Everyone says you have to be consistent with your social media marketing efforts, but no one actually tells you what that means. How often do you need to post to see the growth of your business? And how can you stay consistent with social media commitment when you already have a never-ending list of things to do? Let me simplify that for you. 

What does it mean to “be consistent”?

Consistency is not the same as frequency. Being consistent doesn’t mean you have to post 7x a week. It means you choose a posting schedule that you can commit to now and stick to it on a weekly basis.  Staying consistent means that you show up on your primary social media platform weekly at your posting schedule with no excuses and share your content, as well as engage with followers you already have. In order to avoid overwhelm and be able to stay consistent, it’s important to start small with a realistic posting schedule & add more later when you can. 

For example: If you can now only commit to posting and engaging on your primary social media platform (let’s say Instagram), on Tuesday and Thursday during lunchtime, then you need to include it in your weekly calendar and follow through with it every Tuesday and Thursday during lunchtime. Once it becomes easier and you get into the groove of it, you can add one more day or repost on a different platform. 

How often do you need to post to see results?

Of course, the more often you post, the more you learn and the higher the likelihood for faster growth. But rather than posting every day a week, burning out and then not posting for weeks, having a slower & consistent schedule will get you further in the long term. Why? Because when we don’t post for weeks, our audience doesn’t keep that precious space in their mind for us, they consume other content while we are not there, and sooner or later, they forget about us. If we want to keep the attention of our audience and continue building their trust, we must show up consistently and deliver to stay in front of their mind, so when they are finally looking to buy what we sell, we are the first brand that comes to their mind.

Plus, algorithms LOVE it if you are consistent. If you want to see your accounts grow organically (not paying for ads), then being consistent for the long term is a must. There is no magic number of weeks you have to post consistently to see the growth. Social media marketing is not a quick win. It’s a long-term game. If you want to reach your ideal audience and convert your followers into customers, then you need to play long-term rules to stay in the game & see results. 

Ok, now that you understand what staying consistent means and why it is so important, you probably wonder: “but HOW do I stay consistent, I don’t have time for this”! Hear me out.  

How do you stay consistent?

I also struggled to stay consistent, I would keep it up for 2 weeks and skip another 2, because I didn’t know what to post, and I simply didn’t have enough time to do it all. It used to take me two hours to make one reel, and rewrite the caption 100 times before I hit publish, and when I finally did it, the only people liking it were my husband and my mom, who doesn’t even speak English! I’d get frustrated and skip posting for a few weeks

That was before I created a system for my business and started to plan and bulk-record my social media posts in advance. Let me tell you – LIFECHANGING. Planning your social media in advance allows you to be strategic with your social media marketing and only post planned-out content that is aligned with your business goals. It also takes the stress away from worrying about algorithms and allows you to focus on attracting quality followers to your account (those who are actually interested in your product/service). It also gives you more time to focus on more important things in life and business, because you are not creating rushed last-minute posts and instead have your content prepared and ready to publish on your posting schedule.

Wondering how you can start planning your social media in advance for your business? Here is how:

1. PLAN: Spend an afternoon looking into your calendar, pay attention to your upcoming launches and promotions and write down the list of posts you will need to create to market your upcoming launch. Write down easy tips you can share around your products that will position you as a professional in your niche. Think about what would your ideal customer want to know, or need to know in order to purchase your product. Once you have the list of all important information, schedule a day when you will pre-record your content.

2. BATCH MAKING IS A KEY: Batch-making content is your new BFF when it comes to saving time with social media marketing. What is batch-making? It simply is recording several pieces of content at the same time, so you can have it all ready and just hit publish when the time comes or schedule it out for auto-posting on the scheduling app. It is the best thing I have ever done for my social media! If you are still just creating posts in real-time, you have to try this!

3. REPURPOSE – Save all of your content in album in your phone camera & captions in your Google Docs, so you can reuse it for different social media platforms. Recycle your content by reposting it on different platforms to reach new audiences with minimal efforts. Don’t be afraid to repost the same content a few months later. (I promise, no one will notice, but you may reach a new audience with work you have already done!) 

Simple but powerful – these three processes (planning, batch-making & repurposing) have saved hundreds of hours of my time & my hope is that they will for you too. I hope you are going to give this a try, once you get into the groove of planning your social media in advance, you will never look back.

PS: If you are interested in giving social media planning a try, download my free social media planning guide below to get started.

Xo, Michaela