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Infographic: 5 Content Trends Extracted from the Analysis of 772 Million Facebook posts

These trends outline a clear direction for Content Strategists in small and medium businesses to get the highest bang for the buck while offering better content to their Facebook fans and followers.
Infographic: 5 Content Trends Extracted from the Analysis of 772 Million Facebook posts
Usman Khalil
Published On
March 24, 2020

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Even after a rough couple of years, Facebook maintains its lead among social media channels both in terms of number of users and marketing purposes. Being the versatile platform that it is, it allows a variety of content to be shared onto it. And the kind of analytics it offers for content shared through business profiles makes it possible for detailed analysis and insights into what goes into making the best kind of content.

Related: Learn to set up Facebook for business in 7 simple steps.

Buffer and Buzzsumo had a chance to analyze a massive dataset of 772 million Facebook posts, which they whittled down to the best 500. Here are the insights into what made those Facebook posts great, and how you can replicate that strategy to get the most mileage out of your Facebook. At the end of the day, it's not about your budget, but your content strategy. This infographic will tell you exactly how to inject life into your content strategy for Facebook.

Video outperforms other content types

Video Content outperforms all types of other content posted on Facebook. This is a trend seen across different social media channels. These channels also allow for direct posting of videos with some minimum degree of editing that you can do directly from the app. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and now Linkedin too have a live video feature. Also relevant is the fact that videos posted directly to these platforms perform better than videos posted through Youtube or other video hosting websites.

Inspirational, funny, and practical content topics are most popular

The last time you shared, retweeted, or liked a funny or practical piece of content was probably a few minutes ago. That's the power such content has on us. And the reason is simple; it affects us. It inspires us, makes us laugh, or gives us new interesting information. It begs to be shared with your friends. That's why lifehacks, screenshots of popular tweets, and memes get shared as often as they do. As a business surely you can't abandon your standards of good content for memes? Or can you. Brands routinely try to create or curate content that resonates with their audience. That should be an integral part of your strategy in 2019.

Love & Haha make up more than 80% of the reactions on Facebook posts

Why does it matter? Why would someone care about what emoji people use as long as they react to a post? Because social media is a two-way street, and the way people interact with your content is far more important than the number of likes on your post. Like the last insight, this one sheds some light on the kind of content people are looking for when browsing Facebook. Make content that people love. Make content that makes people laugh. Find a nice balance between the two. If you crack the code for your specific audience, you're already halfway there. The next thing is to find a consistency with such content while it's still relevant for your business.

Use Trending topics

In 2019, a lot of brands have started to enter into conversations online for different reasons. Small businesses with a social media presence in its infant stages cannot compete against businesses with tens of thousands of page likes. Becoming part of larger discussions improves your content's visibility with proven results if you hit the nail on the head. There are a number of ways to do this. Big brands will sometimes take political stances or become a part of some movement. Though this definitely is risky and brands can face positive or negative changes in their popularity among people, it definitely makes their content more visible. Other times trends such as brand wars, or using trending topics can give your content an extra boost.

Curated Content

Over the last 5 years, content has flooded social media channels. So much so that it makes sense now to use existing content online to build your own brand. It is a win-win for all the parties involved. Creating good content consistently is neither cheap nor sustainable. Businesses that are not in the business of making content hit a wall when it comes to finding content to post. Curating popular content with the help of a service like Willow to give your Facebook feed a consistency, authority, and relevance increases your content's reach, likeliness to be engaged with, and helps your brand immensely on Facebook.

These trends outline a clear direction for Content Strategists in small and medium businesses to get the highest bang for the buck while offering better content to their Facebook fans and followers.

Share these trends with your network and find out what they have to say about it! Are they already implementing these practices?

Reach out to our experts to give you a social media audit and find out how Willow can optimize it for you.