Social success gets discussed as though it were a matter of tactics: the right posting time, the right hook, the right frequency. Tactics help at the margins, but the accounts that work tend to get a small number of larger things right first. These are those things.
Decide who it is for, and accept who it is not for
An account that tries to be interesting to everyone is interesting to no one. The uncomfortable step is naming the people you are not talking to, because that is what makes the content specific enough to be worth following.
Publish at a rate you can hold in a bad month
Consistency beats intensity, and the failure mode is always the same: four weeks of daily posting, then silence. Pick the cadence you could still meet during your busiest period and treat that as the ceiling, not the floor.
Say something only you could say
Most business content is a restatement of what is already widely agreed. The posts that travel are the ones carrying something the author actually knows: a number from their own operation, a decision that went badly, a specific rather than a principle.
Reply properly
The reply is where an audience is built and it is the part most accounts automate away. A considered answer to one person is worth more than a post seen by a thousand, because it is the only part of the interaction the other person will remember.
Measure the thing you actually want
Followers are the easiest number to grow and the least connected to anything. Pick the metric that maps to the outcome you need, whether that is enquiries, sign-ups or conversations started, and be willing to see a post do badly on reach while doing well on that.
Our piece on setting goals for social media covers how to pick that metric, and brand Instagram stories covers one channel in depth.