The longer you leave it to take your business’ social media seriously, the bigger the division you are making between yourself and your competitors.

Social media is not to be taken lightly; it is a powerful marketing tool that can make the difference between creating lifelong customers or losing them, depending on how it is used.

Social media content needs to be thought out; not just what you post but how and when you post it too. Posting too often or too little can be detrimental to your business. While the size of your business and the industry you belong to will influence how often you post on social media, you can still follow the guidelines below for the major social media platforms.

Facebook
The size of your following will greatly impact on the ideal number of posts you make on your Facebook page. The widely accepted formula of two posts per day is a good starting space for pages in excess of ten thousand or even a few thousand followers. If your page has less than this or in the hundreds, consider the purpose of why your posting; to get more followers or likes or to direct traffic to your website. Informative and compliant information will get traffic to your website whereas content that is more chatty or lighthearted will generate likes and possibly shares.

Twitter
Much the same with Facebook, the number of tweets you make per day or per week is prescriptive to the number of followers you have. To warrant anyone following you on Twitter, you ought to share some of your own content as well as retweeting. Retweeting is resourceful as it can draw traffic to your account without having to create the content yourself. It is important though, to ensure you don’t lose support or tarnish the name of your business, that you are clear about brands or views it may appear you support. If you wish to share something a celebrity has said, be sure to research other sentiments they have made or courses they support to insist there are no conflicting messages being presented.

Instagram
Instagram differs from Facebook and Twitter, and so the posts you make on this platform, as well as the frequency, should be treated differently. If you are in an industry such as fitness, beauty or retail, more rigorous Instagram posting should be practised. Don’t be afraid to experiment with and try new things with Instagram. Tracking data from your followers is one way to assess when the busiest times to post will be, thus generating more traffic to your platform.

Linkedin
Linkedin is a valuable tool for directing traffic to your website and has overtaken Facebook as the most common place businesses will receive referrals from. Consider the platform Linkedin is used as; a professional one, when developing content for this platform over one your others such as Instagram.