Social Media Simplified: Strategic Posting for Busy Marketers

Hey everyone, and welcome back to Let's Talk Social. This episode is gonna be pretty short and sweet because it's actually a remake of a past episode from a couple years ago, and everything in the old episode holds true, but we have more information to give you this time around, along with an actual P D F handout that you can find on the Alpha Social Media website. Navigate yourself to our blog and then click on the. Episode title that you are watching or listening to this on, it should be something about how to maximize for reach and engagement, or how to post less to get more engagement, something of that sort, whatever our, uh, team comes up with to name this to get more of you to click on it. Of course. And so, um, what we're gonna be really talking about is the two ways to maximize your pages. Post for reach and for engagement, and that's gonna be based on your follower size. So as you guys may know, as you get more and more followers, you actually have to modify how many times we're posting to our pages. And the extra little bonus nugget apart from the handout on this episode is actually gonna be the type of posts that you can be making to spread out across the number of posts that you're doing. So I've broken down the table on here. Again, to maximize for reach, and then another one to maximize for engagement, but that's gonna be spread out across the post type that you'd be making. So the four post types that we have here are just a static solo image by itself to the platforms, a carousel post. Those have been lifted in the algorithm lately. So that's posted. Uh, we recommend three to 10 images. Or a reel or a story. And so we know reels are the vertical videos and stories are the content that disappears after 24 hours. And so the other thing that we're giving you guys in this episode is actually the type of content to put on there. And so those four content types to spread across the images, carousels, reels, and stories are the entertaining style posts, the promotional style posts. Inspirational style post. And then lastly, the educational style post. Now obviously you need to modify this for your business and do whatever makes sense if you're not the type of business that needs to be educating people. Um, there's few in that category, but again, you can kind of tweak these numbers to mold to your system. But this is just a good. Catchall kind of, um, benchmark for you to start at. So as we get into this, I wanted to just talk about the majority of the people who actually follow this page, and I hear from and listen to the podcast, which is gonna be in that zero to 5,000 follower range. If you're anywhere above that, go ahead and check out the sheet. I just don't wanna say too many numbers over the course of this episode or it's gonna get pretty confusing and. We're really gonna be talking about the, again, the two categories for maximizing reach and maximizing engagement. And when it comes to maximizing your engagement, you're gonna be wanting to actually post less on a weekly basis than you would want to for maximizing reach. And the reason being is because if there's fewer posts there, they have a better chance of getting back to your current followers. And actually, again, letting them have more engagement with those actual posts. If we're trying to maximize for reach, kind of get our name out there more. We're gonna be making more. Post on a weekly basis so that we have the opportunity for more people to actually find the page. And so again, we're gonna be talking about the zero to 5,000 follower range. The other two ranges listed on the sheet, if you're interested, are five to 15,000 followers and then 15 to 75,000 followers. Anything past that, I would, I would gladly entertain a DMM on how to. Uh, take that away. Again, there's just not that many people in the demographic that listen to this podcast or that are even clients of mine, um, that actually pay us to do these kinds of things for them. And so when it comes to the, uh, reach. We basically set up a maximum recommended number of weekly posts. That's kind of the question I always get right, is like, how many posts should I make per week or per month? And so we've broken it down here on a weekly basis. And then we also have given ranges between the content types. So image. Carousel reels and stories. And for the people in the zero to 5,000 category, the solo images nowadays recommended again for Facebook and Instagram is only one to two static images per week. And when it comes to the carousel images, we're gonna be looking at two to five carousels a week. So again, those are gonna be three to 10 images a piece. So you're gonna actually still require some more photos there you, it's. On you guys to either listen to other episodes or to come up with what that content type can be. There's loads and loads of content out there so you can check out competitors. When it comes to the reels, we're gonna be looking at one to five reels per week. And so between those three categories, that reaches to the nine to 14 actual posts per week. And then when it comes to the stories we're looking at, 30 to 40 story stories per week and so on. The maximum number of weekly posts, again, that nine to 14 range, that means basically one to two per week, as little as one per day, or one to two per day, and as little as one per day. And then every now and again, two per day, or if you have the ability to put out that much content, you can hit all the way up to two per day. And again, so that's maximizing. For reach, we're looking at one to two posts per day, mostly carousel and reels, and maybe one or two static images. And then 30 to 40 stories per week. And so you can spread that out however you like. The choice is obviously yours to go above and beyond that, but this is what we have seen and what all the sources out there have told us that this is the way to maximize for reach. And so when it comes to engagement, the other half of that, which is a lot of honestly what a lot of us are wanting and needing, especially if we're not running paid ads, it's kind of hard to get our name out there. So we're trying to optimize for engagement. It's gonna be less post. And so if you listen to last episode, we talked about how the algorithm actually defines. What those posts are gonna be doing and everything. And we talked about edge rank entirely, and so this is gonna play directly into that. And so if you listen to the episode, I'm sure this will make a lot of sense. But again, for the zero to 5,000 follower range, same here. For the solo images, only one to two per week. The carousel posts we're actually reeling back, so it's only gonna be one to three carousels per week. Again, three to 10 images. And then for the reels, one to four reels per week. If I had a choice, I would do more reels and less carousels. If you have the ability, so maybe one image. Two to three carousel posts and then three or four stories. And for the maximum recommended weekly post for engagement, it's gonna be three to seven