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Data-Backed Ways to Upgrade Your Social Media Marketing
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Dan Zarrella is the award-winning social media scientist at HubSpot and author of 4 books: The Science of Marketing, Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness, The Social Media Marketing Book and The Facebook Marketing Book. He has a background in web development and combines his programming capabilities with a passion for social marketing to study social media behavior from a data-backed position and teach marketers scientifically grounded best practices. The data in this presentation is compiled from a variety of independent research he’s done over the past few years.
@DanZarrella
About the Author
I go to a lot of marketing conferences, read a lot of marketing books and blogs, and I hear a lot of “unicorns and rainbows” advice. Stuff like “engage in the conversation,” “be awesome,” and “have a personality.” This kind of advice isn’t based on anything more substantial than what “sounds good” or “feels right.”
As HubSpot’s social media scientist, I work to use hard data, facts, and science to go beyond the unicorns and rainbows myths. So without further ado, here are 20 data-backed ways to upgrade your social media marketing.
Tell Us Why We Should Follow You
Twitter accounts that used words like “founder,” “speaker,” “expert,” “guru,” and “author” in their bios had more followers than the average account.
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Use Contra-Competitive Timing 2
Posts made to Facebook timelines on Saturdays and Sundays tend to get more Likes than posts made during the business week.
Use Tall Images on Pinterest 3
As image height in pixels increased for images posted to Pinterest, so did the average number of times they were repinned.
Put Links 25% of the Way Through Tweets 4
Links placed just before the halfway point (in characters) of tweets tended to have higher clickthrough rates than links placed elsewhere.
Use Questions on Facebook
Simple yes/no questions like “should” and “would,” as well as multiple choice questions like “which” tend to get more comments than average Facebook posts.
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Use Links to Get Retweets 6
While fewer than 25% of all tweets contain a link, more than half of retweets contain a URL.
Non-Retweets Retweets
Stop Talking About Yourself 7
As the amount of self-referential content posted by Twitter accounts increases, follower numbers decrease.
Say Something New 8
Retweeted tweets tend to contain fewer commonly used words than a random selection of non-retweeted tweets.
Stay Positive 9
As the amount of negativity posted by Twitter accounts increases, follower numbers decrease.
Use Calls-to-Action on Facebook 10
Facebook posts that included the word “like” tended to get more Likes than the average post.
Stay Away From Buzzwords 11
Facebook Pages that used industry buzzwords tended to have fewer Likes than pages that did not.
Share Links to Interesting Content 12
Accounts in which between 60% and 80% of tweets contain links tend to get more retweets than accounts that tweet fewer links.
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Use Photos on Facebook 13
Facebook posts that use photos tend to get more Likes than text, video, or link-based posts.
Use Hashtags on Instagram 14
Photos that included hashtags in their descriptions on Instagram tend to get more Likes than photos that do not.
Talk About Food on Facebook 15
Facebook Pages that mention food tend to have more Likes than the average Facebook Page.
Tweet Around 4 p.m 16
Tweets posted around 4 p.m. Eastern time tend to get more retweets than those posted at other times.
Don’t Be Neutral on Facebook 17
Posts with positive sentiment get more Likes than posts with negative sentiment, but both positive and negative perform better than neutral.
Write Longer Tweets for More Clicks 18
Clickthrough rate of links in tweets increases as the overall length of those tweets also increases.
Go Short or Long on Facebook 19
Posts that either contained very little text (such as photos) or upwards of 700 characters tend to get the most Likes.
Ask for the Retweet 20
Tweets that contain the call-to-action (CTA) “please retweet” are four times more likely to get retweeted at least once, compared to those that do not include the CTA.
Please Retweet
Please RT
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