SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT

Almost every business can produce a good week of content. The difficulty is week nine, when the job is busy, nobody has photographs, and posting is the thing that can wait until Tuesday.

That's not a talent problem and more effort won't solve it. What solves it is deciding in advance what goes out, having material already captured, and removing the moment where someone has to invent something.

Producing one good post is talent. Producing the fiftieth to the same standard is a system.

• A cadence you can actually sustain, agreed honestly rather than optimistically
• A content library built for reuse, so quiet weeks aren't empty
• Planned calendars rather than same-day decisions
• Production — graphics, short video, copy
• Scheduling and publishing
• Community management and response
• Reporting in plain language, monthly

Roughly three and a half days a month for full management, which is what an honest cadence costs. Front-loaded — the library and the plan are built first, so month two is easier than month one rather than harder.

Volume is the easiest thing to sell and the first thing to collapse. A cadence you can hold for a year beats one that impresses for six weeks and then goes silent — and silence is a signal customers read.