Thursdays best day of the week for brands to schedule Facebook posts, and the more words the better, report suggests
The nuts and bolts of a perfect Facebook post point to a preference for good content and visuals - with posts at 80-plus words garnering two times the amount of engagement, according to an infographic by marketing analytics company TrackMaven who analyzed 1.5m Facebook posts from nearly 6,000 brand pages to determine the best way to engage customers.
The analytics showed that along with more verbiage, users are 37 per cent more likely to engage in a post with an accompanying visual. Scheduling posts for the after work hours (5pm to 1am) may be a key strategy as the study shows 11 per cent more interaction than during the work day (8am to 5pm). Weekends offer a window of opportunity for brands as less than 18 per cent of posts are published on weekends, but weekend content sees the most engagement. Posts published on Sundays, for example, get 25 per cent more likes, shares, and comments than Wednesday posts.
Boosting a post is key as it engages the audience and improves reach. "Likes" are the most common social interaction on Facebook, accounting for 87 per cent of all Facebook interactions. This compares to five per cent for comments and 8 per cent for shares.
Although Wednesday is considered "hump day" when workers start thinking about the weekend, it appears that the most popular day to post is Thursday between 12noon and 1pm. Thursdays garner 16.82 per cent of all posts. The key is to schedule a post when there is less competition in the news feed, the inforgraphic suggests.
Hashtags, exclamation points and questions garner more engagement. In fact, posts with hashtag see 60 per cent more interactions on average. Using them to strategically link to posts that generate larger discussions and trending topics is a key consideration. Being positive or enthusiastic has its advantages with exclamation points seeing 2.7 times more interactions on average while posts that ask questions garner 23 per cent more engagement on average.