This ques­tion has been com­ing up a lot late­ly. Busi­ness own­ers have been ask­ing me via email, mes­sen­ger, social media and at net­work­ing meet­ings, “Yas­min, how often to post and what to post on social media?”

Let’s get right to it:

If you’re a brand using social media to raise aware­ness of your prod­ucts and ser­vices, build an engaged com­mu­ni­ty of fans and cus­tomers, and dri­ve vis­i­tors to your web­site, you real­ly need to be updat­ing all of your chan­nels once a day, every day.

If this is too much for you, then a min­i­mum of three times per week. Once a week or less doesn’t cut it.

HOW OFTEN TO POST

Face­book: Once a day is best or you’ll start to feel spam­my. Curate or re-share a post every oth­er day.

Insta­gram: 1–2 posts per day. Curate and repur­pose posts and always give credit.

LinkedIn: Once a day. Curate or re-share a post every oth­er day.

[Research shows post­ing on Face­book, Insta­gram and LinkedIn one or two times per day receives 40% high­er user engage­ment com­pared to three or more posts per day. This shows that it’s not the quan­ti­ty, but the quality.]

Twit­ter: 5–10 tweets per day. Twit­ter has a very fast through­put on con­tent and the lifes­pan of tweets is short, about, 2 hours. Most re-tweets hap­pen with­in an hour after tweet­ing, so a high­er dai­ly fre­quen­cy is best. Retweet or curate about 5 tweets per day.

Pin­ter­est: 5–7 pins per day. Pin­ter­est is a high-vol­ume chan­nel, so post­ing only once a day will not lead to much suc­cess for your busi­ness. Make sure to post high qual­i­ty images and take advan­tage of ver­ti­cal pho­tos which take up more screen real estate and are proven to have high­er engage­ment. Tip: Use key­words in your descrip­tions to make it eas­i­er to find in searches.

GAME CHANGER! PLAN YOUR CONTENT

5 Rea­sons To Plan Your Con­tent with a Calendar:

  1. Cre­ates con­sis­ten­cy [this is key!]
  2. Allows you to plan time-sen­si­tive content
  3. Gets you organized
  4. Frees up your time
  5. Facil­i­tates well thought out, valu­able content

Plan­ning your con­tent is a game-chang­er! It stops you from being in “I have to post some­thing-itus” pan­ic mode and post­ing con­tent you ran­dom­ly come across while scrolling that’s the fla­vor of the day or week!

CONSISTENCY is KEY because this is how the for­mu­la works:

Con­sis­ten­cy = your con­tent gets in front of more people/clients = see­ing your posts often = more engage­ment and shar­ing = your posts will show up ORGANICALLY more often in the News Feed as Face­book strives to show peo­ple con­tent that is more rel­e­vant to them! Remem­ber Jan­u­ary 2018 Face­book News Feed Changes?

NOTE: Boost­ing Posts on Facebook

Doing the above will organ­i­cal­ly improve your reach to your fans. But only 1% (YES…THAT’S ONE PERCENT) see your posts in their News Feed. So if you have 2,000 fol­low­ers, only 20 see your post. What a waste!

It’s pay-for play now. Putting mon­ey behind your posts (a.k.a. “boost­ing” them) to “Peo­ple Who Like You Page” so many more of your fol­low­ers SEE it in their News Feed is KEY.

Choose 2–3 strate­gic posts per week to boost.

5–3‑2 RULE FOR SOCIAL POSTING

5 posts should be VALUABLE, EDUCATIONAL and HELPFUL orig­i­nal con­tent from you or oth­ers that you are re-posting.

3 posts should be con­tent or pro­mo­tion from you, your com­pa­ny, prod­ucts, services. *

2 posts should be per­son­al updates that build your brand. *

[Note that the 5–3‑2 is not a dai­ly quo­ta but rather a ratio for any group of 10 updates you post over any timeframe.]

* Com­pa­ny or Self-pro­mo­tion can work when you add val­ue and engage! Com­pa­ny, prod­uct or self-pro­mo­tion has a bad rep­u­ta­tion because it’s so often asso­ci­at­ed with mar­ket­ing, adver­tis­ing, and pitch, pitch, pitch! You can be pro­mo­tion­al and still pro­vide val­ue. Pro­mo­tion can be a good thing if your con­tent is out­stand­ing­ly use­ful and always adds val­ue. Do so in a help­ful, action­able, qual­i­ty way, so you are doing right by your audi­ence. Val­ue takes a front seat, and pro­mo­tion sits in the back. Both ele­ments are there, but the high val­ue of out­stand­ing con­tent is what mat­ters most.

WHAT TO POST

The best type of con­tent is one that is valu­able, help­ful, inspires emo­tion, authen­tic, bonds with your audi­ence, and will dri­ve engage­ment: likes, shares, reposts.

Here are some ideas. Start by choos­ing ONE of these types of posts per day.

Con­tent That Inspires Emotion

  • Humor/Something Fun­ny
  • Enter­tain
  • Week­end inspiration
  • Intel­lec­tu­al
  • Chal­lenge
  • Dai­ly nugget
  • Moti­va­tion

Con­tent In Sto­ry Form

  • Nar­ra­tives
  • Sto­ries on case studies
  • How cus­tomers found you

Open-end­ed Content

  • Ask A Ques­tion ** see below for some fun stuff
  • Q&A
  • Sur­vey
  • Ask Me Anything
  • Voting/Poll
  • Dis­cus­sion – What Do You Think?
  • Fill in the Blank

Infor­ma­tion­al Content

  • Tips
  • Guides
  • Trends
  • Pop­u­lar misconceptions
  • Info­graph­ics

Product/Services Con­tent [TIP: Don’t just post ‘bor­ing’ con­tent on your prod­ucts or services]

  • Ask your fol­low­ers for their input
  • Ask them to share their thoughts on how to improve your products/services
  • Behind the Scenes
  • An employ­ee or cus­tomer using the product
  • Cus­tomer sub­mit­ted photo
  • Fan pho­tos
  • Free­bie
  • Cus­tomer Love/Testimonials
  • Spe­cial offer/promotion
  • Exclu­sive offer

Per­son­al Content

  • Shar­ing your feel­ings, an experience
  • Problem/Solution
  • Share your expertise
  • Pre­dic­tion
  • Cel­e­bra­tion
  • Throw Back Thurs­day TBT

Your Blog

  • Post your full blog once
  • Break it up into 3–4 small­er bite-size pieces to post over 2 weeks

POST FORMATS

  • Video! Pre-record­ed or Face­book Live is being syn­di­cat­ed and pushed into News Feeds and gets the high­est lev­el of engage­ment. Peo­ple are 85 per­cent more like­ly to buy a prod­uct after view­ing a prod­uct video.
  • Visu­al Content/Compelling Images/Photos. Posts that include beau­ti­ful images pro­duce 650 per­cent high­er engage­ment than text-only post.
  • Ani­mat­ed GIFFs are fun! https://giphy.com
  • Boomerang for Insta­gram: mini videos that loop back and forth.

SOURCE