Social media secrets, part 3/4: What to post – videos are overrated
What kinds of content do people love? Our data says: use photos, make long updates, and stop focusing on video. It’s not a matter of opinion.
What is a perfect social media update? In this part of our series, we’ll help you make perfect posts.
First, there is no formula. You just need to post a lot, learn from your audience, and be nice.
But our data can help you succeed, especially when there’s a lot of incorrect advice out there.
We don’t guess. Here’s what we found out from the 1.9 million tweets and 1.3 million Facebook updates from more than 4,300 brands stored on our servers.
Likes are silver, shares are gold, comments are diamonds
If you have a lively debate bubbling on your channels, you are a social star. Why? Because comments are the hardest reactions to get.
Looking at Underhood data, we see that Facebook fans are eleven times more likely to just click like than to comment on a post, and seven times more likely to like than share a post.
Don’t leave your audience hanging
This means you should respect every comment you get. Your fans deserve answers. This is why we measure “response rate to audience comments” in our daily analysis pages. Leaving your audience hanging makes a rude impression.
Try to reply — even to comments you might think are stupid — to make sure your fans and followers feel that you care for them. Real dialogue will also make your audience loyal.
Photos attract attention, no proof for video fuss
It’s a common belief that video attracts the most attention on social media. That does not appear to be true.
Video is overrated
Our finding is that video content is overrated. Of the most popular Facebook posts (posts with the most engagement) in the Underhood database, only 19 percent contain a video. Out of all the posts we’ve collected, 12 percent are videos.
That’s way too small a difference to justify all the fuss.
Most brands will find it impossible to produce multiple videos every day. You should focus more on photo or image updates.
In our database, 48 percent of the most popular Facebook posts contain photos or images, whereas only 23 percent of all Facebook posts in our database contain photos or images.
So: every time you post, add an image and win. This applies to Twitter, too.
Write long posts on Facebook
It is commonly believed that online posts should be short because Internet audiences have short attention spans. That does not seem to be true.
Facebook audiences seem to react more to updates that are a lot longer than average.
In our database, the top 4 percent of updates are an average of 306 characters long. That’s almost twice the average length of all Facebook posts in our database, which is 165 characters.
Most best performing Facebook updates are between 50 and 500 characters long. As the chart shows, it’s not impossible to get a lot of audience interaction with a really short or exceptionally long post, but it is less common.
Don’t force your audience away from your page
One more tip: You should consider posting the entire text of your blog posts as Facebook updates and not force your fans away from your page. Removing this unnecessary click barrier is an easy way to create real discussion and get your message through.
Yes, you should have competitions and giveaways
A popular way of generating audience reactions is competitions. You should have one on your wall today.
Underhood data shows that competitions are common among the most popular Facebook posts. Good competitions spark an interest in the brand and turn participants into new followers.
A competition can be a fruitful way to find out what your customers think and engage them in conversation.
Don’t just ask your fans to like your update or comment with a boring “I’m in” — ask them about things that are relevant to you and them. Test new product ideas, for example, or ask them to tell you about their experience with your products.
Stop those hashtag fireworks
The use of hashtags on Twitter is a good way to put your tweets into context, as well as an effective way of reaching new audiences.
Don’t go crazy with hashtags, though.
Of all the tweets in the Underhood database, 41 percent contain at least one hashtag. But don’t put all your hashtags into a single tweet. Using one or two hashtags per tweet is good practice: 90 percent of our most liked and shared tweets follow this rule.
Don’t market — discuss
As for message content, research has shown that direct calls to buy are less effective than messages with functional, rational, or emotional content.
Be real
So, don’t just sell and market or you’ll be considered dull and boring. Be real and post about things that genuinely interest you and make you feel something.
Based on the same study, you can also expect to get more likes from B2B audiences than B2C audiences — but B2C audiences comment more often (source: Swani et al., 2017).
So, good luck! Stay real. And post a lot of long updates with photos.
Camilla Magnusson, Lead Scientist, camilla@underhood.co
Sami Kuusela, Co-founder, sami@underhood.co
Next post: Social media secrets, part 4/4: Conclusions and infographics
Earlier post: Social media secrets, part 2/4: Growing the audience.
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Underhood is a service that measures the reputation of companies, brands and organisations on the Internet automatically. At Underhood, everyone sees each other’s reputation ratings, and can learn what works on social web. Underhood works closely with the academic community.
Check your own reputation: https://underhood.co
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