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When to post on social media

Many people ask me, "How often should I post?"  Hopefully, I can give you some great guidelines and some helpful tools in this article.

First, social media is a social platform.  You are encouraged to be social.  With that being said, I want you to think of social media like a conversation.  It is a two way conversation.  Ask questions, comment on what other people said and add value to the conversation.

We have all been at parties where there is that one person who talks about himself so much, he is annoying to be around.  Everyone likes to talk about their favorite subject, “me.”  The point with social media is to engage with others and don’t just talk about yourself.

If you are using social media for your business, take time to talk about trends, share news, share humor from customers and employees, or even share information from competitors.  I know this sounds counter intuitive, but if you are fair in the way you are sharing, you come out looking like an expert.

How often should you share?

Now let’s talk about how often to share.  Just like a conversation, you should only talk about yourself every 5-10 posts.  Why would anyone want to come to your social media page when all you do is talk about yourself and tell people to buy from you?  People come to social media to learn and interact with their favorite brands and businesses , but they are more likely to be interacting with their favorite persons.

 Posting suggestion:

1.  I suggest posting at least one thing each day of the week.  You can skip Sunday, but Saturday is a big day for people to be on social media, so you may not want to skip that day.

2. I suggest posting at different times of the day.  Noon, right after work, and seven in the evenings seems to be good times to catch people on social media.  Generally speaking, people will check social media at lunch, after work and sometime after or before they eat an evening meal.

3. Feel free to repost your content. If you have a really interesting topic to share, post the same post three or four days in a row at different times.  Posting at different times helps different groups of people see your content.

4.  Remember to post things from others, share humor and engage with your customers.  Use a simple ratio.  Post at least five to ten different things before posting something trying to sell your wares.  You want to build rapport with your customers and follower.  That rapport will lead to trust which will make them more likely to purchase from you.

5. Use tools to schedule your posts and make sure you are watching your stats.  If you see a bunch of people interacting on a Thursday at seven in the evening, then you have found a sweet spot to put your more interesting content.

 TOOLS

Personally, I use Hootesuite.  It is free to schedule and track your posts.  It allows you to use three social media platforms for free, but it is inexpensive if you want to add more.  Decide which social media works best for your company and only use those to have greater impact.

 SPOTTING TRENDS

Google Trends works great to see what is trending at a glance. Each social media will show trends specifically for that social media, for instance Twitter has twitter trends.

Honestly, if you just pay attention to the top stories on your favorite newsfeed, you will probably be OK spotting trends.  Services like msn.com and yahoo.com work great to see what people are talking about.  As a matter of fact, both of these sites have a place called 'trending now.'

Another great tool I suggest every business has it Google alerts.  It will send you an email any time certain things are mentioned.  I suggest adding your name, the name of your company and industry specific topics.  For instance, put an alert for 'Wendy Smith', 'Smith Company Fashion,' and 'fashion.'  Google alerts will send you info about those topics as they are released and found by Google.  You can choose to be alerted daily or weekly.

There are a bunch of different services you can use to spot trends.  You will need to see which one works best for you.  I found a great article that may help.  This article shows 33 way to find social media trends.

How often do you post on Social Media?  How is it working for your company? Share it on our Youtube or GooglePlus.