You can even create a bunch of posts all at once and schedule their publication throughout the week or month. Leave some wiggle room for newsier or unexpected items that might come up.
Along with scheduling posts, consider blocking off time for another crucial component of an effective social media strategy, engagement. Engaging with your followers and peers, commenting on other peoples’ posts, and responding to customers, clients and other stakeholders will improve your posts’ performances and grow your following and reputation as a thought leader.
Social media organizers available to help manage your accounts include Buffer, Hootsuite and Planable.
Using data/metrics to make decisions about how often to post
Once you have begun a campaign, you will likely want to know if your efforts are succeeding. Analytics and other tools will help you gauge the amount of people you are reaching and when, and to see which types of posts are drawing more engagement.
Do 3 p.m. Thursday posts perform better than those you publish at 11 a.m. Monday? Do tweets with images get more engagement than those without? Did your behind-the-scenes video on LinkedIn blow up? Answers to these and other questions can help you figure out where to focus your time and efforts for an optimal social media strategy.
You can find analytics tools on individual platforms, as well as through social monitoring services provided by companies like Hootsuite and Sprout Social.
Using an agency or other staff
If all of this sounds overwhelming, well, then welcome to the attention economy circa 2024. Competing for eyeballs today requires quality, consistency, a game plan—and, often, professional help.
Look what you’re up against on, say, TikTok. Every day on the platform, people post 34m videos. To stand out, a video requires real time, effort, and creativity. Do you have the time and resources to pour into three-to-four short videos per week?
Not to mention, figuring out the best posting frequency for social media requires trial and error. What’s good for one CEO might not work for another.
That’s why so many CEOs, businesses, startups and founders are turning to outside agencies to manage their social media. With a team of experts in social media management, marketing, and branding, full-service thought leadership agencies like CSuite Content can take your social media efforts to the next level. And you won’t have to worry about if, when, or how to post again.
