New research shows how to craft Facebook posts for more engagement

One of the constant battles and perplexing challenges for most modern day marketers is just how to generate more engagement on Facebook. As the world’s largest social network, with over 2.27 billion monthly active users, it’s a vital tool for driving traffic to your website and a platform for creating a buzz about a new website design, new products, company achievements and other milestones.The problem, as has been widely reported, is the decline in natural organic reach on Facebook, meaning it’s harder to get seen and harder still to be noticed. BuzzSumo has conducted a significant piece of research to unlock the secrets to engagement, analysing 777 million posts to find what works on Facebook today.

Best type of post for engagementIt may well come as no surprise but the study shows that the most successful posts on Facebook are video. In numbers, video posts receive 59% more engagements than other post types. The most successful videos are fairly short at around 3 to 5 minutes long so if you are going to experiment with video, this sort of length should be quite manageable.Best time to postThere have been countless debates, studies and tests carried out to determine exactly when the best time to post on Facebook and other social networks is but according to BuzzSumo the sweet spot appears to be between 9pm and 11pm. Keep in mind that your own audience may be different because it very much depends on your content and user – if you’re a B2B poster for example, your best time to post may well be earlier in the morning around 7am-9am during commuter hours.Best day to postGenerating engagement isn’t just about putting the right type of content out at a certain time of day, it’s also about coinciding with the days your audience logs on to check out their News Feed. While many will post Moday to Friday, BuzzSumo’s findings indicate that you could get more engagement by posting over the weekend too, as posts published on a Saturday and Sunday were shown to achieve a higher average number of engagements.Optimal post lengthAs most consumers tend to scroll through their feeds, shorter posts often perform better with the study showing posts of around 50 characters are the most captivating. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should always keep your posts short but do remind yourself of the importance of being succinct when creating Facebook updates.