I published a post yesterday about growing your Medium traffic and turned that into an Instagram post.
View this post on Instagram
And I soon discovered that some people are worried about publishing daily or publishing too often.
I thought I might be able to speak to that issue in a targeted way. Here’s what I have to say about posting too often.
Know Your Platforms
So, it seems some people don’t even know about the long-form blogging social network called Medium (click on the link to learn more). People just saw “traffic” and assumed I was talking about traffic in general.
I don’t think you could over-saturate your audience on Medium by posting daily. I bet there are people who post more often than that even.
Lately, most of my newer stories on Medium have been getting about 20 to 40 views. And that’s with 412 “followers”. I’m clear that, Medium hasn’t been, and isn’t even interested in, getting my posts in front of all my followers.
(Nor is Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Mix, YouTube, LinkedIn… need I go on?)
And I’m also clear that not all 412 followers are even going to be interested in all my stories.
Either way, I’m not bombarding anyone with too much of anything and I would be hard pressed to do that with blogging or any other channel. Because there’s always an element of choice.
I publish daily because I was challenged to. I publish daily because I thought it might give me a chance at reaching my business, financial, and fulfillment goals.
The platform you’re using does play a significant part what some might consider “posting too often.” But on Twitter, some experts post 15 tweets per day (which isn’t even that much on Twitter). On Facebook and Instagram, two to three posts per day seems to be the norm, and I still don’t think you could overwhelm your audience with more.
When it comes to posting frequency, it helps to understand each platform you’re planning to publish on.
Know Your Algorithms
It’s often been said that “marketers ruin everything.”
So, here’s the rub – because marketers continually ruin everything, the organic reach of your posts suck rotten pickles. I’m just telling it like it is.
Marketers ruined organic reach, they ruined live streaming (technically still alive on Instagram), and they will ruin advertising too. They will latch onto anything that works and exploit it until it’s gone.
When you post to Facebook, most of the time, only the people who liked your last post are even seeing your latest post. And that’s assuming they still follow you.
And even then, I’m honestly being a little generous. Because not everyone logs into social media every day, stops to look at what others have posted, or even cares about what’s being said. It might be sad, but it’s 100% true.
Social media wasn’t designed for human interaction. It’s mostly for data collection.
So, posting two or three times per day on Facebook? Not a big deal. You’re not bugging anyone unless you’re intentionally going out of your way to offend them (especially politically or religiously), troll them, spam them, and extract their credit cards, identity, and firstborn.
Know Your Experts
I don’t know who’s teaching you to be restrained in your posting efforts, but if you were to observe their social media feeds for more than a day, you’d probably see they are posting way more than they say is safe or advisable.
This is the problem with advice and tips from so-called “experts” in general, in that even the person offering them doesn’t necessarily follow their own advice. Further, they don’t necessarily know what got them to where they are, and it was long, circuitous journey of trials and errors to get to where they are.
They just don’t talk about it because they like to reinvent the past. They’re embarrassed and scared crapless about their wrongdoings and failures. Which I think is tacky.
Dr. Joe Dispenza says we remember 50% of our past wrong. So, you can’t trust everything you’ve heard. You can barely trust your own experience for crying out loud.
No one is perfect – even the experts.
Know Your Stories
This is not something we’re taught in school (even though it should be).
Basically, we end up constructing stories in our minds about other people and their opinions of us. As if we’re that important.
We assume a lot based on body language and things said or not said, when our assumptions are nothing more than figments of our imagination.
We feel the way we feel about certain people because we’ve continually reinforced the same thoughts about them over time, and thoughts always crystallize into feelings.
Basically, we all live in a world of make believe, assuming things are the way we see them.
The reality is I’ve experimented with posting 10, 20, and even 30 times per day on social media. Overwhelmingly, the response I got ended up being positive. People said it gave me a “presence.”
I won’t speculate on what those who didn’t voice their opinion of me thought because I don’t think they’re thinking about me anyway. And if they are, they’re too chicken to say anything about it.
Know Human Nature
Again, it’s kind of sad to say, but no one cares about YOU that much. They just don’t.
If people follow you, it’s for their own benefit. If people un-follow you, it’s for their own benefit. Either way, they’re only interested in themselves!
If they’re coming to check out all your posts, then welcome them with open arms! Tell them about your latest product, or email list, or coaching group. These are your superfans and you want to hold onto them tightly!
I don’t know anyone who bothers with all my posts. And I get there are a few considerations, from relevance, to messaging, to how much they like or don’t like me.
And they’ve usually got a lot of great stories about “time” too, which is just motion and focus. There’s no such thing as “time” because everyone experiences it differently.
But at the end of the day, if my posts aren’t getting seen, then the only sensible conclusion I can come to is I need to share more, and preferably with different copy and messaging.
Especially since people keep saying my writing is great and they resonate with it. I don’t know if I trust that either, based on the complete lack of engagement or support, but hey, at least they were nice to me once.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to posting frequency, why not do as I did and treat it like an experiment?
I’m not saying there hasn’t been some downsides to my experimentation, but I’ve learned something from everything I’ve done. I’ve never been too shy or too scared to try something.
And inevitably, what works for one won’t necessarily work for another, because of a lot of the reasons I’ve already shared.
Bottom line – if you’re the type of person that’s worried about posting too often, you’re probably not posting enough.
Shh… Don’t tell anyone. Only the cool kids are talking about it.
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