Keep Me Posted

Too much of nothing can make a man feel ill at ease.

— Bob Dylan

"Keep me posted."

The idiom is thought by some linguists to derive from the Old English word postis, borrowed from Latin and meaning "doorpost."

As did many ancients, the Romans believed evil spirits lurked about their doors. To ward them off, they'd nail amulets to their postes and slather them with potions—combinations of things like salt, cumin, chewed buckthorn, and monkey urine. They'd also nail a variety of "danger" and "no trespassing" signs to their doorposts, meant to deter the devils.

In the Middle Ages, wooden posts were erected in village squares, meant for the display of public notices, and postis in Middle English came to mean "to announce," as when a couple would "post banns" before their wedding. This practice is the more likely source of the modern idiom "Keep me posted." (The later-arriving expression "posting a letter" is unrelated; it derives from the French noun poste, which means "courier.")

Today, social media is our postis, the way we all—except for a few Luddites—spread and follow news.

But when is too much posting too much? When does posting become spamming?

The social media mavens at Hootsuite have the answers:

• On Instagram, you should post no more than once a day (either a feed-post or a story). Posting daily will double your following every week. Posting more frequently is spamming.

• On Facebook, you should post no more than twice a day. Posting at that frequency will quadruple your following; but posting more than that will cost you followers.
  
  
• On Twitter, you should post no more than six times a day. One-third of your posts should comprise self-promotion; one-third, stories; one-third, insights.
  
  
• On LinkedIn, you should post no more than five times a day. However, having been banned for life from LinkedIn (for opposition to gun ownership), I urge you to boycott this nest of right-wing vipers and post zero times a day. Better yet, delete your LinkedIn account.

All Hootsuite's rules of course take a back seat to the prime directive: your content should add value. Posting crap, even once, is over-posting.

Adding value—when you consider all the clutter—is a feat. 

Adding value is something. 

Adding crap is nothing.

Too much of nothing can make a man feel ill at ease.