When managing a brand’s Facebook page, it’s an ever-constant battle to try and secure the most likes, comments, shares, clicks and overall engagement. We craft our posts with cute and witty writing and riddle the copy with calls-to-action in an attempt to win our fans’ attention. But, a new study by a social media measuring tool called Sotrender has found that calls-to-action like “watch”, “like”, “look” and “click” are not significantly helping us win the war with fan engagement. Analysts studied 111 UK Facebook pages with more than 2,800 different posts from four different industries – food and beverage, clothing, automotive and cosmetics and hygiene. Here’s what they found:
We are “desensitized” to calls-to-action words. Fans see words like “watch”, “like”, “look” and “click” so often in wall posts that they barely notice, let alone abide by them. In fact, words even like “win” barely increase engagement or buzz among fans anymore. (Only in the cosmetics and hygiene category of the analyzed pages did the analysts see the words “win”, “get” or “on sale” boost any significant fan interaction.)
It’s ok – spill your feelings. Facebook pages of food and beverage brands garner the most fan interaction when their posts refer to emotions. Words like “love”, “like”, “good”, “favorite” and “happy” earned the highest rates of user engagement, while clothing brand pages gained the most interaction from trends-related words like “fashion”, “style”, and “collection.”
Skip the link. This stuffy found that posts containing links brought fan engagement below average. Try to avoid the “www”, “http”, “.com” or “blog” words.
Photos > Words. Witty prose and insightful questions won’t cut it when it comes to engaging fans. Posts with photos garner more fan comments than posts simply asking a question. Follow the example of clothing store Topshop. In this study, only the brand’s 25th most popular post even contained words.
Any of this information come as a shock to you? We’d love to hear your feedback on how to secure the most fan interaction!
