Posting on social media once a day is likely to get you some engagement, shares or traffic. But, would it increase if you posted two times a day, or even three? Does posting more get you bigger results or are you just annoying your followers?
We collected Twitter data of top entrepreneurs within many industries to answer the questions you’ve been wondering. How often should I post on Twitter? What day and time should I post for high engagement? What type of tweets should I post and what types of media do I use?
These entrepreneurs have got Twitter down to a tee, forget trial and error and learn from their success.
Elon Musk currently has 29.9M followers. He’s active on twitter, with an average of 2.4 tweets a day and 1.1 favourites a day. Three quarters of his Twitter activity is replying to mentions and most of his media use is photos. Elon’s main use of hashtag is , of course, #tesla and his most mentioned users are @tesla and @erdayastronaut.
Jeff Bezos is less active on twitter with 0.1 tweets per day and no favourites. Jeff’s twitter activity is the complete opposite to Elon’s with only 0.877% of his posts being responses. 93% of his posts are his own content, which is quite a statement within itself. His main hashtag used is #gradatimferociter which is Blue Origin’s motto.
Gradatim Ferociter is Latin for ‘Step by Step, Ferociously’ which Bezos says is his approach to spaceflight. The user he mainly tweets is @blueorigin which may be surprising to some who know him for being the founder of Amazon. Jeff currently has 1.1M followers
Bill Gates has 48.5M followers but usage is fairly low with 0.8 tweets per day and no favourites. Similar to Jeff’s posts, they mainly consist of tweets with a limited use of retweets and replies. Bill’s most used hashtag is #endpolio followed by #polio and #givingtuesday. He mainly tweets @melinadagates which is his the founder of his next most mentioned @gatesfoundation.
As you can see, Bill’s use of hashtags differs from Elon and Jeff, who are mainly promoting their businesses. Instead Bill’s hashtags are aimed at charitable causes.
Vera Wang has 849K followers and while she’s more active than Jeff and Bill, she’s not quite Elon. Interestingly nearly all of her media is photos, which makes sense seen as she’s in the fashion industry. Vera does have the highest amount of retweets, but she rarely replies to followers. Her most used hashtag is #verawang
Richard Branson has 12.7M followers and he’s even more active than Elon Musk. An average of 5.5 tweets a day is impressive, or some may argue it’s unnecessary. With 0.1 favourites a day, Richard is way more interested in his own content than other, although he does respond to some of his following. His most used hashtag is #virginfamily and his most mentioned user is #virgingalactic. In fact, his top 5 mentioned users are all various virgin accounts.
Oprah Winfrey 42.7M followers and with 3.2 tweets a day, she’s certainly got enough to say. Oprah interestingly has nearly a split amount of tweets and replies which is a first on this list. She also uses videos nearly as much as photos which is completely new to this list so far. Her most used hashtag is #supersoulsunday which is her series.
Sean Combs has 15.6M followers and with an average of 10.3 tweets a day. Sean has a near split of tweets and retweets He mainly uses videos which is to be expected within the music industry. Following closely along is the use of photos and a higher percentage than usual of GIFs. His most used hashtag is #thefour which is a music competition show he produces.
Mark Cuban has 7.7M followers and with an average of 0.6 tweets a day. Mark replies to his mentions nearly as much as he tweets. He has a preferable media use of photos, with little interest in GIFs. His most used hashtag is #thefour which is a music competition show he produces.
Lord Sugar has 5.3M followers with an average of 14.8 tweets a day. His replies are almost non existent, but he does have a decent number of retweets. Similar to Rihana, he likes to push content out to his followers, rather than engage. He has a preferable media use of photos and videos, but little interest in GIFs.
Rihanna has 95.2M followers and with nearly 3 tweets a day, she’s got a few things to share with the world. With a very small amount of replies and retweets, she prefers to push content out rather than engage. The majority of media used it photos which is to be expected when running a makeup and clothing brand. Her main use of hashtag is #diamondsworldtour which ended in 2013.
