In Social Media Marketing and Social Media Branding, the frequency of posting new content matters - or does it?

If it does, how often should you post? Once a day? Once a week? Once a month? Once a lifetime?

Actually, it’s none of the above. As I pointed out in a previous article on Personal and Corporate Branding through Social Media – the What and the Who your posting has to be done for a purpose. This purpose includes both a business goal and a persona for whom you create a series of content pieces.

In general, the goal of posting on social media or in your own business blog with a marketing or branding aim is to position yourself / your business as an authority in your field. Doing so dilligently will establish a high level of trust between you / your business and your prospects. If done well, these prospects will, once they are ready to commit, prefer to deal with you rather than anybody else, simply because of that trust factor that you have built up.

Building authority is based purely on you posting content that is of high value to your prospects. The emphasis here lies on ‘value’. Creating pieces of content that will impress your prospect enough for them to consider you for a future purchase takes time and effort. You need to research the topic, create the content (written content, video, infographic, etc.), refine it and eventually post it. The frequency of how quickly you can produce this kind of high-quality content determines your posting frequency.

If you push yourself into posting once a day or more you will run the risk of creating content that is either shallow or simply crap. This will clearly not help your goal of becoming a credible authority who is worth doing business with. If you post high-value content you will be considered high value. If you post crappy content then you will be considered crappy - it’s that simple. In fact, not posting at all for a while is still better than posting shallow content.

Take the time needed to create a great piece of content. If it takes a week then so be it. If it takes two weeks then that’s how long it takes. If you need substantially longer (more than 4-6 weeks) then consider occasionally posting some high-value curated content, so your connections don’t forget about you. Own content is always best, but curated content will suffice in times of ‘content drought’.

To sum it up: the answer to how often you should post for a social media marketing or social media branding goal is not determined by any number of days, but by how long it takes you to create a high-value piece that will impress your connections.

Next Step: Explore my Social Media Marketing Workshop, so you can learn all the best practices in just one day.