How often should a business post on social media?
There is no magic number. Here is how to pick one you can keep up, and why keeping it up matters more than the number.
Search this question and you'll find confident answers: post once a day, twice a day, five times a week. They can't all be right, because they're answering for different businesses.
The honest answer has two parts. Post as often as you can keep up for three months without the quality dropping. And post on the same days each week, so your audience and the platforms learn when to expect you.
Start with what you can sustain
Work out how many good posts you can make in a normal week, not your best week. Count the time to take a photo, write a caption and reply to comments.
For a business without a dedicated social team, that number often sits between two and five a week. If it's two, post two. Two good posts every week for a year beat a burst of daily posts that stops in February.
Pick fixed days
Choose the days and roughly the times, and keep them. "Tuesday 09:00, Thursday 17:00, Saturday 08:00" is a plan. "When I get a chance" isn't.
Fixed days help in three ways:
- You batch the work. Writing three posts on a Sunday evening is faster than writing one from scratch on three separate days.
- Your followers start to expect you.
- You can see what works, because you're comparing like with like.
Different platforms, different pace
You don't need the same schedule everywhere.
- Instagram rewards strong images and short video. Quality matters more than frequency.
- Facebook suits updates, offers and local news. Many local customers still look here first.
- LinkedIn suits businesses that sell to other businesses. Once or twice a week is plenty for most.
If you're stretched, pick the one platform where your customers actually are and do it properly.
What to post
Repeating a few kinds of post makes planning easier. A simple mix for a service business:
- Your work: before and after, a finished job, a happy customer (with permission)
- How you work: the van, the kit, the team, what a visit looks like
- Useful tips: something a customer can use today
- Offers and news: holiday hours, a new service, a quiet day you want to fill
Rotate through them so no week is all offers.
Check results monthly, not daily
One post's numbers tell you little. Look at a month at a time: which kinds of post got the most reach and the most replies, and on which days. Do more of that next month.
Where MARKA fits
Ask Zara for a week and she drafts a post for each day you choose, each with a day and a time, in the voice from your brief. They wait in your calendar until you edit, delete or schedule them. The schedule stays yours; Zara does the writing.