Here’s a question that comes up, and it’s worth revisiting a lot: How often should I post? And the answer, of course is: It depends.

A big dependency is the platform you’re using. Or rather, the platforms. If you’re using Twitter, with its 140-character limit, posting less generally means posting more. (That is, fewer words leads to greater frequency). Plus, it’s really easy and you can do it while you’re on the go. (There’s that use of interstitial time again.)

Here’s something that’s almost cheating: Pipe your Twitter updates into your blog using an embeddable widget, and it’s a way to pass updates to your blog without doing a full-on blog entry.

And what about that full-on blog? In the Time Demands video (from the Solution Stars Video series), blogger/author Tim Ferriss says that, contrary to some rules that others advocate, he generally posts twice per week… but he’s sure to put effort into those two posts. (Of course, you would expect that, since he advocates for The 4-Hour Workweek). So it’s the quality-versus-quantity approach.

At the If You Build It, Will They Come? event, Frank Warren of PostSecret shared the method behind his unique variation of this — he updates once a week, on Sundays, which not only sets up his blog entries as appointment programming, but it also enforces an artificial scarcity: It keeps people always hungry for more. Obviously, this approach won’t work for most folks, but it goes to show that more isn’t better — better is better.

This ties in to the very important setting of reader expectations. If you know you’re going to be posting relatively infrequently (a couple of times per week, or even per month, or only when specific events happen), be upfront about it. Let people know what to expect, and provide ways that they can keep tabs on your blog. I’m thinking specifically of one-click RSS-to-e-mail solutions that pop off an e-mail when you update (Feedburner, among others, offers this) — it works great for blogs that don’t update that frequently.

Then, think about ways you can streamline your publishing workflow, and how you can optimize it to your writing style. Also at the If You Build It event, Rohit Bhargava said his ideal blog week consisted of three posts, with his typical posting schedule starting on Sunday night, with a goal of having a completed blog entry ready to publish at 1AM Monday, and two half-completed posts to work on during his train ride commutes during the rest of the week.

The most important thing to consider when looking at posting frequency is looking at your readers. Not just the analytics, but also commenting and other reactions and feedback. See if you can discern patterns in your traffic that relate to your posting schedule. You probably won’t be able to do strict A/B testing, but you can see if time of day or day of week posting affects your metrics. And try to find out from your readers if they’re getting what they need from your posts — whether they want more, or if they could do with less. Ask and listen.

Whatever you do, please avoid the temptation to shovel in filler posts to boost your post frequency. Filler posts dilute the value of your “real” posts. Just don’t do it.

I don’t think I’ve covered any new ground here, but I’m curious to hear about your posting schedule, and how you came about it. If you’d like to share, leave a comment below — when it comes to your posting frequency, are you a “more” or a “less”?

So what exactly is the opportunity that social media presents to small business? In this Solutions Stars Video segment, we’ve got 11 more viewpoints from experts in the field for you to consider: The Social Opportunity [6 mins, 24 secs]. Check out the video (and see the full series on available on Blip.tv):

Here are some quick recaps:

Brian Solis, Author of PR2.0, CEO Futureworks: Small businesses now have direct access to the people who can help them make their businesses grow, on a mass scale. Now, small businesses can be influential and become authorities, and build communities around them, based on their expertise.

Rohit Barghava, author, “Personality Not Included“: Small business owners understand the power of word of mouth marketing and customer referrals. It’s cheap, viral, and works.

Tim Ferriss, author, The 4-Hour Workweek: To get online, first get offline — go to conferences, meet people, have credible people online vouching for you — then connect with them online.

Steve Hall, Publisher, Editor, Adrants: Reach out to everyone in your industry, get to know them, and broaden your circle of social friends. Eventually, you’ll be able to use the network to help spread whatever you’re trying to spread.

Toby Bloomberg, CEO Bloomberg Marketing: Small businesses especially build businesses through relationships, which they can do through through blogs, podcasts, video. Social media was built for small businesses, and lets them scale further.

Ryan Anderson, Community Relations, Overlay.TV: It’s an incredible opportunity for small business to bypass filters to get to core customers. The tools let you create conversation that you just can’t do through traditional media.

Darren Rowse, Author, ProBlogger: If starting out again, he’d spend a lot of time defining his niche, establishing self as expert, offering to guest blog in other expert blogs (for free), to get own his content and expertise out.

David Alston, VP of Marketing, Radian6: Small business can use social media to build a brand, in a highly targeted way. Talk to the people in your space and reach out to them.

Mari Smith, Relationship Marketing Specialist: Radical Strategic Visibility — your goal is to be ubiquitous, in a way that excites people.

Liz Strauss, Social Web Strategist, Successful Blog: Use the internet to become irresistible — know which type of people on the Internet they’re going after — readers, people who do, offer and sell things, and people who pass on info to their friends.

Paul Chaney, President, Int’l Blogging and New Media Association: Small business is best suited to use a lot of these tools — an example is a custom signmaker with a blog, who shows the process and tells the story of making the sign, to help customers get to know him.

Find anything particularly meaningful (or offbase) here among our experts’ opinions? Leave a comment and let us know what you think about the social opportunities for small business.

Network Solutions is one of the leading solutions providers to those companies looking to build a large scale business presence. At the Blogworld Expo this past September we had the opportunity to complete a series of interviews with our “Solution Stars“.

In this episode our stars were able to provide some great insight on managing the demands on your time when you add social media into your bag of marketing tools.

Some highlights include:

- You don’t have to write everyday. It is all about quality over quantity
- Figure out what you want to say
- If you are using social media to interface with customers you need to “be in the trenches”
- Evaluate paid advertising to drive traffic and awareness to your blog
- Carefully manage your resources
- Solicit content from your users and customers. Including guest posting, case studies and testimonials
- Ask yourself “what would you do for the next 10 years if you couldn’t make money”. That is the passion you have and that will show to your customers, even on a blog.

The stars in this episode include Chris Baggot, Rohit Bhargava, Toby Bloomberg, Chris Brogan, Paul Chaney, Tim Ferriss, Tony Hsieh, Jennifer Openshaw and Wendy Piersall.

Here is the full episode: