Answer in brief
A posting frequency copied from someone else's feed describes their supply chain, not yours. This article builds cadence from three limits you can measure — footage, approvals and budget — and matches each one to a package with published terms.
The short answer: as many as you can sustain for three months straight
The number does not come from a marketing handbook. It is the count of finished videos your business can shoot, approve and pay for every month without borrowing time from the work that pays the bills. Decide that first, then choose a package.
Owners usually ask the question backwards. They pick a frequency, then discover that nobody has time to film, nobody has authority to approve, and the third week arrives with an empty folder. A cadence set that way stops on its own, without a decision.
A workable answer has three inputs: how much raw footage reaches an editor, how quickly someone with authority can say yes, and what the monthly budget line allows. Any of the three can be the limit, and the smallest one sets the rhythm.
For a business starting from nothing, one finished video is a reasonable first commitment. For a business with a phone full of unused footage, five edits from that material is a reasonable first commitment. Both are a cadence; neither is a guess.
Why a number pulled from the air collapses in the second month
A frequency copied from a competitor's feed describes their supply chain, not yours. From outside you cannot see who films for them, who signs off, whether they hold a standing shoot day, or how much of the output is rebuilt from one session.
A frequency chosen without a source of footage turns into a monthly emergency. Something gets filmed hastily on the last day, the material comes out thin, and the edit inherits the problem. An editor can only cut what actually exists.
There is a quieter cost as well. After two missed months the team stops believing the plan, and the honest question — what can we genuinely sustain — gets postponed for another quarter, and then for one more.
Argue the number instead of announcing it. Write down the shoot days that will really happen, the approver's calendar and the budget line. A cadence you can defend in a meeting will survive that meeting and the two after it.
Start with an inventory of the footage you already own
Before commissioning anything, open the folders. Phone clips from the workshop, a walkthrough filmed for a client, product shots, a recording from an event — many businesses hold more usable material than they remember during the conversation.
That inventory changes the arithmetic. Reels Pack is $90 for up to 5 edits, with a timeline of 1-2 working days from footage delivery and 2 rounds on the edit. Filming is not included — you supply the footage, which is exactly what an inventory pays for.
Sort the material by what it can prove, not by the date it was shot. A clip that shows a process is worth more than a clip that shows a logo, because a process gives an editor a beginning and an end, which is the shape a short video needs.
An inventory also exposes the gaps. If nothing in the folder shows a finished result, the next shoot has a real brief, and that brief grew out of evidence rather than out of a vague wish to film something attractive.
One video is a test, not a campaign
One video answers a narrow question: does this subject hold attention when it is cut properly? A Single Reel is $70, delivered in 1-2 working days with 1 round of revisions, and it includes captions, a licensed track and exports for every vertical placement.
What that price does not cover is shooting, scripting and actors. The package is an editing commitment, so the footage and the intent have to arrive with the order. Read the exclusions before treating the figure as a full production budget.
Used as a test, one reel is cheap information. Used as a campaign, it is a disappointment scheduled in advance, because a single post ends up carrying the expectations of an entire quarter, and no edit can hold that weight.
Read the result as a signal about the material, not about the platform. If the clip held attention, the subject travels and deserves development; if it did not, you have learned something specific for less than the price of a shoot day.
Cadence is a supply question: footage in, edits out
Editing is rarely the bottleneck. Edit turnarounds are measured in days, while footage supply and approvals are measured in weeks, because they depend on people who have other jobs and other priorities on the same calendar.
Think of cadence as a line with a fixed input. If one shoot day yields material for four edits, and you hold one shoot day a month, four is your ceiling until you add a day or change the way you film.
Repurposing raises that ceiling honestly. A single interview setup gives you a long version and several short ones; a process filmed from three angles gives an editor more than one story out of the same hour of footage.
The alternative — demanding more output from the same input — produces thinner videos for the same money. The number goes up while the work gets weaker, which is the opposite of what the content plan was built for.
Approvals are part of the cadence, not a pause between releases
Revision rounds sit inside the schedule and differ by package. Single Reel includes 1 round. Reels Pack includes 2 rounds on the edit. Campaign Edit includes 2 rounds on the cut and 1 on the grade. Reels Pack Express includes 1 round.
A round is only useful if the notes arrive as one list. Three people sending contradictory comments across four days spend both the round and the calendar, and the cadence slips for reasons unrelated to the quality of the edit.
Name a single approver before the first brief. That person collects the notes, resolves the contradictions inside the company and sends one consolidated list. It is an unglamorous decision, and it protects every delivery date that follows.
Write the notes as changes, not as feelings. 'Cut the first two seconds, hold the product shot longer, replace the closing frame' is work; 'make it punchier' spends a round and buys nothing anyone can act on.
When speed itself is the requirement
Some deadlines are real: a shipment arrives, an event happens, a competitor moves. Reels Pack Express is $150, with a timeline of 1 working day and a 24-hour turnaround from footage, and it includes 1 round of revisions.
The exclusions matter here as much as the speed. Shooting is not included, and neither is licensing beyond the supplied track. If the footage does not exist when the clock starts, a fast turnaround rescues nothing and only adds pressure.
Speed is a tool for exceptions, not a standing rhythm. A team that treats every week as urgent loses the ability to signal a genuine urgency, and pays a premium for a problem its own calendar created.
