Facebook Posts More Engaging Early in the Day, with Images: Vitrue

According to research by social media marketing agency Vitrue, Facebook posts incorporating images—including photos and coupons—are more engaging to users than those integrating either video or text. And they get extra engagement points if they’re posted early in the day and late in the week.

The Atlanta-base agency bases those conclusions on a third-party study of engagement with some 32,000 Facebook updates posted by 100 clients using its social relationship management platform between May 1 and Aug. 11 of this year. Engagement levels were calculated by combining Facebook comments, “likes” and shares generated by the posts, divided by the number of fans in a particular stream.

According to the study, image posts to Facebook earned 22% more engagement than video posts and 54% more than text-only posts, while video was 27% more engaging than text.

The report broke out engagement response for two specific industry verticals, quick-service restaurants (QSR) and consumer packaged goods (CPG.) it found that posts for CPG brands with images attached were almost twice as engaging as those with nothing but text, and more than twice as engaging as video posts. The same comparisons held true for QSR brands, although there video was somewhat more effective in Facebook than plain text.

In terms of daypart, Facebook posts made before noon get 65% more engagement than those posted in the afternoon, the study found, theorizing that this was due to users checking their Facebook pages early before their day’s work has really begun. That also held true for posts from the CPG sector, which were21% more engaging to consumers in the morning than after noon.

The exception here was the QSR segment, where posts in the afternoon received 12% more engagement than those from the same sector posted in the a.m., possibly since consumers are thinking ahead to their dinner plans.

Finally, Vitrue’s research finds that weekday Facebook posts overall get more attention than those posted on weekends, but that for the average post, whether a post goes up Monday or Friday makes only a slight difference.

But that’s not true in the CPG and QSR verticals. Facebook updates posted by consumer goods brands on a Thursday were measured as 136% more effective on Thursday than on Wednesday, and 515 more engaging than on Sunday and 18% more than on Saturday.

Conversely, Wednesday s produced the greatest impact for Facebook posts by QSR brands. Posts added to Facebook on that day garnered147% more engagement among readers than those posted on a Tuesday and 154% more than on Saturday.

“Now more than ever, marketers need actionable information and insights to determine the most effective means to communicate with consumers on Facebook< Vitrue CEO Reggie Bradford said in a release announcing the publication of the study “Anatomy of a Facebook Post”.

“It’s clear that Facebook deserves the respect that the traditional marketing media like TV, print, radio and the Internet currently receive,” Bradford said. “What we are providing is data to help refine marketers’ test-and-learn social media publishing strategy.”

Vitrue’s clients include Kellogg’s, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s, Ford, Hyundai, Carl’s Jr., Chick-fil-A and Best Buy.