Set posting cadence and the message routine

1. The cadence ceilings

There is a ceiling on each format, above which your audience cannot absorb what you make. Both ceilings below are stated with their qualifiers, and the qualifiers are the useful part.

Format	Ceiling	As stated
Short form	Up to 10 times a day	You can usually get up to 10 times a day, sometimes, on the short-video and short-text platforms
Long form	Roughly once a week	You might have to go up to maybe once a week, once every five days, every few days

The condition attached to the short-form ceiling. It is given with an explicit refusal to date it: the number is deliberately not tied to the platforms of one moment, and it will probably apply to most short-form platforms in future as well.

The long-form ceiling is found by working up to it. You raise the rate until you notice your audience cannot consume that much, and the sweet spot sits usually significantly below the short-form rate.

Whether these ceilings hold, set against SOP 214. SOP 214, sections 2 and 3, says no platform can be maxed out: the real limit is how many good posts you can make, and some very large accounts post far above both ceilings here. Following this page caps your volume at the ceilings above; following SOP 214 pushes it as high as your good posts allow. SOP 214, section 3, adds a case on its side, as reported: owners adding roughly 400 to 570 posts in one week. This page does not settle which reading is right.

2. The twice-monthly session

The routine below is run by somebody who is not a full-time content creator and who runs businesses; producing content is one responsibility among several. That is the condition under which it is offered.

Step	What happens
1	Find the topics, using the five sourcing methods on SOP 22
2	Sit down twice every month and record 30 or so short clips from those topics
3	On the same day, record two to four longer videos, each unpacking one topic that had a story or a worked example attached to it

The second step draws on a calendar and an existing feed of short written posts: you read back what you have already said, pick the interesting ones, and make videos of those. The third step uses the same feed, filtered for the posts that had more behind them.

That is the whole routine. It is simple because it is meant to be started rather than admired, and volume is added to it over time rather than designed into it at the beginning.

The result, with the conditions it needs to be read with. Run for two years, that routine grew an audience of five or six million people at the time the account was given. Sitting down to record twice a month produced it. The figure is one person's, over that period, on the platforms of that period.

3. What to optimize inside the routine

The view offered is that most people dramatically overestimate how long content takes to make and dramatically underestimate two things: what they should be talking about, and whether what they make is actually good.

Replace the question. Instead of asking how this piece will perform, ask how to make it good enough that somebody would want to send it to another person.

The reason that question works is structural rather than aesthetic. A platform wants more people on it. So it rewards content that gets sent off the platform to somebody who is not yet on it, because that brings a new person in. The qualifier stays on this page: it is a bet rather than a measurement that across almost every platform, whatever gets shared is what travels furthest.

The balance to hold. Making only what you want to make is good for the long run. Ideally, aim at the crossing point — subjects you want to talk about that your audience also wants to hear about.

4. Repeat yourself far more than feels reasonable

People need to be reminded more than they need to be taught. Your audience does not consume all of your output, and does not consume it all of the time.

Why a reminder works. Each one renews the link between doing the right thing and getting the good result. That matters most where the reward comes late: money saved today pays off only much later. In one example, a voice that has told people for many years to spend less than they earn keeps its audience, because hearing it serves as a daily reminder.

The measurement behind it: a survey of one audience found one in six people did not know there was a book, after it had been posted about daily for two years.

In one example, a company owner walked past his own marketing department every day, saw the same advertisement in progress, and asked after three months when they would finally change it — to be told it had not launched yet. You usually get sick of your own content long before your audience knows your name. One post about something means roughly one percent of your audience knows about it; a second guess puts it nearer half that.

The consequence for your calendar is direct: repeat yourself far more, and for far longer, than you think you need to. You might be bored of a message while your audience might still want it, and people often return to the same voices precisely because the message does not change — be kinder, be more patient, work harder — since the reason they came was to be reminded.

5. Length is not the constraint; boredom is

People do not have shorter attention spans. They have higher standards.

There is no such thing as too long, only too boring. Streaming has settled the question in public: people will spend hours on long-form content when they like it. So the effort belongs on the value rather than on the algorithm, and complaints about attention spans are an excuse.

