How Often Should Your Social Media Manager Post for Your Business?
At the Social Media Advisor, we talk a lot about posting consistently. Consistency is the foundation of any social media marketing strategy. However, what consistency means for each business can look different. The point is to pick a posting schedule and have an editorial calendar and a plan for your social media marketing.
How, as a small business owner, to determine how often your social media manager should post for your business?
Schedule
Depending on the platform, the number of posts you should aim for each week can look different. Since most of our clients prefer Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn – we can tell you that, at a minimum, your business should be posting at least 3x a week to stay relevant for your audience and for the social media algorithms. (This amount goes up for platforms like Twitter and Pinterest.)
We also have clients who post 5 days a week and some that post every day. How often your business should post, within these timeframes, is usually determined by how much original content is already available to work with. Business owners that invest in a blogging or video strategy have more original content to pull from, making it easier to create more social media posts per week.
Too Many Posts
There are brands that post more often than 7x a week, which we don’t recommend. In our experience, posting more increases your opportunity to lose followers or to post content that isn’t seen. The way the algorithms work, the first post per day that starts to get engagement is the one that will be featured the most – burying any other content you’ve shared that day. This is a waste of time and energy. It could also be a strategic problem if your audience doesn’t first engage with the post you were hoping would get seen or shared the most that day. You can eliminate this problem entirely by posting no more than once per day.
Newsfeed Rotation
You may find that a post does so well that it will show up in feeds for more than one day. Social engagement is always the goal, so, a top-performing post may continue to get featured in the newsfeeds of your audience in an attempt to gain even more reach and engagement. This will, certainly, downplay any other posts you have scheduled until this one begins to lose traction. Notice when this occurs as it will be a good window into the type of content your audience prefers so that you can continue to get great engagement in the future.
Only you, and your social media manager, will be able to determine the right posting schedule for you. If you are new to social media marketing, consider the first few months a trial period where you pick different dates and times, and then check the analytics to see what performed best. This way you can build, and continue to tweak, your social media schedule to achieve optimal results.
Are you finding it is getting more difficult for you to post about your business in social media due to time and energy restraints? The Social Media Advisor team can create a custom editorial calendar for your business, create on-target messaging and branded images aligned with your culture, and get it scheduled each month – taking this huge task off your plate entirely! Ask us more about our Monthly Social Media Management service!
Be sure to Follow us and Let’s Engage!
Hollie Clere of The Social Media Advisor is a “#BeAwesome” Developer, Social Media, Brand Builder, Content Manager, Trainer and Author in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, and the tools to manage them.
Click here for Social Media Training, Speaking and Strategy Consultations.
