Posting to Facebook through a third-party app reduces likes and comments
Image via CrunchBase
Those who use social media for professional or business reasons often turn to applications like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to post on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. It’s quicker, easier and means you can schedule all your posts at the start of the week if you so desired.
But a new study suggests that posting through a third-party app can cut likes and comments by a huge 88%, in comparison to posting directly on Facebook.
Applum, creators of Edgerank Checker, studied more than a million Facebook updates on more than 50,000 pages to come up with the findings.
There are a number of reasons why posts from third-party apps could get less likes and comments:
- Certain apps, like Networked Blogs, get grouped together in the News Feed, which makes them less visible to users. They often get minimised, so you have to expand them to view (even if they’re from different pages)
- Facebook users click-through less to short URLs, which tend to be used by apps like Hootsuite and Tweetdeck to track clicks and fit them into tweets, than long ones. In fact, engagement levels are three times higher for long links than shortened ones.
- Shortened links don’t tend to transfer particularly well to Facebook. Hootsuite does let you add a thumbnail and description, but Tweetdeck doesn’t yet.
- Just as users are suspicious of shortened URLs, some are also nervous around particular logos next to a status. Particularly given all the Facebook scams doing the rounds.
So what’s the solution? It’s impractical for many businesses to post their statuses straight to Facebook every day. It also makes it harder to post at the best posting time.
Perhaps the key is to finish a Facebook status in the same way you’d finish a blog post – with a call to action. Ask your fans for their input,and you can increase the engagement.
Here’s our call to action: How would you suggest businesses can get around this?
