Study by Facebook reveals the best ways to get feedback on your Facebook links

A recent study from Facebook into the personal pages of journalists has shown how to get the most click-throughs and interaction on the links you post. And yes, it’s about putting in more time and personalising them more.

Facebook analysed the public pages of journalists on Facebook – open pages, not profiles – places where they post links to the work they’ve done. It analysed what links performed well: in terms of which ones were clicked on most, which ones got the most likes and which ones got the most comments.

Content aside, there were certain types or styles of posts that did particularly well. And what they learned from this study is applicable to anyone who keeps a Page. Core lesson – if you hand-craft the introduction to the link it performs better than if you just whack an RSS feed into the page.

If you’re looking for engagement, here’s what gets the most feedback (comments and likes):

> Posts that asked questions or sought user input: +64%
> Call to read or take a closer look: +37%
> Personal reflections or behind-the-scenes posts: +25%
> Posts with catchy/clever language or tone: +18%

It comes back to Facebook being a service built around people – the personal touch and the conversational touch always have the strongest impact in that space.

Importance of Images
The other big finding? Images.

People respond much better to post with images. And just to images by themselves as well. Facebook say:

“Photos received 50% more likes than non-photo posts, and journalists who shared links that included a thumbnail image in the link preview received 65% more likes and 50% more comments than posts that did not include images.”

Times that have the most impact
Some surprises here as it seems that posts at the end of the week got most activity on Facebook and that people are as interested at midnight as they are at 7am.

Here are the Facebook findings:

Daily Feedback and Referral Clicks: Journalists received the highest amount of feedback later in the week. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday had the highest amount of feedback — with Sunday receiving the highest amount of feedback at 25% more likes and 8% more comments above average. Referral clicks were above average Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday — with links getting 85% more clicks on Saturday and 37% more on Wednesday than an average post.

Hourly Feedback: Readers are active throughout the day. Feedback spikes occurred on Journalist Pages at the start of the day (7 a.m. & 8 a.m. showing a 30-40% increase); late in the morning (10 a.m. ET received 40% increase in feedback); later in the workday (4 & 5 p.m. ET showing 40% and 100% increases); and on into the evening hours (12 a.m. ET getting 30% increase and 2 a.m. ET getting 20% increase).

See the full Facebook analysis here.
Findings on how people interact with the Facebook feeds of news organisations will follow.