We Analyzed a Year’s Worth of User Data – See How Your Social Media Marketing Compares

Edgar posted about 22.6 million social media updates in 2017.

(Which sounds like kind of a lot.)

But how exactly are people like you using Edgar on a regular basis?

What’s going on behind the scenes?

We took a close-up look at our data – and we’re giving you a peek.

Which timeslots are the most popular on users’ schedules?

How many updates did the average user add last year?

Which types of update are the most popular – and least popular?

Whether you’re already an Edgar user or you’re just curious about how other entrepreneurs handle their social media marketing, these answers are pretty revealing – so let’s take a look!

We collected some of the most interesting data we discovered in this infographic (just click to enlarge it), but you can keep on reading to learn more details:

How often do other people post on social media?

“How often should I post” is probably the most popular social media marketing question on the planet.

(At least, next to “Which profile picture best shows off my professional side on LinkedIn?”)

Experts can debate the answer to that question as much as they want – here’s a breakdown of why you shouldn’t necessarily listen to them, and how to figure it out for yourself.

In the meantime, though, how often do Edgar users schedule social media updates?

Take a look at how many updates per week Edgar’s users have added to their schedules page:

About 2/3 of Edgar users schedule 50 or fewer updates per week, while the average number of timeslots per user is about 63 per week.

Not sure when you should be scheduling your own posts? You can find that out for yourself fairly easily, but here are the times of day most popular with Edgar users:

As you can see, users tend to schedule the most updates within the business hours of their own time zones – they peak between 9 and 10 am, and start dropping off after 5 pm.

The least popular time for scheduling social updates? Between 1 and 2 am:

(Sorry, night owls.)

If this seems like an obvious choice, remember: your audience might not be where you think it is.

For example, take a look at your Twitter analytics. Ours reveal that about a third of our followers aren’t in US time zones – so the updates we schedule for the middle of the night our time might be a lot more visible to someone who’s an ocean away!

Now that we’ve seen how often Edgar users are posting and at what times, we have another big question to ask:

What types of content are most popular with Edgar users?

Our users already know that Edgar saves your social media updates according to category, so you can control what types of content get posted at certain times.

(Like, “Hey Edgar, share something from my Pug GIFs category every Friday at 2 pm.”)

You can create as many categories as you want, but Edgar also comes with a few starters, so users can start adding social updates right away.

Here’s how popular each of those categories is, along with about how many updates are currently saved in each one across our user base:

1. My Blog Posts (226k)
2. Inspirational/Funny (135k)
3. Tips (108k)
4. Promotional (88k)
5. Questions (37k)

Most users don’t restrict themselves just to the starter categories, though – Edgar users spread out their content across an average of 15 different categories.

(Remember – not every category is necessarily on the schedule at the same time! For example, a lot of users have different categories for different seasons or holidays, then swap them out on the schedule.)

Link shorteners are also popular with Edgar users – not surprising, considering how much valuable click data they have to offer.

(AND considering that customized URLs can increase your clickthrough rates up to 39 percent!)

More than 2/3 of Edgar users shorten their links – with either Bitly, Rebrandly, or our own integrated shortener, Ed.gr.

So that covers when people post and what people post, but what about their overall number of posts?

How many updates should you save?

Edgar allows you to upload and save an unlimited number of social updates.

On the one hand, that means you never have to delete stuff to make room. (Amazing!)

On the other hand, that might sound intimidating. (Scary!)

How many updates do you need? A million? A million and one? The possibilities are literally endless!

But the average is probably less scary than you think.

Edgar users added an average of 236 updates each in 2017 – that’s less than five updates per user per week!

(If you’ve never tried recycling your social updates before, only having to write five per week probably sounds kind of like a dream come true. There’s a reason it’s the standard even for big brands!)

The average Edgar user has about 636 social media updates saved in their library – and about half of all users have made adding new content faster and easier by connecting an RSS feed.

(On average, users who take advantage of Edgar’s RSS feature have actually connected four different feeds. Here’s how!)

Ultimately, adding new content to Edgar isn’t something that happens all at once – most of our users prefer adding a little bit here and there, and letting it build up over time!

How do YOU compare?

So, Edgar users – what do you think of these stats?

Are you surprised by how other people use Edgar?

Or does all this sound a lot like your own experience?

Does it make you think about anything you’d like to do differently?

Share your reactions in the comments!