Content discovery tool, BuzzSumo, analyzed 500 million Facebook posts to discover what types of posts create the most likes, comments and shares. The results may surprise you, and we’ve included strategies for each fact to improve your own Facebook author engagement. At the end of these facts and strategies, a helpful reference infographic is included, created by Facebook guru Mari Smith and BuzzSumo.

8 Eye-Opening Facebook Stats and How to Use Them to Your Advantage:

1. FACT: Posts published from 10 – 11 PM EST get 88% more interactions than the average Facebook post. (Interactions include likes, shares and comments)
   STRATEGY: Schedule some of your Facebook posts for evening release
2. FACT: Image posts get 179% more interactions than the average Facebook post.
   STRATEGY: Use images –always– with your posts! (Want to optimize image sizes for Facebook, Twitter and more? Canva.com makes it easy!)
3. FACT: Posts ending with a question get 162% more interactions than the average post.
   STRATEGY: Readers love answering questions, so give them your post links with provocative questions they can answer, or provide answers to “the burning question” of the moment.
4. FACT: Videos are the most shared post type, with 89.5 average Facebook shares. **
   STRATEGY: Offer up your video book trailer, video from signings, video of you answering reader questions; the sky’s the limit really (and all need is a smart phone!)
5. FACT: Posts published on Sunday get 52.9% more interactions than the average Facebook post.
   STRATEGY: Along with those evening posts in #1, schedule a Sunday post!
6. FACT: Excluding images, posts with 150-200 characters performed the best, averaging 238.75 shares.
   STRATEGY: This needs no explanation — give your readers enough to chew on!
7. FACT: Posting with a third party tool results in 89.5% less engagement than directly posting to Facebook.
   STRATEGY: This means when it comes to Facebook, you MAY want to directly engage with the site vs. posting via Hootsuite or another app. Or, at least make sure the content and links are unique to that which you post to Twitter and other sites.
8. FACT: Posts that link to long form content (2000+ words) receive 40% more interactions than linking to short form content.
   STRATEGY: This simply means linking to your blog or others’ articles of interest, too, because readers like to glean more from links to your site!

Using these facts and strategies will allow you to experiment with your own author page strategy; you may see a significant increase in your readers’ engagement. We’re including this great infographic from Mari and BuzzSumo below as a handy reference. You can also visit blog.hubspot.com/marketing/facebook-engagement-statistics for more insights.