Blog · Small business basics
There is no honest universal answer to how often a local business should post. Anyone who hands you one number is selling a number, not a plan. The real answer is a cadence you can hold every week for a year, matched to how your customers find you. This page walks through what decides that cadence.
Most of the numbers online are invented to look confident, and confidence is not a strategy. The cadence that works is the one a real person can sustain between paying customers, and it is almost always smaller than the internet wants you to believe.
Below: the number nobody can honestly give you, the three things that decide your real number, and a method for choosing yours this week.
Every posting-frequency chart you have seen has the same flaw: it answers a question nobody asked. A chart that says post five times a week says nothing about your time, your trade, or where your customers actually look. It is a number with the hard part removed, which is why it feels easy to repeat and impossible to follow.
The honest version is that there is no floor and no ceiling that holds for every local business. A restaurant with a daily special and a roofer with one crew are not playing the same game. One has something new to say every day; the other has the same services and the same phone number, and posting five times a week would just be the same sentence five ways.
Capacity comes first. The only cadence that works is the one the owner, or one named person, will actually keep when the week gets busy. Posting seven times a week and quitting in three weeks is worse than posting twice a week for a year, because a feed that goes quiet reads as closed. The reader who saw ten posts in a week and then silence remembers the silence.
The customer's path comes second. A business people search for at the moment of need, an emergency plumber or an auto shop, is found through search and reviews more than through a fresh feed, so the page's job is to look alive and current when they land, not to entertain daily. A business people choose between casually, a salon or a restaurant, gets more from showing up steadily in the feed while they are deciding.
Your content supply comes third. A trade that photographs its own work, a painter or a detailer, generates posts just by doing the job, so a higher cadence costs nothing extra. A business that has to manufacture things to say, an accountant or a law firm, is better off with fewer, better posts it can keep up forever.
Pick the highest of these four that you can honestly sustain, and commit to it for three months before you judge it.
One post, every week, no exceptions. It is the smallest cadence that keeps a page from reading as closed, and it is the one almost any owner can hold. If you are posting nothing now, this is the number, and it is a fine permanent answer.
Two posts a week is where a feed starts to feel current. This is the natural floor for any business that photographs its own work, a cut, a plate, a finished roof, because the material already exists.
Three a week is a working feed for most local businesses, and it is about the most a busy owner should attempt without a helper. The extra post should be the one that does a job: a slow-day offer, an open slot, a question answered.
The honest upgrade path is not more posts. It is more weeks. Hold your cadence for three months, and if the page still posts itself without effort, add one day. If it keeps slipping, drop one and hold the lower number forever.
Every idea on this page is something a person can make in an afternoon with a phone. The part a tool can take is the repetitive half: turning the week's jobs and the brand's own voice into drafted captions, images and a short video, on schedule, with you approving each one before it goes out.
A free account includes one campaign a week, every week, which comes to 12 posts, 4 videos and 4 cross-posts a month, plus 300 credits refilled monthly and no credit card.
No. Any single number that claims to work for every local business has removed the parts that matter: your time, your trade, and where your customers look. The honest number is the highest cadence a real person can hold, and it is different for a restaurant and a roofer.
Not on its own, and this page will not promise a revenue number. What more often buys you is a page that looks alive when a customer lands and a habit that does not stall. The months of consistency do the work a burst of posts cannot, and that is the honest claim.
Two honest signals. First, can you keep it up without it eating your week? Second, does the page look current when a real customer lands on it? If both are yes, the cadence is working. If you are judging it by a follower count that moves slowly, you are measuring the wrong thing.
The writing, designing, and scheduling can be handed over, and then the only job left is a read-through and an approve. SpeedRun Social builds a week of posts from a business's own brand kit and holds them for approval before anything publishes. Its free plan covers one campaign a week: three image posts, one short video, and one cross-post, with 300 credits a month refilled and no credit card.
One campaign a week is included free, forever, with 300 credits refilled monthly and no credit card. Approval stays on until you switch it off.