posts per week. And so, again, you hear me say this all the time, but we're trying to maximize the quality of the content so we're not the quantity, but the quality. And so when it's less posts on a weekly basis, that actually allows us to do that. So, I say this all the time, if we have the same amount of dedicated time on a weekly basis, if we have to pump out twice the amount of content in that same amount of time, it's gonna be harder to do that. And typically, over the course of time, the actual quality of those posts will start to degrade. And so same with the stories here. On a weekly basis, if you're trying just to maximize for engagement, we're looking at 20 to 35 stories per week. And so between the, um, reach and the engagement, the big contrast there is the, the reach is almost double, basically it's nine to 14 per week on hard post or three to seven on the engagement side. So, Basically a third in the low range and only half on the upper range. And then kind of same with the stories here, we're looking at about double the stories if you're trying to maximize for reach or about half of that for engagement. Again, 20 to 35 stories there. And I know I'm talking fast and going over this, but again, all of this is gonna be listed in our blog and as a downloadable P D F and it actually looks really nice. Our graphic designer, Callie, made this for us. And so, um, if you would like this document, please go on there and grab it and print it off. And give credit where it's due. Kylie did an amazing job here, so if you want to give her a shout out in the comments, that'd be awesome. So, That doesn't mean that we can't do a mix here. So for my business, for instance, on Instagram, we have about 1,850 followers. And on Facebook we have about 950. So just under, uh, just over half actually on Facebook. And so I may be wanting to maximize for engagement on Facebook or reach on Facebook or vice versa. And same with you. And you can actually do that. For the hard post and for the stories kind of separately, right? So if I want to maximize my reach with my stories on Instagram, I might be posting in that 30 to 40 range. But if I wanna maximize for my posts on Instagram for engagement, I might be doing only three to seven posts per week. And so I. You can kind of blend between there, not only just across the platforms, but actually across the content type as well. I wouldn't recommend splitting off the actual, we call'em hard posts. So the a static image, the carousel post or the reels. I would keep those bundled together and then separate out stories if you're gonna do that. So a lot of people, in my opinion, if we're smaller pages like myself, even. We want to make sure that we're getting really good engagement, so we get a high edge rink. Again, it's from last episode and we still want new people to be able to come to the page and everything. So we might post a few more stories and kind of get up more toward the maximum reach on the story side. So that's the kind of the breakdown there. Again, this chart that I'm looking at here makes a lot of sense. If you get a hold of this. And hopefully it will help you out. The other half of the chart again, is talking about the actual type of posts that needs to be going out. And then when I say type, I mean content type, not just the actual like posting type, right? So don't get confused there. We've got, again, the entertainment, promotional, inspirational, and educational. And so when it comes to feeds and stories, this is broken down. Um, I'm gonna only go over feeds in this episode just for the sake of time, but stories is on here as well. So how you should spread out. The actual content type across stories versus across your feed. And so let's just go ahead and act like we're gonna be maximizing for engagement. So, Maybe one solo image, two to three carousel posts, and then like two to four reels per week. Well, it's like, so how do we spread out the entertainment, promotional, inspirational, and educational content between those, uh, content, actual types, so the images and everything. And so they are recommending at the moment, For entertainment, it should only be about 30% of the hard posts that you're putting onto the page. So if we're looking at seven per week, it's gonna be two to three are gonna be on the entertainment side of things for the promotional kind. So again, you're kind of promoting your products or services. It's 40%, so we're gonna be looking at two to three to four there. Again, it just depends on how many you. Choose to have your, uh, maximum weekly on, for the inspirational only 20%. So that might just be one or two. And then for the educational, we're only looking at 10%. And so obviously 10% of seven is 0.7, so that renders out a one for us. Um, and as you go up or down the tiers based on page size and reach versus engagement, all of that's gonna change. But ultimately, if you work backwards from using this sheet and this chart here, It's gonna give you the number of posts that you should be making per week, and also the types of content that you can be spreading out throughout that post. And if you really wanna make it easy on yourself, it says, you know, three to seven is for us in the zero to 5,000, uh, follower category to maximize for engagement and reach is, again, nine to 14 maximum. So if we round it up to 10, I'm kind of cheating here, but if we round it up to 10, that allows you to break down 10 posts and then be able to put. Three into the entertainment category, four into the promotional, two into inspirational, and then one finally into educational. And, um, same for the stories here. Again, we're not gonna go over that, but it also breaks down how to use those categories when it comes to the, the amount of stories that you're actually gonna be posting as well. And the reason I make this episode again, is because the, one of the number one things I get asked, like all the time is, How do we get more followers to our page? Or how do, how many times a week should I be posting? I said that earlier. How many times a week should I be posting? And so this is finally something that you can actually use and print off and leave with your social media content manager. Pass this over to your agency that you're using, or if you want to, if you're the business owner and you're the one doing all the posts, or maybe you work for the business owner and you've been delegated to run the social media pages, This will hopefully be a good thing that you can kind of keep in your pocket and, you know, you can tell them like, this is a, a tried and true strategy. We've worked with hundreds of clients over the years and. This is not just some random put together thing. This is actually, um, formulated Again, I looked at many online sources as well, and that helped me articulate, uh, how to break down all of these categories. So short and sweet. Like I said, guys, this one, it was purely for maximizing for reach and engagement and giving you also ideas for how to spread out the content. Between the actual number of posts you make on a weekly basis.