Should Your Social Media Marketing Strategy Consist Of Quantity Or Quality Content?

When it comes to your social media marketing plan for your business, there's a lot of debate about how much content creation you should be doing.  Some people say, "You should create as much content as you possibly can!"  If you've ever heard Gary V. speak before, you know that he falls in this camp.  In the other camp, you have people who say, "It's better to focus on posting less, but making those posts really polished and valuable."  Which leaves business owners sitting in the middle wondering, "What exactly IS the best social media marketing strategy for my business?"

We've been creating content across 5 social media platforms for over three years now, and we've done all the legwork, tested different posting schedules, amounts, times, days, etc. so that you don't have to, all to be able to give you our opinion based on the research that we've done, which says (drumroll please) . . .

Creating quantity is better than focusing on quality.  Flat out, and it's not even close.

Here are some of the numbers I'll give you just to show you how much of a difference we see when we post quantity vs. when we focus on quality (I'll also break down the exact number of posts).

• TikTok: we grew 100K followers in 30 days when posting 6x a day.  Since we pulled back to 1-2 posts a day, in the last year we've only grown 37K followers.
• Instagram: we just started posting 3x a day (2 reels, 1 still post) and since then, our reach has quadrupled and we've grown by over 5K followers.
• Pinterest: when I'd post 1 idea pin a day and 5 regular posts, our average monthly impressions would hover between 250-500K.  However, when I was posting 4-6 idea pins a day and 5 regular posts we would get over 1M monthly impressions.
• LinkedIn: we used to only post twice a week, and would get anywhere from 500-1000 impressions on our posts.  Now, when we post every single day, that number is 10x that.

I'm very big on math, and like Jay-Z says, "Numbers don't lie."  And the numbers simply point to the fact that if you post more, you'll get more out of your social media marketing . . . but that still doesn't answer the "why" it happens.  Well, I don't work for these social media platforms, but I do know this: their goal is to keep people on their platforms for as long as possible because if they do, that means more users, and more advertisers, which ultimately means more money.

Based on this, it would only make sense that creating more is better, because the more content you create, the more content people have to consume, which keeps them on these social media platforms longer, which makes the platforms money.

The second thing I’ll say is this: how do you ever expect to create quality content if you never first create quantity?  I’ll say hands down the best thing we ever did for our business and social media marketing was go live on Instagram every day for 30 days and post those 6 TikTok’s a day.  Why?  Because it forced us to get better.

We got more comfortable in front of the camera, we got better at interacting with other people on social media, and we also got better at things like editing, caption writing, and other vital social media marketing skills.  But we never would have got there had we not first focused on the quantity aspect of our social media marketing.

The last thing I’ll say is this: two of the responses we always get when we say this is “Well you have a team” or “I don’t have the time.”  First of all, when we were creating all of that content in the beginning, we both actually had full-time jobs and we STILL made it work, because we were intentional with our plan and with our time.  We had no employees, no team just us.

The second thing is you DO have the time, you’re just using it doing other things, which means you’re not saying that you don’t have the time, you’re simply saying that it’s not a priority.  I bet if I followed you around for an entire day, I could find an extra 10-15 minutes in your day for you to make another piece of content.  If your business is important enough, you’ll find the time.

For context, I have a friend who’s training to be in a triathlon, which involves working out 2-3 times a day to get ready for the competition.  He also has a wife, two kids, and he runs two businesses . . . yet he still finds the time to do those 2-3 workouts every day . . . why?  Because it’s a priority to him.  Now, who do you think has the busier schedule: him or you?

Whether or not this convinces you to create more content, that’s not the point.  The point is this: to stand out on social media as a business you have to create great content, but you’ll never create that great content if you don’t first make a plan to create more of it.  Quantity leads to quality.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, trust me, we look back at some of those old TikTok’s and cringe, but they couldn’t have been THAT bad, because we grew by 100K followers.

Try it for 7 days, 14 days, or even 30 days.  The point isn’t growth, the point is to get better, because just like all the personal growth/business books say, the more you do something and the more consistent you do it, the better you’ll get and the more results you can expect to see.