Should you post every day on LinkedIn or just settle for a few scattered posts to avoid saturating your audience? This is one of the traditional big questions that plague social media managers and marketing leaders. To provide some answers, the publisher of social media management software Buffer analyzed, through its data scientist Julian Winternheimer, more than 2 million posts from 94,000 LinkedIn accounts. Here are the four main takeaways.
1. You Never Post Too Much!
First learning that may surprise: unlike other networks, LinkedIn’s algorithm does not penalize very frequent posting. On the contrary: posting more often improves performance!
Buffer thus analyzed posts from the same accounts during weeks of high intensity and quieter weeks. Results:
- 2 to 5 posts per week: + 1,182 impressions per post and + 0.23% engagement rate (the percentage of people who interacted among those who saw the post)
- 6 to 10 posts per week: + 5,001 impressions and + 0.76% engagement rate
- More than 11 posts per week: + 16,946 impressions per post and three times more engagement
Clearly, whether we deplore it or not, LinkedIn rewards abundance.
“LinkedIn does not ‘limit’ your reach and does not penalize you if you post often. On the contrary, it strengthens your visibility by putting more of your content in front of more people. The myth of ‘posting too often’ probably comes from other platforms, where algorithms can reduce visibility in case of high frequency. On LinkedIn, it’s the opposite—the more you post, the more distribution opportunities you create,” summarizes the report.
A finding that Francis Jette, digital strategist and trainer on Isarta, however qualifies:
“In these calculations, we often forget to highlight the impact on the perception of people in our network and their long-term fatigue from always seeing posts on too many subjects…”
2. The Right Balance: 2 to 5 Posts Per Week
Obviously, not everyone can—or wants to!—post more than twice a day! Julian Winternheimer then puts things in perspective:
“You should post as often as possible… as long as quality remains present! Low-quality content posted frequently will not yield good results.”
The right frequency according to him to maintain a good level of quality is just under one post per day:
“By crossing the threshold of 2 to 5 weekly posts, the algorithm considers the account truly active and this leads to notable gains in engagement. It starts rewarding your content by offering you better distribution.”
Conversely, posting only once a week remains insufficient to trigger a real dynamic, which translates into lower average performance.
3. Small or Large Accounts: Same Battle
A frequent objection heard: these results would only be valid for large accounts (which generate more reach and engagement and have the capacity to post more often). False, responds the study.
Through statistical methods, Buffer isolated the effect of audience size… and proved that the phenomenon is universal.
- Small accounts progress proportionally as much as large ones when they start increasing their posting frequency from one to 2-5 posts per week.
- Large accounts generate more impressions in absolute value, but the growth dynamic per post is identical.
“Frequency is a lever that every creator can activate. The algorithm values activity and consistency, not just account size. Whether you have 500 or 50,000 subscribers, increasing your posting frequency improves your posts’ performance compared to your own average,” summarizes the report.
4. Carousels Remain the Best Format
The last point is the least surprising since already supported by several other similar studies: format matters as much as frequency… and carousels (PDF documents to scroll through) are, by far, those that get the best results (+ 300% engagement compared to videos or 600% compared to text).
Let’s recall, however, that they are generally the longest to create. Nothing comes easy!
Links, unsurprisingly, represent the least engaging formats… because the algorithm doesn’t want users to leave the platform. Hence the usual technique of many content creators to post them in the comments of posts instead (which also has the merit of making internet users click to learn more).
In summary, posting more never hurts, but consistency and quality take precedence over overproduction. Instead of saturating your audience with posts without real added value, it’s also worth recalling that LinkedIn recently introduced impressions for comments.
“This means that relevant and engaging comments now function as micro-posts, visible to people outside your own network. This radically changes the game for staying visible without having to create more original posts,” concludes the report.
