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8 Facebook Engagement Stats Every Marketer Needs To Know

Does publishing Facebook posts through a third party tool affect your reach and engagement? What types of Facebook posts get the most interactions? What is the best time of day to publish Facebook business posts? Which day of the week is best for publishing posts? These are all questions I hear regularly from businesses using Facebook.

Good news! Our friends at content discovery tool, BuzzSumo, analyzed 500 million Facebook posts to discover what types of posts create the most likes, comments and shares. The results may surprise you!

8 facebook engagement stats link preivew

8 Eye-Opening Facebook Engagement Stats

  1. Posts published from 10 – 11 PM EST get 88% more interactions than the average Facebook post. *
  2. Image posts get 179% more interactions than the average Facebook post.
  3. Posts ending with a question get 162% more interactions than the average post.
  4. Videos are the most shared post type, with 89.5 average Facebook shares. **
  5. Posts published on Sunday get 52.9% more interactions than the average Facebook post.
  6. Excluding images, posts with 150-200 characters performed the best, averaging 238.75 shares.
  7. Posting with a 3rd party tool results in 89.5% less engagement than directly posting to Facebook.
  8. Posts that link to long form content (2000+ words) receive 40% more interactions than linking to short form content.

FOONOTE:
* Interactions = likes + shares + comments
** BuzzSumo counted only shares, not likes + comments.

Use these facts and stats to adjust your Facebook content publishing strategy and you may start to see an increase in engagement. Remember, each Page and audience is different – experiment to find your own sweet spot.

mari smith buzzsumo 8 facebook stats infographic

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Content discovery tool, includes trends

Find the most engaging content on the web at BuzzSumo. (I recently started using this tool and totally LOVE it! Stay tuned for even more awesome Facebook-related features coming from BuzzSumo!). 

NEW Free Facebook Tool!

BuzzSumo just released a brand new tool today, called Sumo Rank! You can check the engagement of any Facebook page for free! Go to: www.sumorank.com

Let’s hear from you…

Did you find value in this post and the infographic? Any questions or comments, let us know below – we’d love to hear from you.

Please do share this post on your social profiles, too. Feel free to embed the infographic on your website/blog as well — use the code above! 🙂

UPDATE – 1.21.16

First, please do watch this video:

 

Does Posting to Facebook Using a Third Party App Lower Reach &…Does Posting on Facebook via 3rd Party Tools Lower Your Reach?! BuzzSumo analyzed 500 Million Facebook Posts and discovered that publishing through 3rd party tools *may* lower engagement and, as such, possibly reach, too. See this blog post with infographic: http://www.marismith.com/8-facebook-engagement-stats-every-marketer-needs-to-know/ and this post as well: https://blog.bufferapp.com/facebook-data-study-insightsHowever, Buffer also conducted their own analysis of 500 Million Facebook posts and show that 3rd party posts are not ‘penalized’ in any way on Facebook. See: https://blog.bufferapp.com/3rd-party-facebookSee also this conversation thread on Buffer cofounder, Leo Widrich’s profile: https://www.facebook.com/leonhardwidrich/posts/1152218541457892 Your thoughts?! #FacebookApps #SocialMedia #ContentScheduling #ThirdPartyApps

Posted by Mari Smith on Thursday, January 21, 2016

To explain further, Buffer App conducted its own research of 500 million Facebook posts and “debunked the age old social media myth that posting via third party tools get penalized by Facebook.” As a result of that blog post on Buffer + this comment thread on Leo Widrich’s (Buffer App cofounder) Facebook profile, along with ensuing discussion between Joshua Parker (Post Planner cofounder) and Steve Rayson (Director at BuzzSumo) and myself, I wanted to clear up any misunderstanding about this topic of using third party tools.

Personally, I’m a big fan of third party tools. I use HootSuite every day for scheduling my posts on Twitter and LinkedIn. My own personal preference is to publish natively (directly) on Facebook. However, it’s really important that Facebook Page Admins conduct their own experiments to see what works for you. There is no prescriptive, one-size-fits all approach here.

BuzzSumo’s analysis of 500M Facebook posts did not reveal that posts via third party apps get ‘penalized.’  The data does not mean that using a tool actually lessens engagement of itself. Rather, some possible reasons for lower engagement when posting via third party apps include:

  • people creating less engaging content when using a tool
  • cross-posting content from other platforms such as Twitter, rather than crafting a post specific to the platform which will perform better
  • not optimizing images for Facebook
  • scheduling content for later, which simply gets posted after a story has already gone viral or is no longer as relevant
  • no one wanting to engage with a post that looks automated, which could explain why tools like IFTTT performed particularly badly in terms of engagement

See Buffer’s post for more on this topic, as well:

Mari Smith

Often referred to as “the Queen of Facebook,” Mari Smith is widely known as the Premier Facebook Marketing Expert and a top Social Media Thought Leader. Forbes describes Mari as, “… the preeminent Facebook expert. Even Facebook asks for her help.” IBM named Mari as one of seven women that are shaping digital marketing. Mari is an in-demand keynote speaker, corporate social media strategist, dynamic live webcast host, and popular brand ambassador. She is coauthor of Facebook Marketing: An Hour A Day, and author of The New Relationship Marketing.

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27 Comments

  1. Stefan Shuster on October 13, 2016 at 2:42 am

    Thanks a lot for the post…its awesome.



  2. Anja Skrba on August 5, 2016 at 1:13 am

    89.5% results in less engagement when you post with 3rd party tool then directly on Fb…? Wow…That’s interesting, I had no idea it was such a big number…



  3. Verena Ho on March 21, 2016 at 3:45 am

    Nice read! Mari, thanks for posting this. Yes, images posts definitely gets me more engagement vs videos. I wasn’t convinced till tested them over and over on several of my fan pages. Looks like people are actually “scanning” their news feed and impatient to watch videos. So, gotta post less vids 😉



  4. BBR Music Group on March 18, 2016 at 3:52 am

    Mari – how about posts that include external link vs. those that don’t. Did/can Buzzsumo analyze that?



  5. Lincoln Lim on March 11, 2016 at 12:02 am

    This is really awesome information to know for those who want to improve their engagement level in Facebook. Btw, nice infographic 🙂



  6. Corey Anderson on March 9, 2016 at 1:52 am

    Great Article too good , love to see these types of articles



  7. Alecia Stringer on January 21, 2016 at 5:18 pm

    I think it all comes down to how you use them, and whether you ask for engagement, etc. Thanks for sharing this info.



    • Mari Smith on January 21, 2016 at 5:27 pm

      Great point, Alecia! Thanks for tuning in!!



  8. Janet Rebecca on January 11, 2016 at 11:07 pm

    This blog has inspired me to start my own
    blog. I loved the way you described your experiences throughout.



  9. Sue Bride on November 10, 2015 at 9:03 am

    It’s interesting that posting with a 3rd party tool results in 89.5% less engagement than directly posting to Facebook. Why do you think this is? Could it be that FB doesn’t show these posts to as many people or that we take more care when we publish manually?



    • Scott Ayres on November 20, 2015 at 7:33 am

      Sue.. This stat is not true in reality. It’s a very poorly summarized stat from the study Buzzsumo and Buffer did. Apps do not get a diminished reach by Facebook.



    • Nikolai on November 28, 2015 at 8:58 pm

      Correlation does not equal causation. This stat just probably shows that there are a lot of app posts that get less engagement, which is reasonable: if you post 250 pieces of content a day, each of your posts will naturally receive less reach and engagement than more quality, “pillar posts” which are posted manually… and less frequently. thats my theory anyway



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