After 1.5 Million Posts Analyzed, Here is the Perfect Facebook Post
Do you know how to craft the perfect Facebook post?
Being on the Facebook News Feed has become as hard as being on Google’s first page.
The fierce competition and recent changes in the algorithm are turning this almost impossible, and what makes the difference often times comes down to small details, testing and optimizing every single aspect of your content.
TrackMaven analyzed more than 1.5 million pieces of content on 6,000 Pages, here is what they said…
“We found that when the various elements of a Facebook post are strategically crafted, the viral reach of posts is extended in the News Feed.”
Now, let’s take a look at these different items TrackMaven is calling the nuts and bolts of the perfect Facebook post:
Word Count
I know you’ve probably heard that short posts get better performance. It’s a myth. I’ve seen many people use Facebook pages pretty much as if they were blogs, Mari Smith is very successful writing long posts (John Haydon points it out in this post).This study backs it up with data, posts with 80-89 words get double the engagement (6.19%) that those with 70-79 words (3.42%).
My advice, get your message across in a way that will accomplish the goal for that specific post, whether it takes 10 or 300 words. The point is not to be afraid of the word count.
Visual Content
We all know visual content gets more engagement. According to this analysis, posts with photos get an average of 2.35 interactions per post, while text-only posts get only 1.71.Of course you have to consider that 88% of Facebook posts do have an image.
After Hours
Turns out posting after hours (5pm – 1am EST) can get you 11% more interactions than those published during working hours.This makes sense even without looking at the data, people should be more likely to interact with content when 1) is not overwhelmed with daily activities, and 2) is receiving fewer promotional messages on the screen.
Weekends
Posts published on Sunday can get 25% more likes, comments and shares than those published on Wednesday, but only 18% of the total posts are published on weekends…Which proves my previous point: Test posting at times when there is less competition in the News Feed.
Facebook: Posting on Sunday can get you 25% more Engagement than Wednesday, but only 18% of posts...
Click To TweetHashtags
I recently shared my opinion about Facebook Hashtags on PostPlanner. I basically said that I don’t really see hashtags making a big impact.TrackMaven says that posts with hashtags see an average of 60% more interactions. I’ll be paying closer attention to this in the following days.
Questions
Posts that ask a question get 23% more engagement. This is obvious, a question is a form of call-to-action.To me, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the post has to be a question, but that if you’re writing about an specific topic and you’re sharing your point of view, you can close the post with a question to generate engagement.
Infographic
I should also mention that TrackMaven has a free ebook you can download here.
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