Twice a week, every week. That is the number for one person with a business to run. It is enough for a new visitor to find a living account, and little enough to hold alongside everything else.
The number matters less than the every-week part. A month of daily posts followed by silence reads worse than eight steady ones.
Why steady beats more
People do not see every post. They see the account when they check it, and they check three things: is it alive, does it look like one brand, and was the last post recent. Steady posting answers all three. It also builds your own habit, which is the actual scarce resource. A bakery that posts every Tuesday and Friday for a year has a feed a stranger trusts in ten seconds.
How to hold it in a busy month
Make the month's eight posts in one sitting, about two hours, from one photo day. Schedule them. The busy month then posts itself. Keep two spare posts in reserve, a product and a proof, for the week something falls through. Fix the days, Tuesday and Friday say, so the decision is already made when the day comes.
Eight steady posts beat thirty and then silence.
When to go above two
A launch, a season, an event: go to three or four a week for that fortnight, then come back to two. A brand new, empty account: front-load a week of daily posts so a first visitor finds something, then settle. Stories can be daily without counting, because they are presence, not posts: the loaf coming out, the parcel going off, the shop opening.
When two is too many
If two a week is not holding, do one, on the same day every week, and make it good. One post a week for a year is 52 posts and a feed that looks cared for. Zero posts for three months, however good the plan, looks closed. The rate you can keep is the right rate.
A rule you can keep
Two posts a week, on fixed days, made in one sitting a month, with two in reserve. If that sounds like a lot of decisions, most of them can be made once, and the five kinds of post in the rotation mean you never start from nothing.
What CP3® does here
Twenty posts a month on Professional, sixty on Teams, drafted onto your calendar with the dates already set. Approve them in one sitting and the rhythm holds without a decision every Tuesday. Instagram publishes from the calendar. Other channels you post from the draft.