We know it’s not always easy to know how often you should be posting on social media as a business. You want to stay relevant to your audience, while at the same time, you don’t want to overdo it to the point where someone unfollows or unlikes your page.
We often get asked by clients what the sweet spot is. We’re going to get right to the point. Generally speaking, you want to post about 1-4 times a week. More specifically, the amount of times you post a week is mostly dependent on a couple of things: what your goal is and the variety of topics you have to talk about.
What is your goal?
Are you looking to get leads? Are you looking to get your name out there and build brand awareness? Are you looking for post engagement? A combination of these, perhaps? Whatever your goal is, will vary from another business, or even a competitor.
If you’re lead driven:
You’ll likely be posting more Call-to-Actions (CTAs), which aims to get people to take some sort of action or drive traffic to your website. If this is your goal, we recommend keeping it to 2-3 posts a week. That way, you can stay relevant and top-of-mind for your visitors.
If you’re looking to build brand awareness and get engagement:
You’ll likely be posting more branded content, which covers photos about your offerings or services, photos of you or your team, business news or updates. Think of branded content as authentic, real content centered around your business. If your business aligns with this goal, 3-4 times a week is a good spot to start.
If you’re lead driven and looking to build brand awareness:
If you’re finding you want to have both branded content along with some CTA’s, aim to have 1-2 CTA’s a week, along with 2-3 more branded pieces.
You don’t need to stick to a strict schedule every single week, but having a general guideline of what you’ll post based on your goal will help you get started on content.
Guide: When to post on social media
Variety of topics
Now that you’ve evaluated your goals and who and what you’re trying to target, you should be able to identify your talking points. We recommend coming up with 2-6 different categories you can talk about on your brand.
For example, if you are a Yoga Studio, your main categories could be:
- Class offerings
- Call to action
- A wellness/mindfulness tip
- Quote from yourself or outside source relevant to yoga
These 4 categories offer a well-rounded combination of the variety of all goals listed above.
If you do come up with 6 categories, that’s awesome! You clearly have a ton of talking points, but we beg you… please do NOT try to fit all 6 topics into one week. Space these 6 topics out between two weeks and alternate them. We also do not recommend posting more than once a day, and more than 5 times a week. You don’t want to overwhelm your audience.
Guide: Example of Creative Ideas for Social Media Posts
If you are posting on your own, pick a number that is attainable for YOU. Right out of the gate, people have high posting goals. They don’t achieve it, and they quit. Posting once or twice a week is better than nothing at all.
We hope this helps you begin the process of defining your social media strategy! Now you hopefully have an idea of your strategy and how often you should post depending on your goal. Remember, it may take some playing around with to determine what kind of posts work, what posts don’t, and how often to incorporate them into your weekly schedule. And, keep in mind it will take a while to catch up for you to see results. Do lots of testing, and be patient. You got this!