What do 105 million Facebook posts tell us? 

A huge new study which looked at a mammoth 105 million Facebook posts and 94,000 pages has just published its fascinating findings – and there are lots of great takeaways to help you up your Facebook game.The Quintly study found that by far the most popular type of Facebook post is posts with links. Around 55% of the 105 million posts analysed by the research team contained a link. Photos were used in just 29% and video – which is consistently said to be the most shared and most viewed content format – made up around 14%.

Video isn’t the most prolific but it drives the most interaction From this data, the study that determined which posts were most effective and which types of interactions were most common. Despite being in the smaller minority of post types, video performed better than all other post types receiving 65% more interactions than image posts, despite there being fewer video posts uploaded.Image posts are still valuable though and they were found to receive 105% more interactions than a standard status update. With just 29% of posts using an image, this could be an easy adjustment to make to your own posting format to increase user engagement and audience interaction.Although they were far and away the most common type of post, updates with a link performed less favourably than those with images and videos. In fact, link posts received 72% fewer interactions than videos. Don’t rush to ditch the links though Now, it’s probably not realistic to expect that every Facebook update your business makes will be a video post, due to the time and expense of creating video, but this insight does highlight the importance of factoring in at least some amount of video content to run alongside more image posts and link updates.Despite these figures, it’s not a wise move to rush off and change all of your Facebook posts. The link posts are actually still important because those posts can be used to drive traffic from your social media page to your own web page. Just remember, you can also add an image to those posts to up their visual appeal – making an interaction such as a click on the link more likely. Weekend posts drive great interaction For many Facebook page owners, the question of when to post is one that continually rears its head. Trial and error plays a part but in its analysis, Quintly found that most posts tend to be published during the week, with just 23% of posts appearing at the weekend. Weekend posts did drive more interactions however, with 13.3% more engagement that week day posts.