These Types of Social Media Posts Are Most Engaging: Study

What You Need to Know

A new study from Hearsay Systems found a 23% increase in overall engagement across all channels, content types and lines of business since 2020.
Original content and purpose-driven topics drove high levels of engagement.
Across all lines of business, links were by far the most used, followed by images, video and text.

Social media has become a primary source for information on news, finance and investments, according to a new study from Hearsay Systems, which found a 23% increase in overall engagement across all channels, content types and lines of business since 2020.

“Reviewing the data from one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind, it is clear that social selling is here to stay,” Leslie Leach, chief marketing and strategy officer of Hearsay Systems, said in a statement.

The study aggregated data from some 100 leading global financial services firms and their cumulative 225,000 advisors and agents who used the Hearsay platform in 2022. The study analyzed 16.3 million published social media posts that garnered 22.3 million engagements across Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.

On the Hearsay platform, financial services firms add content to a library for their advisors and agents to publish, with or without modifications.

The analysis showed that in 2022, the percentage of original content — as opposed to modified and unmodified posts published from a firm’s content library — rose from 3.9% to 6.6%. Original content connected best with social contacts, generating engagement rates that average around 3.7, compared with an average engagement rate of 0.4 on unmodified posts.

LinkedIn hosted 51% of all posts in 2022 and Facebook 40%, making them the most actively used networks last year. Instagram proved to be the most engaging, with an average engagement rate of 1.6. LinkedIn followed with an average rate of 0.6 and Facebook with 0.4.

Content Engagement

The study found that three content categories — principles-based, career and recruiting, and corporate brand — scored highly across multiple lines of business.

Purpose-driven brands communicate a commitment to diversity and environmental, social and governance issues. Asset management outpaced other lines of business with an engagement rate for principles-based content that was nearly three times that of the next closest line of business.

Amidst media coverage of the “great resignation,” a highly competitive talent pool and labor shortages, career and recruiting content resonated. It made the top three list for every line of business except for wealth management, where it settled into the fourth spot.

Post Components

Regular publishing cadence and social reciprocity matter when it comes to best practices for social selling, according to Hearsay. Also worth considering are the ingredients that go into a post.

The study found that across all lines of business, links were by far the most used, followed by images, video and text. Users shared links at twice the rate of images and 11 times the rate of videos even though they had the lowest average engagement rate of 0.3.

Text-only posts — those without a link, image or video — drove the highest engagement across all lines of business with a rate of 4.4, six times more than images and 5.5 times more than videos.

In particular, LinkedIn text-only posts garnered the highest engagement rates for all lines of business. Hearsay noted that text-only posts tend to be original, reinforcing the power of original and modified content.

Twitter produced the lowest engagement rates. Its highest ones ranged from 0.1 for property and casualty insurance (text-only posts) to 1.5 for asset management (image posts).

According to the study, program owners and field teams can meaningfully connect with clients and prospects by using a mix of high-effort, high-engagement content and corporate-provided, lower-effort library posts.