Rules Of Engagement: Latest Guide To Social Media Posting

As the world of social media continues to develop and evolve at a rapidfire pace, what made for an effective post last year will no longer work today. Here we look at how to maximize your chances of engagement across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

Posts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are evolving, and what worked last year won’t get you the same engagement now. A new social media content study of over 100 million posts by Planable and Socialinsider discovered what really works today.

If you want the highest engagement rate, choose Instagram.

The engagement rate per post is 2.26%, as opposed to 0.21% on Facebook and only 0.06% on Twitter. If you look at the big picture, it means that you shouldn’t expect a huge amount of engagement on a post, and if it does happen, you should be pleasantly surprised.

Users with big followings get less engagement.

It’s counterintuitive, but it means that a larger following means more casual followers who are just naturally less engaged. Profiles with fewer than 5,000 followers receive on average 4.85% engagement rate on Instagram, 0.85% on Facebook and 0.19% on Twitter, while profiles with over 100K followers receive on average 1.41% engagement rate on Instagram, 0.08% on Facebook and 0.03% on Twitter.

Posts with questions get less engagement.

This is totally contrary to what was happening a few years ago, when questions were the key to engagement. Now 9.8% of all posts on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram include questions in the caption and it actually leads to a decrease in engagement.

20.7% of all posts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter include emojis in the caption and they have higher engagement rates per post.

Across the board, posts with emojis in the caption lead to an increase in engagement compared to posts without emojis.

The perfect post has over 20 emojis, short captions with albums/carousels or videos.

Posts with under 10 words and lots of pictures or a video do best, but I find the 20 emojis hard to believe. It’s the same thing where a few years ago one study found that 30 hashtags was the right number for an Instagram post, but now we know that number is around 7.

Except for Twitter, most posts are short.

Facebook and Instagram are shorter, around 70 characters, or less than 10 words, while the typical Twitter post is between 110 and 120 characters.

Posts about contests and giveaway are still top performers.

Posts about contests and giveaways perform exceptionally well across the board, bringing higher engagement on all 3 platforms, while tutorial posts perform badly across the board.

When posting links, single images, statuses, or videos, people need more information.

That translates into longer captions of over 30 words, but it’s important to explain what’s happening in order to increase the engagement.

Finally, if you’re planning on posting for the Holiday, Christmas posts only perform well on Facebook – 0.35%.

Posts that include Christmas words or Christmas hashtags only have a higher engagement rate than regular posts on Facebook, while on Instagram and Twitter they bring down the engagement.

Everything online changes extremely fast, so the social media posts guideline you read above may be outdated by the 2nd quarter of next year. As always, try the suggestions, keep what works and throw the rest away.