6. Post manually

Avoid pre-scheduling posts.

The observation: manually posted pieces perform better than pre-scheduled ones.

The explanation, marked as an explanation. It is unproven, and it is one person's reading of what is happening rather than a finding: when you post by hand you know the audience will judge what you just put up within seconds, and that gives the piece one last look — is this good enough, does the caption need a tweak, is the headline right. Planning a month of content at once removes that moment, because the feedback is no longer about to happen.

The practice that follows. Prepare ahead if you want, and still press the button by hand. The condition on the finding is that it is one team's, and it holds for that team: it works better there.

A second view: let software post. One team has software title its clips and schedule each day's batch, run as a daily job, and keeps a person checking the titles, because titles drive so much of a video's growth; the check shrinks as the software learns from that team's own data. Another of its feeds, a short-text one, runs with no person touching it, and was reported at an all-time high on a measure not named. This section says press the button by hand; the second view hands the posting to software. SOP 276, section 11, flags the same question. This page does not settle which reading is right.

7. Benchmarks

One practice here is to measure both of these, monthly: how big, and how fast.

Measure	What it is	Worked example
Followers	Total across all platforms — how big	1,000 to 1,500 is 500 more followers
Reach	Impressions, people seeing your material — how big	10,000 to 15,000 is 5,000 more people
Follower rate	Speed of gaining followers — how fast	500 new on a base of 1,000, in a month, is a 50 percent growth month
Reach rate	Speed of gaining reach — how fast	5,000 extra people in a month on a base of 10,000 is a 50 percent growth month

The arithmetic checks out. 500 on a base of 1,000 is 50 percent, and 5,000 on a base of 10,000 is 50 percent. Both examples are built to give the same answer.

Time cost: maybe 60 minutes, once a month.

The rule of thumb behind measuring both: the more things you measure, the more ways you have to win.

Everybody starts at zero. Every account on every platform started there. Starting from a very small base means your growth percentages are usually enormous.

Compare your growth between months, and ignore everybody else. The only reason a small number feels small is that you are comparing yourself with somebody who has been doing this ten or a hundred times longer than you. Compare against the alternative you actually had — which was probably doing it in person, or probably doing nothing — and against what you did last month.

Why inputs come first. You can only control inputs. Measuring outputs is only useful if the inputs were consistent. So the order is: pick the posting cadence you will stick to on a platform, pick the ask cadence for that platform using SOP 24, start, and do not stop.

8. Why the routine is worth keeping when the numbers are slow

One business found its paid advertising performing worse with no obvious cause. The question that found it was asked at a quarterly meeting: what did we stop doing twelve weeks ago that we are no longer doing now? The answer was that the content had moved from the specific subject the customers cared about to general material.

A survey of existing customers then found that 78 percent of them had consumed at least two pieces of long-form content before they bought.

The reading given is that the advertising had been getting credit that belonged to the content: the content built the goodwill, and the ads collected the people in whom it had already been built. The same effect shows up in one-to-one outreach — somebody who gets your message, clicks through to your profile and finds a body of useful material is far more likely to respond, and to believe you later when you do make an offer.

9. The checklist

Question	The answer
Who runs this	You
How often, short form	Up to 10 times a day, usually, sometimes
How often, long form	About once a week, or every five days, or every few days
How you find topics	The five methods on SOP 22
Recording sessions per month	Two
Short clips per session	30 or so
Long videos per session	Two to four
When you post	By hand, not pre-scheduled; a second view is flagged in section 6
What you measure	Followers and reach; the rate of each
How often you measure	Monthly, in about 60 minutes
What you compare against	Your own previous month, and the alternative you actually had
How long before the audience compounds	Not established on this page; why posts keep paying is SOP 214, section 5.1

10. What this page does not cover

Which platforms to be on, and in what order, is on SOP 25. The piece itself has four pages of its own: SOP 20 for its shape, SOP 21 for the headline, SOP 22 for where the subject comes from, and SOP 23 for keeping people to the end. SOP 24 governs how often this audience may be asked for anything, and where that ask sits. Turning a post that performed into a paid advertisement is on SOP 38.

Editing, production equipment and platform algorithms are not covered on this page.