Social Media ButtonsJust asking someone to share a post is frequently the most effective call to action (CTA) for Facebook posts by brand according to recent reports (TrackMaven).

Posts that contain the word “share” have almost two times as many social actions (likes, comments, and shares) on average compared with those that do not (4.02 vs. 2.19 average interactions per post), the analysis discovered.

The word “please” was also found to be an effective CTA, with approximately double the average number of interactions as well.

Out of the words observed, “now” was found to be the least effective: Posts containing the word have only slightly better effectiveness than those that do not.

Although the efficiency of some CTAs, the report indicates, marketers must keep in mind that the latest News Feed system change disciplines Pages that involve in “feed spam behavior,” which is defined by Facebook as “when a post clearly asks News Feed followers to like, comment or share the post to get extra circulation beyond what the post would generally receive.”

The authors recommend marketers to follow Facebook’s advice and generate calls to action that are “genuinely trying to encourage discussion among fans.”

Below are key findings from TrackMaven’s Report, which was based on an analysis of 1,578,006 posts shared by brands on 5,804 Facebook Pages.

Hashtags

·         83.9% of the posts observed did not contain any hashtags.

·         Among posts that included hashtags, the majority had only a single hashtag, accounting for 11.6% of all posts.

·         Posts that contained hashtags had more interactions than those that did not.

·         Posts containing one or two hashtags had more engagement than those with three or four.

·         Only 0.02% of the posts examined used seven hashtags, but those that did had exceptional engagement, with 5.41 average interactions per post.

Punctuation

·         71.2% of the Facebook posts observed did not contain an exclamation point, 21.6% used a single one, 5.2% had three, and 2% included four or more.

·         The analysis found a hopeful association between post effectiveness and number of exclamation points per post.

·         Posts with seven exclamation points had the greatest engagement, with 7.8 interactions on average.

·  78.1% of the Facebook posts studied did not contain a question mark, 19.6% had a single one, 1.8% included two, and 0.48% had three or more.

 · Posts with exclamation points, the analysis found a positive association between post efficiency and the use of question marks: Posts without question marks had less than average interactions per post (2.35) than those that included one or more questions marks (2.90).

 · Posts that used nine question marks had exceptionally high engagement, with 6.05 average interactions per post on average, but only accounted for fewer than 0.002% of posts.