Medalist Athlete Branding Guide

Learn how to build and grow your athlete brand.

How often should you post to Facebook and Twitter

The social sharing app maker Buffer recently posted a great article titled "The Social Media Frequency Guide: How Often to Post to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn And More" The post includes data and graph finding the perfect frequency at which you should post to Facebook & Twitter. 

It is a great resource and a must read to online marketers. But not so athlete-friendly.

So we spared you the jargon-heavy read and cherry picked what matters to us, athletes:

How often to post on Facebook

It looks like once a day is the way to go on Facebook. Engagement seems to decrease for every additional posts.

Bottom line: refrain yourself, only post important updates. 

How often to post to Twitter

Three tweets seems the be the magic number for optimal posting. Engagement seems to decrease after three tweets posted per day.

It's unlikely that your are tweeting much more than that but if you do, don't feel bad about it. While the engagement per tweet decreases, the overall engagement seems to go up. 

Bottom line: tweet often. 

Something to consider: The incredibly short life cycle of a tweet
18 minutes of fame, that's it. Your tweet will hit its peak of retweet and engagement after being live for 18 minutes. 

On the other hand, your last tweet will get more exposure since it will also be visible from your profile.

"Presumably, the longer a tweet sits at the top of your page, the longer its life. The more you tweet, the shorter the lifespan of each individual tweet."

Bottom line: timing is key.

Facebook’s life cycle is much longer, relatively speaking

Facebook posts reach their half-life at the 90-minute mark, nearly four times longer than Twitter. 

The 90-minute mark was found by Wisemetrics in their study of Twitter and Facebook life cycles. They found that 24 minutes was the median engagement point for Twitter and 90 minutes for Facebook. 

For Facebook, a post reaches 75 percent of its potential in the first 5 hours (vs. three hours for Twitter).

Bottom line: twitter makes for the perfect 'real-time' update for an event whereas Facebook is the place to go for a 'race report' update.

The late-night infomercial effect

When there’s nothing else on, you’re more likely to watch an infomercial.

ie.: When there’s little else being tweeted, your tweets are more likely to stand out.

Turns out, there is a flip side to post updates when you are competing or training in a different time-zone (ex.: North American racing World Cups in Europe).

How's that to debunk the myth that you should post when everybody is online!

Bottom line: don't sweat the time conversion. Keep it real, tweet when it happens.

To wrap it up, tweet your spontaneous events knowing that they won't be in the limelight for long. Feel free to do it as much as you want. During an event, for example, go on and tweet your results and whereabouts. Or just do like Chris Mazdzer and take a selfie next time you're 20ft away from Mr. Putin:

Then, turn to Facebook for your planned update to ensure a longer exposure.

Written by
Geoff Wolfer
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