Social media secrets, part 4/4: Conclusions and infographics
In the final part of our series, we summarise the results of our research on our database of 4,300 brands and 3.2 million Facebook posts and Twitter tweets. Feel free to share.
You are welcome to use our findings in your presentations, blog posts, articles, reports or other publications, but we kindly ask you to mention Underhood as the original source of information and provide link to our service at underhood.co.
You can also use the quotes from our Chief scientist Camilla Magnusson included in this post (contact info at the end of this post).
We are happy to give our datasets for scientists for future research.
About our data
The data was collected automatically by our social media analytics service Underhood. It is based on the social media activities of 4,300 brands that have been added to our database by our users during July 2016 — July 2017.
Underhood focuses on brands that have Facebook pages. These may be companies, products, events, public figures, organizations or other types of brand.
For these brands, we collect and analyse all their Facebook and Twitter updates and the reactions they get from the audience. We don’t measure individual Facebook users, as we want all our data to be public for anyone to see and use for benchmarking.
This data reflects our Finnish origins in the sense that 40 % of the brands in the database are from Finland. Other main markets represented in the data are the US, UK, Sweden and Germany.
Audience sizes on social media services
The median number of Facebook followers in the Underhood database is 2,600.
The median amount of followers differs significantly from consumer-facing industries like the news media (over 50,000 followers) to professional services like consulting (less than 800 followers). (For a more detailed view, read our blog post on growing your audience).
“As social media is still a fairly new thing in B2B marketing, many large companies have surprisingly small audiences”
- Camilla Magnusson, Chief scientist, Underhood.co
Likes, shares, and comments as social media currency
On Facebook, comments are the hardest reaction to get, followed by shares. For every comment, there are eleven likes. For every share, there are seven likes.
“Comments are diamonds, shares gold and likes silver on social media”
- Camilla Magnusson, Chief scientist, Underhood.co
Optimal posting frequencies: post a lot
The top 100 brands (all categories, measured by Underhood score) are much more active on Facebook than average brands: they post twice every day. The top 100 brands on Twitter tweet almost ten times per day.
Most brands are too quiet and shy on social media. The median posting frequency on Underhood database is only 0.4 Facebook updates and 0.8 tweets per day.
The posting frequency varies a lot, depending on the industry. Here are the frequencies of the top100 brands by category.
“If you post a lot, you get noticed more and get more engagement”
- Camilla Magnusson, Chief scientist, Underhood.co
Text, video, and images: which media format works best
The most popular Facebook posts are much more likely to contain photos or videos than the average post (we measure post popularity by likes, shares, and comments they get).
Photos and images work best. Half of the posts in the top 4% contain a photo, compared to only a quarter of all posts.
With videos, the difference is smaller: 19% of top posts contain a video, compared to 12% of all post.
For more details about best social media content read our blog post What to post — videos are overrated.
“Seems like video is a bit overrated. Considering the effort needed to produce videos, brands should use more photos and images on social media”
- Camilla Magnusson, Chief scientist, Underhood.co
Post lengths on Facebook: Use more words
The most popular Facebook updates are twice as long as the average post. On average, updates in the top 4% contain 306 characters, whereas the average for all updates is just 165 characters.
“It seems to be a myth that texts on social media should be brief”
- Camilla Magnusson, Chief scientist, Underhood.co
For more details about best social media content, read our blog post What to post — videos are overrated.
Using hashtags on Twitter
More than 40 percent of tweets contain at least one hashtag. It’s rare to see more than two hashtags.
“Using hashtags on Twitter is a good way to put your tweets into context, but one or two is enough”
- Camilla Magnusson, Chief scientist, Underhood.co
More info & interviews
About this research
Camilla Magnusson, Chief scientist, camilla@underhood.co
LinkedIn
About Underhood and other questions
Sami Kuusela, Co-founder, sami@underhood.co
LinkedIn
Earlier in this blog series
Social media secrets, part 1/4: Measure against others
Social media secrets, part 2/4: Growing the audience
Social media secrets, part 3/4: What to post? Videos are overrated
…
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
Get your Audit report now: https://underhood.co/audit
