Does My Business Need Social Media and How Often Should I Post?

For a majority of businesses, social media is the best way to promote and sell their products and services. Social media is one of the top methods to affordably reach and convey information to a sizable audience in their native environment. 

 

Will this always be the case? Absolutely not. There was a time when the greatest technique to economically reach an audience at scale was with print. A time will come when we look back at the Facebooks, Twitters, and LinkedIns like we are currently looking at newspapers. Until that day comes, social media is the game, and you better be taking advantage of it. 

 

So, How Do I Take Advantage Of Social Media?

 

Start posting – And I mean a lot! In 2017, the average time spent on social media was 135 minutes per day or nearly two and a half hours. Although this number is staggering, it is only rising. So, with all of this time spent on social media, why not market to these folks where they feel comfortable? 

 

How Often Should I Post?

 

People often have trouble deciding how frequently their business should post. As a rule of thumb, no number is too high. The only time when a company should cut back the amount of content they’re putting out is when the quality is suffering as a result of the volume.

 

Make a commitment to post at least once a week. Then, increase the frequency to two times a week. Keep increasing the rate until you are posting every day. If I’m completely honest with you, one post a day is still probably not enough. With the average person spending over two hours a day on social media, the chances that your one post will resonate and stick with someone isn’t very high. However, if you’re delivering consistent, quality content that is curated specifically to your audience, those chances just went up!

 

But, How Can I Possibly Create Enough Content?

 

“I am running a full-time business. I don’t have enough time to post on Facebook.”

 

This is your business we are talking about! Whether you like it or not, social media is the current landscape where the majority of the population wants to spend their free time. As a business owner, it is your obligation, to yourself and to your employees, to make social media a priority. 

 

 

Create those social media profiles and start posting. It sounds that easy because it is. Yes, it may be intimidating to put your thoughts out to be judged and scrutinized, but that’s the name of the game. Social media is meant to be just that, social. If you’re putting out content that is helpful, thought-provoking, empathetic, entertaining, or interesting, people will consume it. If you know enough to operate a business successfully, you know enough to create one social media post a day.

 

Learn To Repurpose Material

 

Additionally, having the ability to repurpose content is key. On days when your creative juices won’t flow, do a quick Google search and reshare a trending article. Just make sure the material is relevant to your business and that you’re citing correctly. 

 

Repurpose your own material! Did you put out a piece of content that performed well in the past? If so, then reduce, reuse, and recycle. If the post was from a few months prior, the chances that you have new followers that haven’t seen it yet are pretty high. Additionally, due to the current algorithms, not all of your followers will be served everything you post, so they may have missed it the first time around. If that piece of content performed well the first time, it is probably pretty valuable, and it couldn’t hurt for your audience to see it twice. 

 

 

Does your company have a blog? Did someone send you an interesting article? Chop it up and pull snippets for twitter, then link to the full piece. Post a link to the blog on your Facebook and LinkedIn pages with a short summary. Post a picture on Instagram and put the link for the full post in your bio. Do each of these things two times for each blog/article, and you’ll have more than a week’s worth of content!

 

Ask For Help

 

If you still can’t produce quality content at scale, seek out assistance. Hire an in-house social media guru to document your workday and create content for your company. We realize it isn’t always feasible to hire a full-time employee or content team, and that’s where we come in! 

 

We are a social media marketing agency with a robust team of in-house Content Specialists. If you’re interested in learning how our agency can help grow your business or brand by creating engaging, customized content, please give us a call today – we look forward to hearing from you!