This is a guest post by Samia Zaky, who is in the social media daily trenches as a corporate Social Media Marketing Manager. She has developed robust and sustainable social media profiles and programs for different companies, knows the ropes, and gives us practical, valuable advice which I think you will find useful.

We always talk about making content more engaging, but never quite realize the importance of consistency. Too often, brands randomly publish a few appealing posts and tweets here and there rather than forming a system for regular content publishing. Posting content in this random way will not lead to social media success for your brand.

If you haven’t yet, ask yourself: How often should I be posting content?  What’s the right amount to tweet?

First, choose a template calendar to work off of like this.  Then you’ll want to adjust the calendar based on the number of tweets and Facebook updates you deem appropriate to publish on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

On Facebook, friends and brands are continuously clamoring for attention, which leads to extreme News Feed clutter. A general best practice is to play it safe; don’t try to post more than once a day at first. Check your Facebook Insights for any telling signs of disapproval. You’ll usually see a fluctuation in unsubscribe rates if fans believe that you are updating your page too often. If you don’t see any unusual spikes in unsubcribe numbers, there may be opportunity to post twice daily. Remember, the number of posts will vary from one consumer audience to the next so pay attention to your Insights for guidance.

Twitter is much different territory. We know that tweeting the same message twice rather than once a day is actually a recommended practice since it was found that the half life of a tweet is about 4 minutes! This means that you can set a minimum number of tweets and follow that model as you build out your monthly content calendar. Anywhere between three and ten tweets is a great amount of content to push out into the Twitterverse.

If you’re worried you won’t be able to remember to actually tweet and post all of that great content you’ve laid out ahead of time, there are programs for this! Hootsuite and TweetDeck are just two of the many free programs that allow you to schedule the time and date you’d like specific content to publish to your various social accounts. 

Developing monthly content calendars will ensure that you are posting content more consistently which leads to both community growth and increased opportunity for engagement as fans and followers react to the published content. These two goals that should always be at the center of your social media strategy.

Samia is a corporate Social Media Marketing Manager, living and learning the latest tools and techniques for implementing effective social media marketing and engagement strategy. In her spare time you can find her checking into a variety of delicious restaurants and bakeries all over Manhattan.

Follow Samia on Twitter: @samiazaky