You will be able to set how often you publish based on the hours you actually have each week.
Many small business accounts post in bursts. A common pattern is a post every day for two weeks, then a busy month, then nothing for six weeks, then an apologetic "we're back" post and another burst. This usually happens because the plan asked for more time than the week could give, even when the owner was trying hard. Most people have never measured how long one piece of content takes, so they plan as if it takes no time at all.
Mei Ling, who owns a small business, ran her Instagram account in bursts like this for two years. She felt guilty every time she opened the app. She was putting in the effort, but her plan needed more hours than her weeks had.
Start by measuring one typical piece, such as a blog post or a short video. Time it in four stages and add them up. Research covers checking your voice-of-customer file and checking any facts. Writing is the draft. Editing is the editing passes from Lesson 7.1. Publishing covers formatting, images, scheduling and sharing.
Priya runs a centre whose customers include parents (also an invented example). She timed the blog post she wrote in Lesson 6.4. Research took 1 hour and writing took an hour and a half. Editing took half an hour, and publishing, which for her meant the photo and formatting, took another half hour. One blog post came to 3.5 hours. A short social post adapted from that blog took her about half an hour.
Then look at a typical week and count the hours that are really free for content. Use the hours an ordinary week gives you, and leave out the hours you would like to have. Priya found about 5 hours a week, mostly on Sunday evenings and one weekday morning before the centre opened.
Your sustainable rhythm is the posting frequency that fits the hours you really have and that you can keep up for at least three months. To find it, divide your available weekly hours by the hours one piece takes. For Priya, 5 hours minus 3.5 hours for a blog post leaves 1.5 hours, enough for three short posts at half an hour each. Her rhythm comes to one blog post and three short posts a week, at most. Two blog posts a week would have needed 7 hours, 2 more than she had, so she would have kept up for a week or two and then fallen behind. Planning beyond your hours tends to go this way. Her numbers are only an illustration, so work from your own.
Readers get used to a steady rhythm and start to expect your next post. When you post in bursts, they learn that you can't be relied on. This applies to social posts, email and blogs. A monthly email that always arrives is more useful than a weekly email that stops after six weeks, and a blog with one good post a fortnight for a year is worth more than one with twenty posts in its first month and none since.
Before you commit, check that the rhythm will hold for at least three months, through busy periods, holidays and weeks when the business needs all your attention. If you aren't sure, start smaller than you think you can manage and add more later, rather than starting big and stopping. If the division gives you a fraction, round down.
Writing a single post every few days means getting into writing mode again each time. Every switch takes time, because you have to find your notes, remember where you left off and get back into the reader's head. Batching is doing several pieces of the same kind of work in one sitting. Write three or four posts in one session and edit them all in the next. Then schedule them together, using the social media platform's own scheduling tool or a separate scheduler.
Mei Ling now spends two hours on the first Sunday of each month writing four weeks of posts, and one more hour scheduling them. For the rest of the month she only replies to comments, and her account has posted every week for seven months.
If every slot in your calendar is filled in advance, you have no room for anything new, such as a customer question that would make a great post, news that affects your customers, or a product selling out. Leave one slot open each week. When something timely comes up, it goes into that slot and the rest of the week stays as planned. When nothing does, use the slot to answer a customer question from your list, written in the customer's words with the name removed.
Priya keeps her Friday short post open. Most weeks she fills it with a question a parent asked during the week, in the parent's words with the name removed. Those posts get more replies, week after week, than anything she planned weeks ahead.
For the activity, time one real piece of content this week, stage by stage, and write the total down. Then look at your week and write the hours you can honestly give to content every week for the next three months. Divide, leave room for one open slot, and round down.
Time yourself as you produce one post this week, then write down how many pieces a week you could keep up for three months.
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