This is the most shared kind of Facebook post

I recently stumbled upon an article that analyzed 1.4 million Facebook posts to try and determine the attributes of the most engaging content.

Here’s some of what they found:

• Offers is the most shared content types
• Photos is the most liked content type
• The ideal post length is less than 75 words

It’s a rigorous study, and a misleading one.

There are countless articles around the net imploring you to create the best content type, stay under a certain word count threshold, find the right size for the image you share. It’s research like I quoted above that fuels these articles.

But the truth is, the content type has no impact on engagement. The most popular content is popular because it’s made by people who are dedicated to crafting great content. These people include photos because they feel photos help them tell a better story, not because they’re trying to optimize for most likes.

Endlessly optimizing your posts can only yield one result for your readers: Langour. Content fatigue.

No one appreciates being constantly optimized for. Optimization is for machines, not people — people make mistakes, and speak from the heart. Nothing we do is optimal.

You know what? There’s only one thing that makes for happy readers, and that’s happy authors. You need to write content you’re happy about, and your audience will follow. Your dedication to produce great content shines through the misaligned cover photo and the over-the-top word count, and makes your readers enjoy spending time with you on social media.

Does optimizing your Facebook photo size make you happy?

Didn’t think so.

Yala, our social media bot, knows how to tactfully determine the best time to publish your posts, so that people who requested to get updates from you will be online when they go live. Click here to try her out for Slack.

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