How often should I post?

We hear this question all the time: how often should I be posting on social media to get the best bang for my buck?

I wish there was a magic number but the truth is, it’s not that simple. If it were, everyone would be posting that number of times and seeing crazy results! No, it’s not that simple.

Would you believe me if I said that you could be posting 2-3 times per week and potentially see just as much engagement as if you were posting every day?

Now, that all depends on a few different factors. And I talk about a few of those in my latest video (below). So without further ado, let’s get into the three things we should be considering before we ask the question “how often should I be posting on social media?”

#1: Quality over quantity

You hear it all the time, but it’s so true. If your quality isn’t providing value to your audience, then it’s not quality content. If your current content is unprofessional or just thousands of memes you thought were funny but have nothing to do with the problem you solve for your customer, you’re not generating quality content. If you’re seeing zero engagement when you post over and over, your customer probably doesn’t understand how you can solve a problem in their lives.

Your solution here is simple. Provide value. What problems do you solve? What questions do you hear all the time that you can answer? What’s happening in your industry that’s important for your customer to be informed of? All of this is potential content sitting there, ready for you to post.

When your customer sees the value you add to their life and understands the problem you solve, then you’ll grow an engaged audience.

So, how can you tell if some content is better than others? That leads us to point #2.

#2: Test everything.

I was recently working with a client whose analytics showed us that most of their audience was online earlier in the morning. When we ran a few tests with posts throughout the day, we found that the time of day that received the most engagement was actually between 4-6 PM.

That’s very different timing. If we would have relied on Facebook’s analytics, we could have been losing out on so many people in their audience. Now, that’s not at all to say that Facebook’s analytics were wrong. There are a lot of factors that play into reasons why the engagement was so much higher in the late afternoon. But, if we didn’t test, we would have never known who we could have been reaching.

I tell you this because it’s one of the most important things in social media marketing and in marketing in general. If you don’t test what works best, you’ll never know.

You could test engagement on different channels or platforms, time of days or even days of the week, creative, and a whole lot more. But the point is: test. You don’t know what you don’t know, and you’re not going to know unless you try. You know?

You may be feeling like we’re two steps in, but this whole social media takes up a lot of time. How can you possibly take care of it all? That leads us to point #3.

#3: Identify your capacity.

The fact of the matter is, social media is incredibly important for business growth today, and it cannot be ignored in your marketing efforts. However, it takes time and energy to keep up with it in order to ensure its success. So, identify how much time you are able to set aside to dedicate to generating content and responding to your audience on social media.

This is extremely important because consistency is key on socials. Your customers need to be reminded consistently that you are there, ready to help them when they need it.

Ultimately, the question that we should be asking is: how many hours per week do I have to be spending in order to generate quality content and learn from my audience on social media?

If your answer is 2 hours, then how many quality posts can you create or curate in those two hours? Do that consistently for 3 months and measure the difference in your performance. You can even plan out months of content at a time with tools like Hootsuite and Sprout Social, which could give you an advantage to making sure there is a stream of content flowing.

So, let’s recap:

1. Create and curate quality posts that add value to your customer’s life and solves their problems.

2. Test your content, your posting schedule, and time of day to create an optimized strategy to reach the most amount of people

3. Set aside time to plan and post and schedule that time in your calendar/agenda/time tracker. Make sure that it gets done so that you can be consistent with your audience.

Now let’s get going! Questions about your social media presence or want to measure your social media growth? Benchmark your performance with our social media audit. In 5 simple steps, you’ll have a baseline and an outlined strategy for your social media presence. Click here to download 5 steps to audit your social media!

INSERT VIDEO HERE

#facebook #instagram #socialmedia #socialmediamarketing