Would you like to know now when you can stop posting to social media and still get the same level...

Hello and welcome to the Speak PR Podcast. My name is Brian and I am taking over the mic for Jim today. As always though, we are going to address how a business owner can be noticed using technology-augmented marketing. Today on the Speak PR Mastermind, Jim covered the perennial topic of how much content is enough to get audience engagement. This is where we are fortunate because the industry provides advice aplenty. So let's look at some of these and see if we can find a consensus. I think that the first thing to note is that there are plenty of metrics relating to external audiences, but when it comes to internal audiences and partner audiences, the data is less forthcoming. This is because internal tends to come under human resources and therefore doesn't come within the purview of public relations, although in our view every stakeholder which impacts the organisation should be addressed. The other reason is that the lines are now not distinct with digital media consumed regardless of relationship with the company and because team members and partners can amplify a message as readily as a customer. According to Statista, as of 2019, the average daily social media usage of internet users worldwide amounted to 144 minutes per day, up from 142 minutes in the previous year. This seems low in light of COVID but long-term projections for social media use estimates the average adult will spend 6 years and 8 months of their life on social media. By comparison, the average 75-year-old will have spent 25 years asleep. So this means that a company has in theory just over 2 hours per day to connect with an avatar, although if this is directed at team members and partners they will be at work and so email will increase that window of time to create engagement. The goal of all of this work is to move people along the funnel from being receptive, to aware, to be interested, to engaged as they receive value, and ultimately to be evangelical, and to tell others. So the question then is how much will this take? Jim has developed the concept of the Active Communications Index, a productivity measure which will give you a metric to determine how much work will be sufficient. Efficient for your social media activities against known industry benchmarks. In setting an Active Communications Index, or ACI, you can be relieved at not creating endless content, and instead focus on engaging content. We will focus on content created times the number of channels of distribution. Remember too, that content creation is a circular process, it is never finished and this needs to be kept in mind when undertaking public relations. What is the Active Communications Index which a company should aim for in order to find the optimal balance between time invested in the activity and the return on that investment of time, creativity, and money? The good news is that frequency is not key, but quality and timing are because the engagement levels are important, which is why we covered creating A1 context-sensitive content in Engage, and why we detailed our avatar and their daily schedule because people are not online all day looking at content— some may be, but those working will have to work some of the days. Let's also point out that these are not hard and fast rules and different organizations will have different volumes, and also this will be different for business-to-business, consumer, government, etc. However, the important takeaway is that this is not an all-consuming task but a considered application of creativity coupled with technology for creation and amplification. So let's reveal these optimal numbers as advised by the platforms themselves. Twitter should have a minimum of 3 posts per day, 15 is ideal and 30 is the maximum. Facebook should have a post once per day, ideally 2, but doesn't really set a maximum. Instagram suggests 1 to 3 posts per day. LinkedIn, the business site, suggests 1 per day to a maximum of 5 per week. Pinterest suggests a minimum of 3 per day, ideal of 10 and maximum of 30. YouTube is a minimum of 1 per week. The truth is that these metrics are changing as the platforms change, but overall you will get the idea that this isn't about generating masses of content Carefully curated high-value content for your audience shared when they're looking for it on the platforms they are consuming information on. YouTube isn't mentioned in the same infographics, but the view seems to be one per week. The key again is consistency and quality, not volume in sporadic bursts. Apparently, Thursday and Friday are the best days to post to YouTube, which makes sense as it is often a Netflix or Amazon Prime alternative. On a cautionary note, oversupply can be detrimental to your well-being. HubSpot found that Facebook pages under 10,000 fans experienced a 50% drop in engagement per post if they posted more than once per day. Also, avoid sharing a number of posts in quick succession, allowing at least 3 hours between posts as too many updates is the number one reason people unfollow fan pages. For email newsletters it is the same— too frequent and people can't consume it all, too infrequent and people lose the thread. So the next important point is to think about the time you share your posts. Sprout Social shared some charts on their website which illustrate that the time of day and day of the week will impact the performance of a post. Different days perform differently, and the same time on different days yield to differing levels of engagement. For example, Monday 8 o'clock has a higher engagement level than Tuesday at 8 o'clock, but Wednesday at 8 o'clock has the same as the Monday. In other words, people are perhaps catching up with their posts when they first get to work and then on Tuesday focus on work first. So get those posts in on a Monday morning, but not on Tuesday, but schedule for the Wednesday instead. Now what about the team? The statistics on employee engagement show an alarmingly low level of internal communication within organizations. According to Gallup's State of the Global Workplace, 85% of employees feel disengaged in the workplace. Importantly, disengaged employees are simply bad for business. Employee engagement increases productivity to the tune of 21% higher profits per year. The data on internal communications is privately held, but also internal communications take place across various and often disconnected platforms. On the Speak PR Mastermind, Jim mentions platforms like mo.work, but also community platforms like Tribe which allow for building private communities for the staff. He recommends a daily message to the team and a weekly roundup to share key goals, successes and learnings. Let us also not forget the impact of trigger-based communications, for example, recognition of an anniversary, an award, or just to inject some fun into the business. Right now, that's what everyone really needs too. Don't forget your partners. Finally, we mention the partners because the other companies can be a source of sales referrals. Social channels may not be relevant because partners will want to share commercial and sensitive information. However, it is possible to use closed groups e.g. on LinkedIn, but also to use email newsletters, for example Issuu, private videos hosted on Vimeo and partner webinars hosted on Zoom or MS Teams, or dedicated platforms like On24. In the UK the business events industry was, pre-COVID, valued at £31.2bn and the meetings incentives conferences exhibitions industry globally is a significant platform for partner marketing. These traditional means of gathering and sharing business ideas have been disabled by COVID and may not return. Partner communications in the traditional form need to be replaced with other channels in a proactive and planned engagement strategy built into the Active Communications Index. It may not be with the popular social media channels, but there are many private and dedicated business-to-business digital platforms to use instead. Finally then, I hope that by sharing some actual numbers of how much social media posting is enough, you can be free of the anxiety of being on the digital treadmill. Parkinson's Law states that work expands to fill the time. I have articulated the Active Communications Index as a way of defining how much time needs to be spent, and in the Speak PR Mastermind we share the amplification tools which enable the automation of distribution. The combination of a known goal and the tools with which to attain those goals I hope will allow you to focus on the enjoyable aspects of content creation, and focusing that on telling your customers' success stories. Thank you for listening to this episode of Speak PR. My name is Brian and I am an AI avatar myself, generated by the Talkia platform. I've been speaking on behalf of Jim. So until we meet again, Jim and I wish you good health, a profitable business, and that you relax and create only the content which you need as defined by the Active Communications Index. Keep communicating!