This is something we get asked a lot and it’s easy to see why! You want to stay active and keep your business in front of your audience, but you also don’t want to post so often that people start scrolling straight past your content.

So, how often should you actually be posting? Let’s break it down.

Consistency is key

Posting multiple times every single day might sound like a good idea, but for most small businesses, it can quickly become time consuming and difficult to maintain. The key to social media is consistency, so it’s better to choose a posting schedule that you can realistically keep up with every week.

For the average small business, we recommend posting around 3-4 times a week. This gives you enough opportunities to engage with your audience and keep your business visible, while still leaving you time to focus on the other important areas of your business.

Social media platforms also tend to favour accounts that are active and consistent. Regular posting helps keep your profile active and gives your content more opportunities to reach your audience organically. When your followers know when to expect content from you, they’re more likely to stop, read and interact with it. Maintaining a steady posting schedule can therefore help build engagement over time, rather than posting lots of content one week and then going quiet the next.

Quality over quantity

It’s important that the content you post is good quality every time. You never know when someone might come across your page for the first time, or when a post might reach a much wider audience than usual, so you want to make a good impression.

Some posts will naturally come together more easily than others, so don’t feel like you have to rush something out just to stick to a certain number. If four posts a week isn’t realistic, three quality posts are better than four that have been thrown together.

Posting less frequently can also help prevent your audience from feeling overwhelmed by too much content. Instead, focus on creating posts that are useful, entertaining or relevant to your audience. Content that gives people a reason to stop, read, engage or share is more valuable than simply posting for the sake of it.

Social media training

There’s more to social media than deciding how often to post. If you’re looking to manage your social media in house, our bespoke training sessions can help you get more from your platforms and make sure your time is being used effectively.

We cover everything from choosing the right platforms and creating content ideas that help increase brand awareness, to understanding analytics and measuring how your social media is performing.

We can also share plenty of practical tips and tricks, including finding free stock images, creating graphics, batch creating content and scheduling posts using tools such as Buffer. These can help you save time and make managing multiple social media accounts more efficiently.

If you’d like to learn more about what you should be doing on social media and how to make your efforts more effective, book a training session with us.