For those looking improve engagement with their Facebook posts, it seems that adding more pictures and speaking in the first person is a good place to start. Social media ‘scientist’ Dan Zarrella has tracked and analysed more than 1.3 million posts from the 10,000 most-liked Facebook pages. He has created an infographic (see below) showing what kind of posts perform best on Facebook in terms of likes, shares and comments.

Photos perform best across the board, followed by text and video, according to the data. News links bring in the lowest number of likes, shares and comments. In opposition to Twitter, posts with a high number of self-referential words such as “I” and “me” get more likes .  “It’s also important to be passionate, not neutral,” which means that both positive and negative posts tend to do well.

As mentioned in a previous post, timing is also key. Updates posted later in the day bring in more shares and Likes, but they tend to peak around 8 p.m. Shares, on the other hand, seem to trickle off towards the end of the working day. Contrary to other social media experts, Zarrella advised page owners to “publish when others aren’t, such as later in the day and on the weekends.” Similar to Twitter engagement, Facebook posts do better earlier in the week than later: Thursday is apparently the least active day for Likes. Obviously, these are general guidelines and the best time to post will depend upon your target audience.

What do you think? Do you agree with Zarrella’s advice? Feel free to leave any comments below.