There’s no easy answer to this question as the solution is different for every marketer. What is the composition of your target audience? If it skews to millennials, the answer is more often than if your target is skewed older. Is yours the type of product or service that needs to post more often? I would argue not, but there are more important factors to consider than posting frequency:
- Posting consistency. There’s nothing much different about social media marketing than any other marketing tactic…consistency of message content and delivery is a prerequisite to building a relationship with your reader.
- Content is vital, but while pictures and videos of cute animals might work for some, it’s not going to cut it when you’re marketing a professional product. So be very concerned about the content you use. My recommendation would be to mix up the serious and the less serious content, I suggest you use a 60/40 approach. 60% professional content + 40% less serious. But make sure its professional.
- Engagement is what messaging on social media is all about with the key objective of moving your online engagement to an offline conversation. In short, you have to be prepared and be committed to ENGAGE.
- Objectives are a necessary requirement for your social media marketing efforts. After all, without objectives you can’t measure performance.
Posting Consistency
You’re posting to a predetermined target audience and true followers wouldn’t be following you if they didn’t want to hear what you had to say. When they committed to following you, they also bought into hearing from you on a regular basis. Now, based on your audience demographics, you can make a rational decision as to how often you post, whether that’s once a day or multiple times a week.
Content
“Value” is the all-important aspect as to why your content is going to be wanted and consumed. If you don’t disseminate valuable (read quality) content, your followers won’t be engaged and posting consistency becomes a redundancy. In fact, if your content is questionable you could lose followers.
Engagement
Even if you post consistently and your content is appropriate, if you don’t engage you’ve only fulfilled the beginning part of your social marketing efforts. The successful end comes when you engage with your followers, and where possible, take some of your online conversations offline.
Objectives
Set objectives for your social media marketing activities. A key objective might be to convert online ‘engagement’ to offline conversations. Another might be to raise your number of followers. You might also want to raise brand awareness. Just like any marketing activity, you need to button down your objectives and make them as quantitative as you can. Just remember to set realistic goals.
If you’re still wondering how much social posting is too much, place your energy in these four more important areas and not only will your questions be answered, you’ll be developing a plan, not just a post!
