If you thought you had everything figured out about social media posting, think again. New research from Compendium suggests that even the punctuation used in updates and posts can affect how well they are received and how many clicks they get in the B2B and B2C worlds.
The research compiled best practices gleaned from the social sharing statistics of more than 200 companies across LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, but the LinkedIn and Twitter stats interested us the most. Here are some key takeaways to add to your own brand’s best social practices.
Keep It Short and Sweet
The research confirmed that short messaging is best for B2B and B2C brands, even if you’re not constrained by character limits. For B2B brands, 16-25 words is the ideal length for LinkedIn posts and 11-15 words is ideal. Meanwhile, B2C brands can afford to be a little more verbose on LinkedIn and more concise on Twitter — 21-25 words is the ideal length for LinkedIn and 1-5 words is perfect for Twitter.
Don’t Question It!
Although the instinct is for brands to ask questions to engage followers, using question marks seems to result in fewer clicks. For B2B brands, posts containing question marks saw 25% fewer clicks on LinkedIn and 39% fewer clicks on Twitter. For B2C brands, posts with question marks results saw pretty similar responses. Posts with question marks for B2C brands saw 45% fewer clicks on LinkedIn and 52% fewer clicks on Twitter.
Get Excited for LinkedIn, Stay Calm for Twitter
Oddly enough, posts with exclamation points in them saw better click rates on LinkedIn than on Twitter. On LinkedIn, exclamatory posts saw 26% more clicks for B2B brands and 27% more clicks for B2C brands. Meanwhile, exclamatory posts on Twitter saw 15% fewer clicks for B2B brands and 8% fewer clicks for B2C brands.
#hashtags
The biggest divide on Twitter was found regarding the use of hashtags. Posts made by B2B brands that included hashtags results in 193% more clicks, whereas hashtags posts from B2C brands saw 82% fewer clicks.
Need to brush up on more best practices for your brand’s social media accounts? Check out Buddy Media’s findings.