Small business owners have to be masters of time management. When there’s so much to do and only 24 hours available in the day, every minute has to count. At the same time, managing your business’s social media presence can be very time-intensive. It’s not at all uncommon for business owners to want to know exactly how often they need to update their social media sites.

Determining The Frequency: What Are Your Goals?

Before you can determine how much time and effort you want to put into social media, you need to be very clear on what you want to get out of your social presence. If all you want is a digital billboard, relaying basic information and pointing your existing customers to your website or physical business, you’re going to be able to be able to spend less time and energy with social media than a business owner who wants to use these platforms to generate sales, to increase market share and brand visibility, or to provide a customer service channel; if these are your goals, you’ll have to do more.

Finding the Right Number

There’s a direct relationship between how often you use social media – the frequency of your posts and replies – and how useful social media is from a business perspective. The more often you post high-quality, relevant content to your social media platforms, the better ROI you’re going to see.

In this way, social media is very similar to every other messaging vehicle available to the small business owner: ten print ads will generate more results than a single print ad will; telemarketing is a non-starter as a sales strategy if you only call 2 people.

Facebook:

Plan on posting at least daily; more frequently if you’re getting high levels of response from your customers. Look at your business. Sometimes the way you do business dictates how often you should post. If you’re a restaurant that offers daily lunch and dinner specials, that’s at least two posts a day. Possibly even three so you can provide visitors with a little something extra to stay connected.

LinkedIn:

Update your personal status daily; twice a day if you’re establishing yourself as a thought leader in your industry. LinkedIn business pages should be updated at least twice a week.

Twitter:

Twitter updates are short, but they’re numerous. One or two Tweets a day are fine if you’re just maintaining a presence, but if you’re planning on using Twitter for business growth, plan on making 10-15 Tweets per day. This can include retweets and replies, but make sure you’ve got some original content in there as well. And don’t forget to include hashtags for greater connectivity.

Know Your Resources

Monitoring and maintaining your social media presence can take a lot of time and energy. However, it can be very rewarding, as customers increasingly use social media as their primary source of the information that influences their purchasing decisions.

There are tools and resources available to make social media management easier, such as HootSuite and Sprout Social. Another option is to choose an experienced marketing team to handle your social media so you can realize the maximum benefits from these powerful tools.

If you’re not sure what option is right for you, give us a call or reach out for a consultation. We’re here to help your business grow!