How often to post
Be consistent. Consistent about - quality, volume, narrative, and categories.
How often to post?
Once a day, once a week?
Thrice a day, twice a week?
I am sure we all have faced questions like these many times and everyone has varied answers for this topic. Some believe in the power of frequency, posting multiple times a day. Whereas some say, numbers do not matter, what matters is the quality of your post content.
In my own experience - both matter. Quality as well as the frequency.
Though I understand that maintaining both for many, especially, small businesses or solopreneurs could be challenging. It’s not easy to produce quality content consistently and it’s definitely not easy to be constantly active on social channels when you have many other business aspects to manage.
But the truth is, the channels are so cluttered out there, that it's difficult to get noticed amongst the sea of content getting uploaded every minute. To add to that, most of the platform algorithms support active accounts more. There is no easy way out, no shortcut. If we have money, paid marketing helps but only to a certain extent. It definitely gives instant boost and results but it’s not sustainable unless we keep pumping in more money.
So, is there a sustainable solution for small businesses? Yes, there is and that is to be regular. By being regular, I don’t mean posting multiple times a day. What I mean is being consistent.
Consistent about - quality, volume, narrative, and categories.
Frequency matters but what matters a lot more is consistency.
Below is a screenshot of one of the Instagram pages, Kiddingly, that I manage for children’s books review and doodles. Whenever I post, I clearly see the engagement going up and vice versa. There is a clear correlation between posts and growth numbers, however, the growth path doesn’t map to posting daily directly.
On average, I post there 3-4 times a week including stories. I am passionate about this category and I would love to post more. But, my current bandwidth doesn’t allow me to do it every day. What I definitely do is post consistently, about the same topics, maintaining the quality and tonality.
And it works for me.
What doesn’t work or won't work are patterns like these -
No posts for days.
Lots of posts on one day.
Random content to meet the goal of one post per day.
Absence for long and then buying out likes and followers to compensate.
Quite often we observe that when we start, we put in lots of effort in creating the pages and posting content. But as things get busier, the zeal fizzles out. Post too often and we will be treated as spam. Post too little and we will be forgotten quickly.
Here’re a few things that you may try if you’re a small business or solopreneur.
Have a calendar and broadly defined topic list on what you would like to post. Pre-planning helps, else we end up scratching our head at the last moment on what to post.
Define a frequency that’s comfortable to you and try to stick to it. It could be once a week or once daily. If you can’t achieve one per day, it’s perfectly fine. What is important is that you stick to a consistent schedule.
Keep the conversation going. It’s not about only posting our own content. A lot of magic happens when we engage with others’ content too. In your effort estimation, allocate time to interact, comment, and share others’ posts.
Do proper research on text and hashtags. Hashtags help in getting us discovered, especially if we’re a new brand. A consistent tone helps us in establishing our authority.
Ride on the trends if there is a brand fit. Seasonal content for events or festivals brings additional growth. However, do evaluate if your brand has a synergy with the event. If we see the current wave of covid messaging, we find banks sharing tips on including turmeric in our diet and apparel companies asking us to buy clothes for zoom calls. I mean really?
To conclude - decide on a number of posts that you think you can manage and commit to it. Calendar and clarity on topics will help drive consistency.
Are there some industry benchmarks for post frequency? It depends upon channel to channel and to some extent on the category too. I have compiled case studies of a few brands and that’s the content for my next post. Keep watching the space for more.
Cheers,
Kanupriya
*In case you would like to know about how to generate content ideas, you may check my recent Medium post here.
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*This post is the sixth post in a 10-posts series that I have created for Small Businesses, Passion Economy Professionals, and Solopreneurs to help them in their Product Marketing Journey. If you liked it and would like to read more, you may read the seventh post here.
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Know more about ‘Connecting The Dots’ here. Looking forward to connecting the dots together :).
Thanks for sharing! Very insightful