Keep the express option in the plan the way a business keeps a spare part: identified, priced, and used when something breaks rather than every Monday morning as the normal operating mode.
A launch is not a cadence: where the campaign edit fits
A launch has a different shape. Campaign Edit is $180 and delivers a hero cut plus short derivatives, with a timeline of 3-5 days, 2 rounds on the cut and 1 round on the grade.
Licensed music is not included — the licence is purchased by you. Budget for it before the grade, because swapping a track late changes the pacing of the cut and can consume a revision round you meant to spend elsewhere.
The derivatives are the part owners tend to underestimate. One hero cut and its short versions give a launch several weeks of material without a second shoot, which is a cadence assembled from a single production effort.
Do not confuse the launch burst with an ongoing rhythm. Once the derivatives are spent, the feed returns to the volume your monthly supply actually supports, and that number was never the launch number.
The monthly cycle: turning cadence into an agreement
When the answer is 'every month, and onward from there', the agreement should say so. The Monthly Content Engine is $290/mo, runs on a monthly cycle, and stops with 30 days notice.
Volume is agreed at the start of each cycle. That single term is what turns cadence from a wish into something negotiable: the month with three shoot days and the month with none are allowed to look different on paper.
Filming days and paid stock are not included. The retainer covers the editing rhythm, not the camera, so the shoot budget stays a visible line of its own instead of hiding inside a monthly subscription.
The 30 days notice cuts both ways. The studio gets a planning horizon, you get an exit that requires no argument, and that is a reasonable basis for committing to a standing rhythm at all.
Formats and files: what goes to the platform, what stays with you
Delivery is a container question. The MDN guide to media container formats explains that a container such as MP4 or WebM holds video and audio tracks encoded with separate codecs, and that support differs by container and by codec.
In practice, an MP4 holding H.264 video and AAC audio is a dependable default for both a platform upload and a website, because that combination is widely supported and rarely needs converting on the receiving end.
Keep the high-quality master. Platforms re-encode what you upload, and every re-encode of an already compressed file loses a little more detail, so re-cutting a year from now should start from the master and not from a download.
Order the exports you will genuinely place: vertical for the feed, and a second aspect ratio if the same edit has to sit on a product page. A Single Reel already includes exports for every vertical placement.
Captions and accessibility: a requirement, not a decoration
Captions are not a stylistic choice. The W3C's WCAG 2.2 quick reference lists Captions (Prerecorded) as success criterion 1.2.2 at Level A: prerecorded audio inside synchronised media needs captions.
A commercial argument sits on top of the normative one. Feeds commonly start playback muted, so a video with no text on screen asks a viewer to turn the sound on before they know whether it is worth watching.
The same reference covers audio description or a media alternative for prerecorded video at criterion 1.2.3, and the three-flash threshold at criterion 2.3.1. Read the criteria that apply to your material rather than assuming captions close the subject.
Check the captions the way you check published copy. Names, prices and units are where automatic transcription drifts, and a wrong figure on screen stays a customer-service problem long after the post has lost its relevance.
What to review at the end of a cycle, and which variable to change
At the end of a cycle, compare what was published against what was agreed and name the reason for every gap: no footage, no approval, or no budget. Each reason has a different fix and a different owner.
Change one variable in the next cycle. Add a shoot day, or reduce the volume, or move approval to a single person — if you change three things at once, you will not be able to say which one worked.
Watch completions and saves, not only views, wherever the platform reports them, and read those numbers against the subject of each video. A pattern across several releases is worth more than any single result.
Then set the volume for the next cycle deliberately, because the terms allow it. Cadence is a decision you renew every month, not a promise you made once and then defended for a year.
Practical checklist
- Count the shoot days you will genuinely hold over the next three months.
- Inventory the footage you already own before commissioning a new shoot.
- Name one approver who consolidates every revision note into a single list.
- Match the package to the job: a test, a launch burst, or a monthly rhythm.
- Keep the high-quality master and hand the platform an MP4 export.
- Set the volume for the next cycle at the start of that cycle, not mid-month.
Questions and answers
How many videos should we publish each month?
Start from capacity rather than from a target. Count the shoot days that will genuinely happen, the person who can approve an edit within a day or two, and the budget line you are prepared to defend. The lowest of those three sets the number. A smaller volume held for six months is more useful than a larger volume that lasts six weeks.
What does it cost to edit a single video?
A Single Reel is $70, delivered in 1-2 working days with 1 round of revisions. It includes captions, a licensed track and exports for every vertical placement. Shooting, scripting and actors are not included, so the raw footage comes from you.
We already have footage. How do we turn it into a batch of posts?
Reels Pack is $90 for up to 5 edits, with a timeline of 1-2 working days from footage delivery and 2 rounds on the edit. Filming is not included — you supply the footage, which is why going through the existing folders first pays for itself.
What does a monthly arrangement include?
The Monthly Content Engine is $290/mo and runs on a monthly cycle, with 30 days notice to stop. Volume is agreed at the start of each cycle. Filming days and paid stock are not included, so the shoot budget stays a separate line.
We have a launch in three weeks. Which package fits?
Campaign Edit is $180 for a hero cut plus short derivatives, with a timeline of 3-5 days, 2 rounds on the cut and 1 on the grade; licensed music is not included, and the licence is purchased by you. Where the deadline is tighter, Reels Pack Express is $150 with a 1 working day timeline, a 24-hour turnaround from footage and 1 round of revisions.