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By Lisa Wozniak
There’s been a long running debate about the frequency and quality in social media posting. The fact is, it really is a balancing act. There is a fine line between making sure you keep your name and brand in the eyes of the public and being just down right annoying to all who encounter you on a daily basis. To add to the confusion, Facebook’s new algorithms have left many feeling unsure about how often to post as fewer and fewer of their posts will be making in out into the news feed, leaving many feeling as though they need to post twice as much just to get brand recognition. The struggle with this is that we just don’t know WHICH posts will make it into the news feed.
There are many schools of thought that play into the answer for this. First and foremost, it really does depend on the industry your business is in. For example, marketing has a tendency to be a much more engaging audience that allows for more frequent posting content. Engineering on the other hand is an industry that will tolerate less engagement but needs high quality specific content to establish the necessary engagement. It’s important to know your audience and where the threshold is. While there are baseline reports and infographics like the one presented in this article, you really have to research your industry and audience to find out what works best. Social Media tools like SumAll and Google Analytics can give you the data needed to find your company’s sweet spot to obtain maximum engagement; and the good news is that much of this can be done for free!
The bottom line however, is that you need to ensure the quality of the content in your posts is going to be worthwhile to your audience. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy dog videos and baby pictures as much as the next guy, but make sure that you are really limiting the use of these posts. Your readers definitely need to see the warm human side to you so there’s a true benefit to offering this up once in a while and even the humor posts can help paint a personal style. After all, this is social media and building relationships is the cornerstone to its success.
Something that helps me to keep this into perspective is the image of the cocktail party. While no one likes to go to a cocktail party and be saddled all night long with someone who only talks about themselves and before you have the opportunity to get to know them, they’re out of the gate selling you on everything having to do with their business. Annoying right? Now picture the cocktail party where you meet someone, engage in great conversation, get to know them as a person and laugh a bit and as the party goes on you begin to learn more about their business, share some of the challenges you’ve had in different areas of your own business, and before you know it you are exchanging business cards and this new connections fulfills the answer to all your problems.
Now apply this same concept to social media posting. You NEED to establish rapport with your audience, they need to know you’re a real person, they should be able to laugh with and relate to you. But best of all the NEED to know that you’re knowledgeable about what you do, the need to see you as a leader in the industry and that you can help THEM. The knowledge that, just like a friend, you can help them with THEIR struggles. This is the basis of the quality of your content in social media posting.
If you’re feeling concerned that you just don’t have enough to say in your social media posts, think of the questions that you are asked most often in your business. Better yet write blogs about answering these types of questions and use social media to direct traffic to the blog portion of your website so that your audience will not only engage with you on social media but become educated from your site as well. Your call to action in your posts is key. Ensure that you are letting your audience know what it is you would like them to do. (i.e. go to your website, sign up for your newsletter, check out your latest products, call you for a consultation etc. )
The key point to keep in mind with the frequency of your posting is that you need to provide variety and value without over selling. I’ve provided an infographic from our friends at Buffer that will serve to give you a very generic approach to posting. Please keep in mind that this will differ by audience and industry and remember, when it comes to social media posting, it’s not frequency or quality, it’s both.
Please include attribution to http://blog.bufferapp.com with this graphic.
