Posting to social media in today’s digital marketplace is a must for any business owner who is committed to growing their brand. Yet the question of how often to be posting is not so simply answered. Additionally, the time commitment of posting can be intrusive for many busy brand managers and business owners. Surely there is a better way?
Today we’ll look into social media branding and how often you should be posting to your business profiles. We’ll also explore some of the tools available for making the job of social media scheduling more convenient.
Social Media Posting Frequency
The dilemma that is faced by business owners and social media marketers is how to strike a balance between posting social content too often and not enough. You want to be connecting in a captivating way with followers, without alienating them by being too “in their face”. The last thing you want is to clog up the newsfeeds of your fans; however you also need to make sure you are not forgotten in the realm of social media noise by posting too infrequently. Think of it like Goldilocks: too much is bad; too little is bad; it needs to be “just right”. It can be a delicate balance.
Sharing and Listening
The perfect strategy for social media branding requires an ideal blend of both sharing content and listening to follower responses. You need to find the perfect balance between being interesting or informative and annoying.
You need to make your social presence felt on a regular basis, but you don’t want to overdo it.
Much depends on the nature of your business and your target audience as well. If you’re targeting Millennials who are using their social accounts constantly throughout the day, posting more often is a good idea. If, instead, you’re targeting an older and more conservative demographic who likely follow fewer pages and use social media less frequently, posting too often will quickly become annoying to them.
Many novice brand marketers will believe that more posts get better results. This is not always true!
There have been a number of formal studies undertaken by market researchers into optimal posting frequency, and the results are surprising in some cases.
Recommended Posting Frequency
(Sources: Ahalogy, Buffer, HubSpot, Dow Social, Constant Contact, Quick Sprout, Nulou, and Localvox)
One way to assess if your post frequency is ideal is the response of followers.
Are your posts being likes, commented upon, and shared? Are your follower numbers growing organically? Are you losing followers? When you get post content and frequency right, your numbers will increase.
Social Media Scheduling
Thanks to an array of fantastic tools, it’s easy to pre-schedule social media posts for your business. This is the most convenient way for most businesses to plan and execute their social media strategy and to organise themselves and their posts ahead of time.
Just some of the social media scheduling tools available include:
Other useful scheduling tools to explore include SocialOomph, Social Flow, Sprout Social, Crowdbooster, DashBurst, Everypost, Symphony, Postcron, LaterBro, Timely, Buffero, DoShare … and the list goes on. There really is a perfect social media scheduling tool out there for every business.
There is one important thing to keep in mind if you are scheduling your business social posts ahead of time: you need to be committed to checking in each day to respond to comments. Interaction is the key to the success of your social campaigns, and unlike other forms of marketing, social media isn’t just about broadcasting to your audience. If your followers receive silence from your side even when they comment on your posts, they will move onto more communicative pages. You need to be present, post mindfully, and show appreciation for your followers – do so and their appreciation for you will flourish.
Originally published on Linkedin Pulse.