New Report Finds Photos Generate 50% More Impressions for Small Business on Facebook; Twitter: Quotes

Roost, a tech company committed to helping small business go social, today announced the findings from its second quarterly report on the state of local business and its use of social media. More than 10,000 Facebook and Twitter posts by small businesses across over 50 industries were evaluated, indicating that the most effective post types for small businesses to drive meaningful interactions were photos on Facebook and quotes on Twitter.

• Not All Posts Are Created Equal: The Roost social marketing platform for small businesses provides impression and engagement metrics beyond the standard Likes, Comments, Shares and Retweets. Roost takes a deeper look at the various types of posts for each platform and determines which ones yield the highest levels of interaction amongst local business fans and followers.
  
• Photos Rule on Facebook: The two greatest engagement tactics on Facebook are Likes and Comments, with Likes leading the charge. Roost finds that the best way to achieve Likes is through photo posts, quotes and status updates, with photos providing 50 percent more impressions on average than any other post type and quotes providing 22 percent more interactions when compared to all post types.
  
  Findings also show that questions generate almost two times as many comments as any other post type. The second most popular way to get fans commenting is through a compelling business status update. Facebook Shares are a great way to disseminate business and product messages across fans’ networks and links are 87 percent more likely to be shared than any other post type.  
  
• Quotes Rule on Twitter: Roost’s report finds that the most effective engagements for local businesses communicating on Twitter are Retweets. Quotes drive, on average, 54 percent more Retweets than any other type of Tweet, with status updates being the second highest driver of engagement.

“These results are telling for the small business community and provide direct guidance on how to achieve the highest level of engagement with their Facebook fans and Twitter followers,” said Alex Chang, CEO of Roost. “Facebook is inherently visual, so it follows that photos would ignite more activity here, while twitter began, and largely remains text-driven, the home of the pithy soundbite, so it makes sense that quotes create the most engagement on that network,” added Chang.

The study was conducted in September of 2011 by analyzing Facebook and Twitter posts created on the Roost platform by over 8,000 small businesses across over 50 industries.