Ask the Marketer: “How Often Should I…?”

As marketers, we’re often asked questions about various topics, from social media advertisements to blogging. A common question that seems to come up time and again spans a few subjects and generally follows these lines: “how often should I…?”

Determining how often you should post to Facebook, blog, or send out an email is tough. You don’t want to spam your customers, but you also don’t want to neglect them or miss out on potential opportunities to sell a product or service. Here are three questions we often get about how often to carry out a marketing tactic, and why that frequency is so important to your business.

1. How Often Should I Post to Facebook? The short and simple answer to this is 2 times per day, 7 days per week; however, according to a study done by HubSpot posting frequency should vary according to how many followers you have. HubSpot has created a helpful graph that compares monthly Facebook posts with indexed clicks per post, and the number of times you should post per month varies according to the number of followers. Those who have between 1-10,000 followers should only post 1-5 times per month, while those with 10,001 of more followers should post 31-60 times per month. That’s quite a difference, but if you’re only looking for clicks, it’s something to keep in mind. At Pulse, we consider social media part of a greater branding strategy. HubSpot’s data doesn’t take reach or impressions into account, so if you’re hoping for great brand awareness as well as clicks, we stick to our original advice to post 2 times per day, 7 days per week. If you’re thinking this sounds like a lot and you don’t want to spam your followers, keep in mind organic reach is very low (due to Facebook encouraging advertising to increase reach) and only a small portion of your followers will actually have your posts show up in their news feeds. If you’re unable to keep up with this kind of schedule, try posting at least 3 times per week. This keeps your page updated, meets HubSpot’s minimum for those with less than 10,000 followers, and contributes to your brand awareness strategy.
2. How Often Should I Blog? As often as you’re able (within reason). Blogging is important because it helps your search engine optimization strategy. According to HubSpot, “search engine optimization is incredibly important for marketers. When you optimize your web pages — including your blog posts — you’re making your website more visible to people who are looking for keywords associated with your brand, product, or service via search engines like Google.” The more blogs you write, the more keywords you can optimize your website for (and the more keywords your website ranks for). An important aspect of blogging is being consistent. If you’re consistently updating your website with new blog posts, your readers know the return for fresh content. Google also has more opportunities to crawl your website for that new content. If you can only blog once per week, that’s fine, just be sure to consistently post once per week. If you start off by blogging 5 times per week but you can’t maintain it, it will only put added stress on you and disappoint your readers. Set realistic goals for yourself and be consistent. You should also aim for producing quality blogs, rather than producing a lot of them. Posts need to be helpful, keep visitors on the site longer, and encourage them to view more pages. Otherwise, the site will get a high bounce rate and short duration on site, both of which can harm SEO.
3. How Often Should I Email Customers? Once per month, or every day. This varies depending on your business needs and capability. According to a report by HubSpot, click through rate (CTR) is highest when you only send once per month; however, if you’re sending 4 or 5 times per month and want to send more often than that, there’s no harm in doing it. “[HubSpot] found that once you’re emailing your list 4 or 5 times a month, there is no sharp decline in clicks if you move to sending to them once a day. Remember, if you go from sending 5 to 6 times a month, and you lose a fraction of a percent in CTR, you’re actually gaining clicks because you’re emailing an extra time.” Another note: unsubscribe rates are highest when emails are only sent once per month, and they go down consistently the more you send.

Do you have a question about marketing you would like answered? Send us a message at pulsemarketingagency.com/contact or give us a call at 207-947-9333. Ask a marketer! We’re here to help.