Frequent Posting
How often to post on your social media is a question that has a multitude of different answers. It depends on the business, the interest and the time that you have available. In fact, the question you should be asking instead of this is “How consistently should I post on social media?” Consistent posting is what matters, whether it is once a week, once a month or once a year. Regular consistency is key to social media, Facebook, for example, prefers a page that posts regular, reliable content, and as such this content will be given a higher reach. Obviously the more you post, the better, in theory, but don’t post too much, as a boost in generally meaningless material will lead to your page being recommended to less and less potential customers. Ensure that the posts you offer are brief, simple and consistent.
Lack of Time
A lot of businesses, especially sole traders, do not have time to post content on social media every hour of every day. As a result, these businesses will often post several posts in one day followed by a long period of silence. This is where a calendar comes into place. Social calendars are a great way to both plan for regular future postings and track the results of any previous posts. These result metrics can give the poster an insight into what days, and hours are best to post and what type of content is favored by the followers of the page.
Different Social Channels
It is also hugely important to recognize that each social media platform is different and the type of posts on each platform should showcase this. For example, the use of hashtags on Facebook is redundant as is the use of URLs on Instagram, unless it is through a story. Twitter is not for long posts and you won’t encourage many B2C sales on LinkedIn. Each platform has a unique personality that must be adhered to. Treat these platforms well and respect their rules and they will treat you well back. We will be following this blog up with a second part entitled “What should I post on social media?” where we will be going into details on the exact content that should be displayed on each platform and how you can easily adhere to each guideline.
Blogging / URLs
I would always advise that every single post that can have a url or link to your website that is relevant to the post should have that link. This is obviously not as possible on Instagram or even Twitter but it should be used where applicable. Obviously, don’t have a post saying “Happy St. Patrick’s Day” with a link to your Homepage of selling pens… But do link it to a blog on your website that details the great staff party that was had on the last St. Patrick’s Day and change the text to “We hope you had as great a St. Patrick’s Day as we did last year!” This type of personal connecting posting is relatable to the consumer and also including an image and link allows you to track exactly the amount of links clicks.
Tracking
Tracking is a huge part of social media posting, without it how do you know what posts are popular and what isn’t. How do you know where to start the next time you want to share something important but don’t know how to word it. Word it similarly to the positively resulting posts and different from the negatively resulting posts. This can be hard to judge from a few smaple social media posts but once a collection of results from posts are made, we can begin to see a correlation. Google Analytics is your best friend for any business that has an online presence.
Review
At the end of the day, you should plan your posts wisely if you want results. There’s no need to go down to the exact minute… But as a general rule, I suggest one post every 3 days, this is different for any business but set out a realistic plan and stick to it! Good luck.
