I always wonder. Should I entice our audience with a thought-provoking question? Or cut to the chase with a bold statement, ending with an exclamation mark?
When in doubt, I look at the data. So I took a look at 3000 Facebook posts published within the past few weeks. This is what I found:
We shout a lot
30% of all Facebook posts contained an exclamation mark. That's a lot, seeing as we ask questions in only 22% of our Facebook posts.
In addition, 17% of all posts contained a hashtag, which struck me as a lot, but only 2% contained a smiley of some sort.
But is this having an impact on content performance? And if so: how?
Shouting to get more Facebook engagement
I define Engagement as the combination of Post Likes, Comments and Shares. I wondered if asking questions or shouting has an impact on content performance.
In this dataset, a Facebook post contributes on average 0,03% to the total amount of Engagement generated. If a posts contains a question, performance drops to 0,02%. Shouting in your posts increases performance to 0,04%.
So shouting works 100% better than asking a question to create Facebook Engagement. Using smileys or hashtags on the other hand, doesn't increase content performance.
Smile for Facebook reach
Again, shouting is having a beneficial impact on reach per post. Performing almost twice as well as average.
Facebook content containing smilies on average generate more Facebook reach, performing twice as well as posts with hashtags. What about negative feedback? All that shouting might get people to unlike your page. And it does, a little:
Smileys on the other hand, don't increase average negative feedback. But the increase in negative feedback doesn't weigh up to the beneficial impact of shouting, and certainly not of smiling a little more:
Shout and smile! :)
We shout a lot in our Facebook posts. And it works. The benefits clearly outweigh the modest increase in negative feedback.
But we only smile in 2% of our Facebook posts. And if you're looking to increase your reach, that's a shame. Facebook posts containing smilies have a higher average Reach, without any additional negative feedback.
Use this post as an inspiration, not as a reason to shout in every Facebook post. And if you're wondering what works to increase your Facebook content performance: start a free Myrise trial.