Gordon has 7.3M followers and tweets around 6 times a day. He’s up there with Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates on mainly using tweets as his type of content with a limited number of retweets and replies. The main use of media used is photos at nearly 60%, followed by videos and some use of GIFs. His most used hashtags are #24hoursfox and #masterchef.
Ella has 193.6K followers and tweets around 6 times a day. She's active with Twitter with 7 tweets a day and she’s the most active with favouriting content. Along with Mark Cuban, the type of posts she uses is pretty diverse, with the majority being retweets and a near equal split of replies and tweets. She very heavily uses photos over videos, which differs slightly from Gordon who is also within the same industry.
Simon has 11.6M followers and he’s not as active on Twitter when compared to many of the other entrepreneurs on this list. He mainly tweets his own content, but he isn’t opposed to the odd reply and retweet. He’s also the only entrepreneur on this list to not use GIFs at all. Simon uses a lot of photos, but Vera Wang still comes out on top for the most use of this type of media.
Theo has 490.8K followers and mainly tweets his own content but is partial to a retweet. Like many others on this list, he mainly uses photos as his media type but uses very little video or GIFs. Only Theo and Deborah share the same peak engagement day and with them both being on Dragon’s Den you’d assume this was due to the show but that airs on Sunday’s. His main hashtag usage is #SBS and #smallbusiness which is right on brand.
Victoria has 12.6M followers and mainly tweets her own content, so much so that retweets and replies are a very small percentage. She’s not a fan of the favourite function and her engagement peak is one of the earliest on the list along with Alan Sugar and Eleanor.
Deborah puts out a staggering 15.2 tweets a day to her 347.1K followers. She has a healthy share of retweets and tweets but doesn’t appear to reply to users much. At this point you’ve definitely picked up the trend of mainly using photos as the prominent media output. Debroah does seem to like the favourite feature, not as much as Eleanor though.
Martin puts out an even more staggering figure of 21.2 tweets a day to his 659.4K followers. Martin is the only one on this list with replies as his main types of post, which may account for the high number of tweets per day. The fact that he’s seen as a man of the people is also a contribution towards the level of engagement he puts out.
Steven doesn’t tweet as much as the previous two with an average of 2.9 tweets a day to his 72.9K followers. He does however have a higher reply rate than most within this list, not as much as Lewis of course. Like many others, he mainly uses photos as the prominent media output. He is known for making many videos of himself giving out words of wisdom so many would expect a heavier video percentage.
Curtis puts out an average of 3.7 tweets a day to his 11.2M followers. He definitely doesn’t value Twitters favourite function and he doesn't reply to users much either. Maybe Curtis prefers his own content with 87.8% of his tweets being his.
Stefani’s average number of tweets stands at 2.1 a day to her 80.7M followers. She appears to reply to users more than favourite their content and has a good amount of tweet and retweet ration of content. She mainly uses photos as her type of media, but also uses videos which is likely due to the success of her new makeup brand. Her top mentioned account is the @btwfoundation which is a non-profit organization founded by Stefani and her mother.
The perfect amount of tweets per day is 5.3 and the ideal frequency that you should favourite is 1.8 times a day. Based on these successful entrepreneurs peak engagement times, it’s predicted that the ideal time to post is between 8pm and 11pm on a Sunday.
Below you can see the specifics of how to tweet like an entrepreneur:
We also gathered all of the entrepreneurs tweets and put them into one word cloud. This enables the visualisation of common terminology they share. The main qualities the most used words share is that they’re positive and typically engaging terms. These include words such as happy, hope, energy, love, fun, live & excited.
Terminology that you’d expect from entrepreneurs such as money, power, job, plan, task and deal were significantly smaller than the more positive terminology. The entrepreneurs weren't just all talk of themselves either, the word team and support were frequently mentioned.
We found the average by adding up the number of tweets per day and divided by 20. We also used the mean calculation for the favourites section, the type of posts and the type of media used.
Sources:
https://www.veganfoodandliving.com/news/deliciously-ella-launches-range-of-vegan-frozen-ready-meals/
