The life span of your social posts is this

 

As business owners, we’re all aware of how having a good social media strategy is integral to our content marketing strategy. As well as knowing what to post, many of us also question how frequently we should be posting. After all, we want to remain visible, but on the other hand we don’t want to annoy our audience by posting all the time, right?

What if I told you that most businesses are not posting nearly enough on social media? And that actually, the majority of the things you post are not even showing up on your audiences’ radar at all?

Most people are scared of posting too much on social media for fear of being judged. They don’t want to appear annoying by posting more than a few times a week. But think about this – how many times a day do you see the same TV ad? I’m guessing that if you had the same channel on for the whole evening, you’d likely see the same set of ads more than once, right? And that’s just over a few hours!

This is because companies know that in order to get your attention, they need to repeat their message time and time again. And they spend thousands of pounds in order to get the most coverage they possibly can. They do this because they know it works!

Let’s be honest – even though people are constantly on social media these days, their attention span is piss-poor. You might have a post that grabs their attention and stops the scroll (and that is an art in itself!), but pretty soon, something else will replace it. In fact, each one of your social media posts has a surprisingly low life-span. The average Facebook post only lives for an average of 6 hours before it disappears to the bottom of the newsfeed, and out of people’s reach, forever.

Here is the true lifespan of all of your social media channels:

 

Pretty surprising, isn’t it?

So, that post you made on Facebook yesterday? Probably about 2% - 6% of your full audience saw it. And now it’s gone, never to be seen again.

How you can in at social media

My first piece of advice is this: don’t try to be everywhere. Sure, it can be tempting to sign up for all of the social platforms and get lost in the excitement of all of those followers and leads reading your stuff every day. But in reality, it’s going to be impossible to keep on top of it. You’ll end up not posting on some of them for weeks, flitting between one channel and another, and never really getting anywhere with any of them.

Instead, pick one. Maybe two. Pick the channels where you’re type of client is most likely to hang out. And then work really, really hard to get well-known on those ones.

Post the best quality content you possibly can to attract people to you. Post regularly and to a schedule, whether that’s twice a day, once a day, or 2-3 times a week. The actual frequency matters less than the consistency and quality of your content. If you post on a Monday and Wednesday this week, do the same next week.

Secondly, don’t feel that you have to create brand new content all the time. You absolutely can, and should, recycle your posts. Remember; a lot of your followers won’t see everything you post, so don’t be scared to repost the same thing the following week – no-one is going to notice, much less shout at you for it!

Utilise social media features. Most of them, like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram, have other places to put your content. Stories, for example, do really well. Reels on Instagram seem to be the big thing at the moment, and can get you a load more followers. You can post blogs directly to LinkedIn. There are plenty of opportunities to get noticed – use them.

Here’s one that I always forget about – but it always seems to grab attention. Hashtags! People will and do search for information via social media hashtags, so figure out what # people are likely to search for you on, and use them on your posts. It really does work.

I hope that this post has opened your eyes to how social media works, and how you can improve your reach. If you’d like to chat about your social media or content marketing, please get in touch – I’d love to help!

About me

Tereasa Hedges, freelance copywriter for creatives, designers and makers.

I’m a freelance copywriter who specialises in writing content for creative people, helping you to reach larger audiences through blogging, web content, email marketing, and a little bit of social media for good measure.

Want to work with me? Contact me for a chat via shirecopywriting@outlook.com