Margie Dana

An old commercial for prunes asked, “Are three enough? Six too many?” It applies to this tip about how often you should post on social channels.

First of all, they’re “social” channels because you’re supposed to engage with your community easily and regularly (speaking of prunes). Monthly isn’t social. Weekly won’t cut it, either. You need to post more often.

Hopefully, you’re active in a few social channels that work for you. As a writer, I’m active on Twitter and in LinkedIn. Words come easily to me, both in the short form (Twitter) and in longer forms (like LinkedIn publishing).

Let’s talk Twitter. If you want to build your community (and therefore your reputation) here, you should post multiple times a day, which is what I typically do. And by multiple, I mean somewhere around five posts. It works for me.

This is incredibly easy if you use a tool like Hootsuite. It lets you schedule posts to a few different social channels at once. I use it all the time. You can add images, too, and select “Autoschedule,” whereby Hootsuite publishes your posts at the optimum time.

Back to those prunes. When it comes to Twitter, either three or six a day will do the trick. Or thereabouts. You don’t want to (and don’t have to) spend a ton of time Tweeting. It’s a good channel for small businesses and niche experts to build their communities.

At another time, I’ll share what makes great Tweets for businesses.