Nobody in Canada publishes a number for how often a real estate agent should post. What Ontario's regulator does publish is a definition of “advertising” wide enough to swallow a personal Instagram story — and that is the more useful thing to build a calendar around.
Key takeaways
Start with the definition, because it decides everything else about the calendar. RECO's own bulletins describe advertising as “any notice, announcement or representation directed at the public … in any medium including, but not limited to, print, radio, television, electronic media, or publication on the internet (including websites and social media sites).” (RECO Bulletin 5.2) The same bulletin adds that “business cards, letterhead, email signatures, or cover sheets that contain promotional statements may be considered as ‘advertising.’” Bulletin 5.3, on advertising online specifically, is blunt about the consequence: “advertising requirements apply to websites and social media, just as they do with any other advertising medium,” and “while social media platforms may seem less formal, the same advertising requirements apply.” (RECO Bulletin 5.3) There is no separate, lighter rulebook for a phone-shot reel.
That definition reaches personal accounts too. Bulletin 5.3 states that “agents using a social media account for both personal and professional purposes, or advertising on both personal and business social media accounts, must ensure both accounts and each message relating to trading in real estate comply with advertising requirements.” A weekend post about a closing, tagged from a personal handle, is not exempt because the account is personal — it is exempt because of what the post says, not which account it lives on.
Search for “how often should a realtor post” and the answers you find are almost all vendor marketing — social media tool companies and coaching programs with a stake in the answer, most of it American. No Canadian regulator, board or CREA publishes a recommended cadence, and none of the sources checked for this piece carried one. Rather than repeat a number nobody actually measured, the more useful frame is to plan the calendar around the four obligation lanes below, and let frequency follow from how much material you genuinely have to put in each one that week.
Evergreen and educational. Market explainers, process walk-throughs, general local-area content. This carries the least day-to-day friction, but it is still advertising the moment it promotes your services, so the basic accuracy rule from how you describe a property still applies to any factual claim you make in it.
Listing content. Every post about an active listing needs the brokerage “clearly and prominently identified,” using the name registered with RECO — short forms and nicknames are explicitly barred. (RECO Bulletin 5.1) On a platform with limited profile fields, that identification “must be readily visible or accessible on the account profile through the available information fields and customer profile graphics, such as display and cover images” — a bio link is not automatically enough if the specific post itself gives no indication. (RECO Bulletin 5.3) RECO records this as one of its more common complaints: on team accounts especially, “the absence or lack of prominence of the employing brokerage name misleads the public by inaccurately representing that the team is registered to trade in real estate.” (RECO Bulletin 5.3)
Testimonial and review content. A screenshot of a five-star review or a client quote is a testimonial under the federal Competition Act the moment you republish it, and that statute requires the testimonial to accord with what the person actually gave you — not an edited or brightened-up version. The mechanics are worked through in collecting reviews without breaking a rule; treat it as its own lane precisely because the approval trail has to exist before the post goes up, not after.
Sold and celebration content. This is the lane with the most consent machinery attached, and it is easy to get backwards because the rule changes depending on timing. Before a deal completes, advertising that a property is “sold” needs the seller's written consent; after completion, it needs the buyer's. Adding the price or any other term of the deal needs both parties' written consent regardless of timing, and “the consent must be clear and include the date on which the consent takes effect and the date on which the consent expires.” (RECO Bulletin 5.4) A recurring “another one closed” post format that reuses the same wording every time is exactly where this gets missed — the template doesn't change, but the consent underneath it has to be checked every single time.
A calendar is not finished once it is scheduled. Bulletin 5.3 requires agents to “actively maintain and regularly update profiles on social media and professional networking sites” — the example it gives is an agent who must promptly update their profile after transferring to a different brokerage, but the same duty covers a stale headshot, an old brokerage name in a bio, or a pinned post advertising a listing that sold months ago. (RECO Bulletin 5.3) Photo and video content carries its own expiry: it “cannot remain online past the end date identified in the written consent,” which means a recurring calendar reminder to review old posts against their consent end-dates is not optional housekeeping, it is the actual compliance mechanism. (RECO Bulletin 5.3) The same bulletin covers what happens when a seller or buyer later asks for something to come down: “promptly removing the requested information demonstrates integrity and professionalism” — in practice, treat any such request as jumping the queue ahead of whatever else was scheduled that week.
None of the figures below are a rule — they are one illustrative way to divide a week's attention, not a benchmark to hit. Suppose an agent has one new listing, one closing, and a client who agreed in writing to a testimonial post this week. A plausible split: two evergreen posts (no consent needed, ordinary accuracy rules apply), two listing posts (brokerage name checked on each one, not just in the bio), one testimonial post (approval on file, wording matches what was approved), and the closing post held back until the written sold-consent question above is actually answered — which may mean it runs next week instead, or not at all if consent is refused. The calendar bends to the consent, not the other way around.
No — the trigger is the content, not the account. Bulletin 5.3 is explicit that a personal account still has to comply the moment a post relates to trading in real estate, so a purely personal account that stays purely personal is outside this rulebook, but the instant it carries a trade-related message it is inside it, on either account type.
For an active listing under a current representation agreement, ordinary marketing use of the listing photography is generally within what the agreement authorizes. The written-consent machinery in RECO Bulletin 5.4 is specifically about advertising that a property is sold, or about identifying a party or the deal terms — different triggers from posting an active listing's own marketing photos, and worth keeping distinct from who owns those photos in the first place, covered separately in the piece on floor plans and buyer usage.
Not on its own, per RECO's own complaint pattern — the bio is one place to identify the brokerage, but a specific advertising post still needs the brokerage clearly and prominently identified in a way that's readily visible or accessible on that post, not just buried on a profile page a viewer may never open.
A short review can catch a missing brokerage name or an expired consent before RECO does.
