How to Get More Likes, Shares on Facebook

BY SAMANTHA MURPHY KELLY
JUN 19, 2012

If you're looking to get better engagement out of your Facebook posts, add more pictures and start speaking in the first person.

Social media data expert Dan Zarrella — who tracked and analyzed more than 1.3 million posts from the 10,000 most-Liked Facebook pages — has released details about which posts get the most likes, shares and comments on Facebook, from post type and length to the best time of day to add updates.

Photos bring in the highest number of engagement across the board, followed by text and video, according to Zarrella. News links bring in the least numbers of likes, shares and comments.

Meanwhile, posts with a high number of self-referential words such as "I" and "me" get more likes — a tactic that doesn't work well on Twitter.

"Overall, the best strategy for Facebook, as well as all kinds of social media marketing, is to create a lot of interesting content and share it," Zarrella told Mashable. "On Facebook, visual content does especially well. It's also important to be passionate, not neutral."

This means that both positive and negative posts tend to do well with engagement.

Timing is also key. Updates posted later in the day (Eastern Time) bring in more shares and Likes, but they tend to peak around 8 p.m. Shares trickle off around the end of the work day (6 p.m.).

"Publish when others aren't, such as later in the day and on the weekends," Zarrella advised.

For example, Facebook posts that go up on Saturdays and Sundays tend to get more Likes than those during the week. Similar to Twitter engagement, Facebook posts do better earlier in the week than later: Thursday is the least active day for Likes.

People also tend to be active throughout the week in the early hours of the day (5 a.m. ET) and during lunchtime (12 p.m. ET).