Can you post too much on social media?

userby Polly Barnfield, OBE. Founder and CEO of Maybe*

Fact:   Primark and Boohoo post over 10 times more on social media per day than Top Shop or River Island. When you look more closely at their social media performance, the social media engagement per post is round about the same for the 4 retailers.

Fact:   Primark and Boohoo are performing well in a difficult retail market

This brings me to a question that I am often asked when I present data is:

“Surely posting at the level of Boohoo or Primark this much is spamming users”

The answer is this is not seen as spam by Primark and Boohoo's customers - if it was they wouldn't achieve the level of engagement they do. So if it’s relevant, it’s not too much is the simple answer.

River Island and Topshop are averaging 6K engagements per day with Primark and Boohoo achieving 70K and 46K respectively. The bottom line is their social media strategy reaches more people.

Primark

Followers: 14.4m

Total posts: 2.6k

Engagements: 4.5m

Avg. posts per day: 41

Avg. engagement per post: 17.28

Avg. engagement per day: 70,184

Best performing post: View

Boohoo

Followers: 9.5m

Total posts: 2.5k

Engagements: 3m

Avg. posts per day: 39

Avg. engagement per post: 1,187

Avg. engagement per day: 46,319

Best performing post: View

Topshop

Followers: 14.3m

Total posts: 138

Engagements: 409k

Avg. posts per day: 2

Avg. engagement per post: 2,963

Avg. engagement per day: 6,390

Best performing post: View

River Island

Followers: 5m

Total posts: 247

Engagements: 391k

Avg. posts per day: 4

Avg. engagement per post: 1,582

Avg. engagement per day: 6,109

Best performing post: View

Data from 1st Oct 2019 - 1st Dec 2019. Data is accurate at time of collection and may not account for engagement accrued since collection or via paid media.

Look beyond the numbers

Social media content has to work for an audience in terms of tone of voice and where the messaging goes. You have to look beyond the numbers to understand how they are doing it, who they're talking to and where.

If you look at Boohoo, they're very Gen Z savvy in terms of their use of emojis, their language, their pop culture references. With Primark it's a similar story, but they also know they have a captive mummy audience as well. 

Both Primark and Boohoo create FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and excitement around their product.   

There is no magic formula for how much you post per day - the takeaway has to be that if it works for your customers you'll achieve more engagement, and it has to translate into something meaningful and measurable. 

 

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It's on brands to drive more value

It's on brands to drive more value to customers first so you can derive it from them later. What Boohoo and Primark have tapped into (especially Boohoo) is that its ok for a brand's content to sometimes do nothing other than entertain via their content. Entertainment is quite often the value add of their content. 

This approach won't work for every brand, it either won't be the right tone, or the right target audience for them. But there is no wrong or right way of doing social - only the best way of talking to your customers on the platforms they're on that is mutually beneficial to the brand and to customers. 

It’s very easy to get caught up in creating content that serve your marketing priorities but the killer question for brands or any organisation is are you adding value to your customers via your social media strategy? Or just trying to derive value from them… if you are doing the latter, you won’t get away with posting more content. 

Measure what matters and do more of what works

This is where Maybe* can help you. We help organisations do this more efficiently. We think differently about social, putting the voice of the customer front and centre. We listen first to help you incrementally improve your results, doing more of what works by understanding what your audience likes.

Our mantra is “Measure what matters and do more of what works”.

As for doing social media right - well just listen carefully to what your audience is telling you. If you are entertaining them you will not post too much. If your content is not relevant even a small amount of it is too much, much the same as any form of communication.  

Maybe’s social media engagement analytics report empowers you and your content team with information. Automatically track, analyse and visualise data from your business’s social media posts and those of your competitors.  Get started for free

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