Pop on LinkedIn and half of the content marketing experts will tell you to post every single day on every channel because presence is everything, while the other half will tell you to post the highest-quality content on only your top-performing channels.
So which is right?
The truth, like in most cases, lies somewhere in the middle. The amount of content you publish depends on so many factors, from your industry to your goals to your budget, that there will never be one right answer. However, you can calculate how much content you need each month for sustainable growth. Here’s how:
1. Understand Your Buyer Persona’s Content Consumption Habits
You need to be where your audience is because it doesn’t matter how much quality content you produce if they never see it. If your target demographic is in their 80s, they are not very likely to spend all their time on Snapchat and TikTok (there are, of course, some incredible exceptions). Instead, they will mostly use Facebook and YouTube. You can learn the demographics of different social media platforms here. Research where your audience is, and that is where you should concentrate your content efforts. The platform itself will define the frequency and timing of posts based on user engagement times. These are frequently changing, but you can get started learning them here.
ProTip: Don’t limit yourself to just your best channels. Other channels with lower return on investment (ROI) may still be very worth your time and investment. They just shouldn’t be the same priority as your primary channels.
2. Clarify Each Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey
Also, consider your buyer’s journey and sales funnel. How many stages are required from lead generation to close? How many stages of awareness, interest, consideration, intent, and evaluation until a customer makes a purpose? A business-to-business (B2B) business in heavy industry will have far more steps on its sales funnel than a business-to-customer (B2C) business selling everyday consumer products. Assess each of those steps and answer the following:
What does the customer need to learn at each step of the sales funnel?
Understanding what the customer needs to learn at each step of your sales funnel helps you determine the amount of content required to keep them informed.
3. Define Your Business Goals
Are you looking to attract more website traffic, grow brand awareness, or convert more customers? How much content you produce will depend on your brand’s goals. Different goals require different types of content published at varying frequencies to be most effective. If you are clear on your overriding objective, it is easier to then determine how much content you will need to produce.
Content Marketing World has an excellent article about how to connect your business goals to your content goals.
4. Determine Your Content Types
Once you have defined your business goals and understand your audience and their preferred channels, you can begin to define your content types. For example, if your primary channels are your website, Instagram, and Amazon, you will need images, content writing, and video. Content types could include:
Website copy, landing pages, and product descriptions
Blog posts, articles, and press releases
Ebooks, white papers, and case studies
Scripts for podcasts, interviews, and webinars
Captions for video, infographics, and photography
Social media posts
Email newsletters
With this information, you can begin to build a content calendar. A content calendar is a planning tool typically using a spreadsheet that helps you organize all your posts for regular scheduling. It contains topics, content types, authors, publishing dates and times, and publishing platforms for upcoming content.
HubSpot has some really helpful, customizable content and editorial calendar templates that can help you get started building your calendar.
5. Deliver Consistently
Now, no matter the volume of content you need, consistency is not a gray area. Both search engines, including Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and social media platforms like LinkedIn and X (formerly Twitter) prioritize the content of brands that post consistently. Publishing content consistently improves user engagement, keeps the audience returning, and signals to algorithms that the content creator is active and reliable. Search engines and social media platforms prioritize consistent content creators by boosting their visibility and ranking because regular updates signal active engagement, trust, and reliability.
Consistency can mean posting every day, but it doesn’t have to because the baseline for consistency is posting regularly, at least weekly. Consistency is only as impactful as the quality of your content. So, if maintaining consistency degrades your quality, you need to adjust your frequency.
6. Evaluate Your Company’s Content Capabilities
Once you know how much content you need to create, you’ll need to figure out what you can realistically produce. Producing consistent quality content is challenging when you have resource constraints like a small marketing team, insufficient content creation tools, or a limited budget. If you can’t consistently create high-quality content, don’t take shortcuts—rushed content is risky and might even hurt your brand. Instead, assess what you can manage with your available resources and produce at the volume you can handle at a quality that reflects your brand. From there, you can always hire content-writing experts to help you with the rest.
So, how much content is enough content? Following this strategy will help you find out.
If you need any help with your content strategy or just a team of expert professional writers to pick up the slack, Borrowed Pen is here to help. Check our services and let us know how we can help. We’ll make sure that you produce only the high-quality content you need to achieve your goals.
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