Surprises Are Guaranteed: Which Facebook Posts Get the Most Engagement?

The latest research comes from BuzzSumo in an analysis of one billion posts in January 2016. They shared the results, an insane amount of data, with Neil Patel, co-founder of KISSmetrics, data marketing and analytics expert, who explores these points in “How to Win on Facebook: 8 Lessons Learned From Analyzing 1 Billion Posts,” published on Quick Sprout. Patel says:

Let me quickly summarize the 8 best practices that came from BuzzSumo’s research:

1. The best time to post is between 10 PM and midnight of your audience’s local time
2. Posts with questions and images get the most engagement
3. The best day to post is Sunday
4. Posts that link to articles between 1,000-3,000 words get the most interaction
5. Short post descriptions get by far the most interaction
6. Directly embedded videos get over 6x the interaction of YouTube videos
7. Images posted through Instagram get a 23% boost in engagement
8. Posts with hashtags get less interaction than posts without hashtags