Hey there,

Georgi from Cobot here!

Did you know?

4 out of 5 people have recently unfollowed a brand on social media.

41.5% say they unfollowed because the brand was “Posting too much”.
GoodFirms's Social Media Usage Survey

At the same time, when you open an article on how often you should post on social media, you feel the wave of anxiety rushing through your body:

Is it really recommended to post 5 times a week and share 2 stories a day if you want to be successful on Instagram?

You tell yourself: “I have to post in Facebook groups, so I can engage my local community, LinkedIn, so I can reach professionals that might book a table/office, or TikTok, which everybody seems to be using these days…”

Slowly but surely you're not a coworking space operator anymore, but a full-time social media manager.

Deep breath. Let's solve this in 5 steps:

Step 1: Choose the right platform.

You probably don't have a 10-person social media team. Frankly, you don't even need one: Choose one social media platform carefully, test it for 6-12 months, and draw conclusions.

Is this channel bringing enough leads? Is your coworking space benefiting from it? Maybe your ideal customer doesn't even use this platform.

Here is a quick infographic that gives you a brief overview of the pros & cons of the most fitting social media channels for your space:

Click on the image to see it in full size or download it.

Step 2: What are you posting?

Even though 40% of people say they unfollow brands because "they post too much”, what they actually mean is “they post too much about stuff that I don't care about”.

As a coworking space operator you can create a lot of content: Community pictures, events, building upgrades, everything can be content, as long as your potential customers like what they see. Try to think like them and create content that they will identify and interact with.

• Does your potential customer want to hear that your kitchen fridge is broken? Probably not. 👎 (Unless you make it funny)

• Do they want to hear that they get a discount from the cafeteria nearby if they are a member? Definitely yes! 👍 (Unless that cafeteria is known to be really bad)

Here are a couple of great recent community-oriented posts from ImpactHub Berlin and betahaus: One promoting an event, and the other showing the welcoming community at betahaus through a cute dog picture:

Step 3: How are you saying it?

You can be funny, serious, informative, or outright provocative with your posts. Just make sure you stick to one style of communication.

If you're not sure which one, I suggest being down-to-earth and genuine. Honesty is appreciated greatly in today's digital world.

TIP:

The more provocative/edgy type of marketing we see these days (Duolingo, Ryanair, Liquid Death) is usually reserved for mass B2C products and doesn't work so well when targeting businesses or working professionals.

It's very hard to execute, and might not represent your coworking space as very welcoming. It's my job to tell you not to do it, as it is probably yours to prove me wrong by doing it.

(Yes, I stole that quote from a tech billionaire, not my proudest moment.)

Step 4: How often should you post?

I will list below the recommended averages on how often you should post on each social media channel. However, the hard truth is you probably don't have the capacity to keep up with them. And that's okay.

Even though it seems easy, publishing daily (or more) on social media requires a lot of time if done properly. Yes, your posts might statistically gather more attention by the algorithm if you follow these recommendations, but no one will interact with your posts if they are not interesting for them. Quality is more important than quantity.

If you don't have a marketing team that can focus on producing a lot of high-quality content, don't post things just for the sake of keeping up with recommendations. It will only hurt your coworking space.

I will repeat what I said in step 2: People don't unfollow brands that post too much, people unfollow brands that post too much about stuff they don't care about.

On the other hand, don't fall into the trap of posting too little if you want to use social media properly. Your following will forget about your coworking space. Try posting at least once a week. Every time something interesting or exciting happens, feel free to share it with your followers: Don't be afraid of posting too much if you actually have something interesting to say.

As promised, here are the recommended posting amounts:

Step 5: Get creative!

After you've followed the previous 4 steps and slowly started building a small but engaged social media following, try experimenting a little.

Short casual videos don't belong on LinkedIn? Certainly Lenny, the founder of workish.berlin 🇩🇪, doesn't think so. He's built a great online community with his skills of creating engaging videos (and he will share some of them in a couple of weeks in this newsletter 🤫)

What about long informative posts on Instagram? Nobody has time for that, right? The 3,000 engaged followers of Coworkies will tell you otherwise!

Find your strengths, be consistent, and experiment with caution while noting the results. The rest will follow.

That's it for this week! Reply to this email if you have any questions, disagree with something I said or have a suggestion for a collaboration/future topic. I'm always happy to stay in touch!