FrontGate Media’s blog series on The Science of Social Media: Posting analyzes the five major considerations to think about when creating a social media posting strategy as exemplified by our own experience and tips from serving clients in social media since 2007, and references from an excellent study conducted by Track Social. 

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Want interaction?  You have to ask for it!

The type of message content you post has a huge effect on the total response per post.  On Facebook, asking questions will deliver comments, but generates much fewer likes, as you’ll see in the graphic below.  Alternatively, asking for a caption, like, or comment delivers lots of likes and more comments.

The Response Score on the Track Social graph below shows the steep decline in response from “asking: to “caption” to “asking a question”:

It’s not surprising that the analysis shows that “explicit calls to action get the best response.”  I would suggest to continue employing a variety of creative posts, like post type mentioned in Part Two, but this sheds light on the general popularity and response of various kinds of post content. If you want interaction, creatively ask for people to share, like, and comment on your content!  Ask and you shall receive.

Here’s an example of how we’ve received when we’ve asked.  Posted for My Broken Palace, this very simple post collected 107 likes and 65 shares.

Check out our previous blogs in this series:

The Science of Social Media: Posting – Overview (Part 1 of 6)

The Science of Social Media: Posting – Visual Posts (Part 2 of 6)