HOW OFTEN SHOULD I POST ON SOCIAL MEDIA?
Firstly, I believe very strongly that if you are just starting out, or you’re a one person business right now, then just focus on ONE platform.
Despite your good intentions, posting in more than one place puts additional and unnecessary pressure on you and your time. It dilutes your attention and focus and although it’s easy to think that you can share content across platforms, people often gravitate to a certain platform. Different content does better on different platforms and so sharing exactly the same thing across several platforms is never really the best approach.
Marketing your business is just one part of the multitude of hats you wear as small business owners. Putting too much time into your marketing bucket doesn’t leave enough time for all the other things you need to do, like actually making your products or serving your clients.
Plus, it’s all very well posting everywhere when you are starting out and don’t have many clients, but as soon as your business is in flow, the pressure on actually doing the work will push some other things down the list and you won’t have as much time for marketing as you did.
Which brings me nicely onto the next super important part about social media, the best thing you can do, is to post consistently.
Now obviously, if you can consistently create good content that enables you to post daily (or even more than once a day) then fab.
But for many people, posting daily is too much and not realistic.
You are much better off posting consistently on your grid 3 times a week for the whole year than you are posting full on for a month and then running out of steam.
So work out how much content you can create monthly and then work out how to spread that out. Sticking to the same days each week (look to your Insights to see when your audience are online).
The reason you want to post when the majority of your audience are online is because early engagement on your post tells Instagram that you have created some great content, so that post will be shown to even more people, thereby giving more opportunity for even more engagement and so on... You can see how this spirals.
Think of your grid as the foundation of your marketing, your shop window if you like, your Stories are your behind the scenes, your informal chats with your customers. Reels are a bit like your ads - the way to reach new followers and share value with those already following you. Lives are your way to have a dialogue with your customers who are online at the same time as you. And IGTVs are a way to go in depth on a subject.
All are useful, but again, don’t feel you have to be everywhere, creating content across all features. Get your grid up and running and then take small steps to branch out. Try out the different features and see which you enjoy, where you feel most creative and which bits your audience are engaging with too.
With all of this, the focus should be on building an engaged group of followers. ‘Your people’. People who love what you do, love what you say, want to talk about you to other people and ultimately will buy from you - when the time is right.
So in conclusion, work out what consistency looks like for you by following the three simple steps:
Focus on one platform to begin with.
Work out how much great content you can create a month.
Look at your insights for the best posting days / times.