Content marketing on social media depends on trends in consumer behaviors.
A changing focus and emphasis on audience activities on social media are a key
optimization problem in social media marketing (SMM). A solution to this problem
lies in a field of ongoing empirical studies of posting frequency. In the review of the
literature, authors highlight the role of social media as a promising channel for a
direct interaction of companies/brands with consumers. Based on theoretical
generalizations, authors present a generation sequence of an SMM content strategy.
The article also includes an analysis of posting activities of users from Russia on
well-known social media. A cost-benefit analysis of posting activities rests upon
some factors: socio-demographic characteristics of users, a content format, time
and day of the week parameters, etc. Data come from such sources as aggregated
statistics of social media and selective interviewing. An analysis of activities for
users from Russia has shown that VKontakte is the most popular platform; Instagram
is the second, while Facebook is the third. Odnoklassniki and Twitter are less
preferred. VKontakte users respond best to short posts. On Facebook, entries with
medium-sized texts have got the highest number of responds. On Instagram, long
posts work better. The photo format is a leader in all of the social media. The video
format has a middle position, while a text is the most inefficient type of content.
There is strong differentiation in response time depending on a target audience.
Findings have made it possible to present recommendations for optimization of
content marketing.