How often should a business actually post?

Every guide gives a different number. The useful answer is: the highest frequency you can sustain for a year at a quality you are not embarrassed by. That is usually much lower than the advice suggests, and it works better.

Rough guidance by platform

• LinkedIn: 2–3 a week. Daily works if you have something to say daily; most people do not, and it shows.
• Instagram: 3–5 a week including stories. Stories carry more weight than the grid for an audience that already follows you.
• YouTube: weekly if you can, fortnightly is fine. Consistency matters more than volume here than anywhere else.
• TikTok: 4–7 a week. It genuinely rewards frequency.
• Facebook: 2–3 a week for a local business.

Why sustainability is the real constraint

The pattern is always the same: an ambitious schedule, three excellent weeks, then a gap, then guilt, then nothing. An abandoned account signals a business that has stopped, which is worse than one that never started.

Pick the number you can hit in your worst week, not your best.

Batch, but do not schedule everything

Write a month in one sitting — the context switching is what actually costs time. But leave room for something timely; feeds reward posts that respond to something happening now, and a fully pre-scheduled account reads like a broadcast.

What to post when you have nothing to say

• A question a customer asked this week, and your answer.
• Something you changed your mind about.
• A piece of work with the reasoning behind a decision.
• A mistake and what it cost.
• A number from your own business.

All five are more interesting than an industry statistic, and you already have them.

The measure that matters

Not followers. Enquiries that mention a post, conversations started, and people who arrive already knowing what you do. A thousand followers who never buy is a vanity number; forty who are exactly right is a business.