How often should you schedule posts on social media?

This question we hear a lot from businesses.

The answer is simple.

Daily.

Daily sometimes just isn’t do-able though.

What if I Can’t Post Daily

There are several factors that need to be considered.

First, the nature of your business.

If you are a business that offers products and services most days of the week or 24/7 then your social media presence should be fairly regular.

However, if your business is either an event-based or only offers products and services certain days of the week less active social media might be the way to go.

Also, consider walking the fine line between being noticed and being annoying.

In the case of a business which offers its product or service most of the time new posts should be scheduled once or twice a day.

This will ensure your business regularly appears in the feeds of the people you?re trying to reach and make them familiar with you.

Being more familiar means more likely to think of you first when seeking the product or service you offer.

However, posting too much will get the posts muted by people looking to un-clutter their feeds, decreasing the effectiveness of the posts overall.

Another outcome of this is having your business?s page reported as potential spam by customers who believe your page is not genuine.

You want to be noticed and connected with not filtered and reported.

Event-based Businesses

For event-based businesses or businesses that operate intermittently throughout the week less regular posting is potentially necessary.

For example, music venues may post occasionally to promote an upcoming concert or event.

Likewise, companies that offer seminars will post with increasing frequency as dates approach rather than a consistent and steady stream.

The effect of this is to gradually ramp up interest for the upcoming event.

Compared to maintaining constant engagement your audience to help avoid the pitfall of over-saturation.

It should also be noted that as the general rule most holidays should be acknowledged some way via social media posts.

Not sure what holidays to post about? Check out our post here for help!

Making Life Easier. Build a Schedule.

For large companies with entire social media teams, posting on a daily or event-based schedule is fairly simple.

With the load shared, a strong and consistent media presence is easier to maintain.

For smaller businesses, the work generally falls on one or two people.

Even though the posts are not particularly taxing; consistently posting once or twice a day, on a schedule, requires a significant amount of effort.

Especially if there is other work to be done.

As a small, two person media company we here at Rycob even feel this time crunch!

Social media platforms and apps have developed tools to make this easier.

Facebook allows you to schedule social media posts so that several posts can be written at once and scheduled to go out.

Making it easier for your business to consistently have content without having to write posts several times in the day.

Allowing more focus to be put on the day to day physical operation of your company.

If your company uses Instagram there is a tool where a single post can be shared across it, Facebook, and Twitter with a single click.

This effectively allows the entire social media output of your company for the day to be done all at once.

However, Instagram is by far the most visual of the social media platforms.

So, if your business isn?t necessarily geared toward a visual medium this tool may be difficult to utilize since your company may not have an Instagram presence.

Not sure what to post on social media?

Check out part one of our “How to Stay Relevant on Social Media” series here!