Neworld, Great relationships build great brands

I often get asked ‘how often should I post on a blog or a Facebook page?’ There is no definitive answer because it depends on the business. If I ‘like’ a news organisation on Facebook I’d expect a dozen or maybe more updates each day. But if I ‘like’ a business selling garden furniture on Facebook and they post a dozen times a day, I know I’d be very quickly deleting them from my network. So it really depends on what the business is – which isn’t a useful answer.

This underlines the problem somewhat, if we don’t know what the right number is, could we stand to lose subscribers if there’s too much, and not attract new ones because there’s too little? In the case of over posting, the individual could decide to stop following or subscribing. How likely is it that they will return and become a fan or subscriber again? That’s the danger of losing fans and followers in social media, they may never return.

Some Basics First

As I mentioned there’s no real answer to this. But there are some basics that should prove helpful.

For any social media channel I suggest making 5 posts, before launching the page, profile or blog. Its content that attracts readers so launching a blog or even a Facebook page with no content defeats the purpose. After launching I’d suggest having at least one more post ready to publish within days.

After that the how often should we post is up for debate. There’s two schools of thought on this. One suggests making a posting schedule, that way regular content is posted (which is good for SEO). The second suggests not to stick to a schedule as it will become too rigid, and the quality of posts may suffer as result of trying to maintain regularity, (which will be bad for keeping readers on a page for long and returning) .

What Are The Goals?

Its also important to understand what the goals of the page or blog are. Is it for SEO purposes? Then posting on a regular basis will be crucial. However if its about more long term engagement, building subscribers and fans then I suggest focusing on quality over quantity.

Find A Balance

The best solution is to find a balance between regularity and quality. That is the point where the person with responsibility for publishing feels comfortable in what they post. After all who is responsible for posting also has a role to play. For example a marketing person may feel more comfortable writing up posts than an engineer might. However, I would start with making sure that content is always relevant and of interest to your readers. This is the first hurdle and this will dictate frequency to a degree. If you have 1 quality post per week, it will be much more useful than 3 poorer  posts. One post won’t be as good for SEO as 3 posts, but quality should receive more likes, re-tweets, subscribers and shares, thus keeping old visitors returning, attracting new visitors and keeping them on your blog or page for longer.

What you will discover, with a bit of experience is that finding good quality content for posts becomes much easier. Ideas will hit you walking down the street, surfing the web, reading a magazine, or talking to people. This in turn increases the frequency that you are posting but keeps the quality of the content to a certain standard.

Whats your approach to posting content online?