Fashion icon Iris Apfel famously stated, “More is more and less is a bore.”
Nowhere is that phrase more relatable than in the world of social media. Multiple social media posts a day litter newsfeeds for anyone involved with the profile that’s posting them. The phenomenon is barely tolerable when it’s your uncle, sister, or old high school buddy - and it’s downright irritating when a company does it.
It’s common for a business to get excited and want to continuously post on social media. After all, your customers liked your page for a reason - so better not disappoint them! However, the problem with a high quantity of social media posts is that the information you pass through them becomes watered down quickly, and pretty soon you’re going to see less and less likes, follows, and overall engagement with your page.
Don’t worry about Iris Apfel up there - less can definitely be more. Where the quantity decreases, all you have to do is increase the quality.
Reasons to Post on Social Media
Before we break down how to increase the quality of your social media posts, let’s talk about what qualifies as worthy to your online presence. Ask yourself:
Will this social media post…
Offer something to a customer that they would find useful?
Interest my customers enough to spark engagement?
Enhance the experience my customers will have with my brand?
Boost my company’s public persona?
Answer a question that my customers may have?
If you can’t answer any of these questions with, “Yes!”, then you may be posting something up just so you can say you posted something up. Posting just to post is basically interrupting a conversation just to hear your own voice - it not only puts people off, but can seem to your followers as though you don’t respect them enough.
This is something that a lot of companies do, and it always comes back to bite them. The second you post something that is irrelevant to what a customer wants from your page, they’ll turn off to your brand and may begin actively seeking one of your competitors. To avoid that, make sure that your posts can answer at least one of the questions above with a yes.
Better Quality Social Media Posts
Let’s stop posting 10 times a day in the hopes you’ll get a like or follow. Instead, let’s post 2 times a day and watch our audience increase over time!
First, make sure that what your offering answers those questions in the last section. If it answers only one of them, take time to think on how to make that post of more interest to your customers. For instance, instead of just posting about the new shoes your store is selling, talk about some of the features of that shoe and how it could relate to the person who buys them. So your post would go from:
“Here’s the newest addition to our shoe line-up! Come on in and grab a pair!”
to
“These shoes come with a memory foam insole to keep your feet from hurting after a day at work. They’re brand new and we already love them - try them on and see why!”
In one fell swoop, you’ve changed the whole tone of your post from a sales pitch to a conversation. You’re giving more information that matters to the customer, not just attempting to get your product off your shelves. It’s a relationship builder that will matter most when the customer finds themselves needing the product or service that you provide.
Once you have the written post down, make sure that you add a photo. Adding an image to your post can double or even triple your engagement rates - what can we say, people love pictures! You’ll still want to keep your photos relevant, so you may need to use more than one in your post. In the example above, instead of just using a photo of the shoe, you may use a photo of the shoe and a photo of the interior of the shoe.
So How Often Should I Post?
With this question comes a somewhat irritating answer: It depends.
Mostly, it depends on which social media platforms you use. These are the numbers of posts you should post on several different social media platforms:
Facebook: 1 - 2 times daily
Source: Hubspot
This can vary depending on the amount of followers you have, but posting more often than that can break up the engagements each post collects. Facebook will also sometimes recycle your post in their newsfeed depending on each individual user’s other online activity, so a single post may be seen multiple times in someone’s newsfeed. This decreases the amount of posts you really need to make overall.
Twitter : 5 - 10 times daily
Source: Agorapost
Because of its simple status system, Twitter is an entirely different beast in the social media world. It’s easy for users to lose a single post due to the speed at which other tweets pop up in a user’s feed. New posts with quality content will help to keep your Twitter relevant, especially in comparison to other company Twitter accounts.
Instagram: 1 - 2 times daily
Source: Union Metrics
Although Instagram’s feed can move as quickly as the feeds on Twitter, people are more likely to scroll through the day’s posts to ensure they didn’t miss anything. This makes it less necessary for multiple posts throughout the day.
What to Take Away From This
In a nutshell, we’d like to say that Iris was wrong, at least when it comes to social media posting. Less IS more. As long as you practice quality over quantity, you’ll see your followers continue to grow.