We’ve never been a social media firm that recommends joining every new social media platform or app that comes out. We’ve always been big believers in doing more with less (and have been watching as more and more businesses and brands have come to this realization, too). We work with small business owners and independent professionals, so we also know that urging our clients to take on more than they can reasonably execute doesn’t help them, and can actually hurt.

Because of all that you just read, you might be surprised that I’m suggesting too little social media is also bad for your business.

But it is.

Focusing your social media efforts on fewer platforms is one thing, but simply not putting enough time into the platforms you have decided to use, isn’t going to pay off for you.

Too Little Social Media Activity is Bad for Your Small Business

Posting 1 or 2 tweets a day, every day, it almost like not having a Twitter account at all.

Publishing 1 Facebook update every few weeks isn’t going to move the needle.

The same holds true for Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, and any other social media platform or app you have a presence on.

No, you don’t need a full-time social media presence on 3+ platforms if you are a small business. But you are wasting your time if you are barely putting any effort into the platforms you have decided to use.

How Much Social Media Activity is Enough?

This question is a bit difficult to answer because every business and client mix is different, but this can at least give you some guidelines. Ultimately, you want to do enough social media that you can begin to “move the needle” as they say. Anything less just isn’t worth it.

• Facebook – Hopefully you have an ads budget in place because you’ll need it. With a modest ad budget, a small business can do well enough with only 3 updates a week. We also encourage interacting with other Pages as your Page.
• Twitter – A solid 10+ minutes a day, 5 days a week. That’s enough time to send original tweets, retweet and engage with others, check replies, and follow back new followers.
• Pinterest – If you are making sure to check the pin’s source before repinning (which is something you should always do), you need a minimum of 15 minutes a day. And even with that, you’ll likely only get a chance to pin a couple pins of your own and repin a handful of others’ pins.
• Instagram – Along with posting at least 1 original image each day (because you should also be regramming as part of your strategy), time should be spent on interacting with others’ images plus searching post hashtags. I’d suggest at least 15 minutes a day here, too.
• LinkedIn – This depends if you are talking about LinkedIn Company pages or personal profiles. LinkedIn Company pages are very limited in functionality, but personal profiles should get a mix of new content published plus interaction and sharing of Connections’ content (at least 10 minutes a day). We’ve steadily grown our Company Page’s following to over 600 with nothing but 1-2 link posts a day (Buffer is great for this).
• Google+ – Here you’ll want to make multiple posts a day (a mix of original posts and shares from others), spend time interacting with others’ (Google+ lends itself to lengthy discussions in the comments section of a post). Ten to 15 minutes a day at a minimum.

So you can see that no 1 platform requires that much time on a regular basis. The more time you can put in on 1 platform, the better. But you do need to maintain at least a minimum level of effort if you want to make any time you spend, worth it for you.