Social Media Users Activity Global Research 2020
Popsters has developed a formula for an engaging post on social networks.
The Popsters research was based on statistics on the activity of users’ interaction with publications on various social networks in 2020. 537 million publications from 1 million 106 thousand pages on Instagram Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Telegram, Coub, Tumblr, Odnoklassniki, and VKontakte were analysed by the researchers in the course of preparation. The authors-researchers also found out how the audience engagement indicator is affected by the day of the week and the time of posting, the type of content, the volume of text, the frequency of posting and the number of subscribers.
- On Tuesday, Facebook’s audience is the most active in publishing and responding to content — on this day, the figure reaches 16.1%. Facebook users are least active on Sunday, when engagement drops to 11.4%.
- The peak of Facebook user engagement on any day of the week is 12:00 p.m., when the activity of the social network population reaches 7%. Complete inactivity occurs at 3:00 a.m., when engagement drops to 0.9%.
- Contrary to popular belief that Facebook is a platform for longreads, the audience of the social network is better at reading short posts of up to 160 characters. The readability thereof reaches 45.98%. Medium posts – 160 to 1,000 characters – reading activity is 37.17%. Engagement when interacting with long posts of over 1,000 characters is only 16.85%.
- Activity in reading posts of a certain length correlates with the day of the week, but the overall balance is unchanged: short ones are read most, medium ones – a little less, long ones are preferred by a minority. On Monday, medium posts have the highest reads, and on this day they almost equate to the coverage of short posts — 6.11% and 6.23%, respectively. On Tuesday, the audience is most favourable to longreads — on this day, the activity of reading them reaches 3.6% or half of the medium post readings. And Wednesday is the best day for short texts — the activity of interaction with such texts in the middle of the week exceeds 7%.
- Audience engagement also depends on the time of publication. The most successful time to post short posts is 11 a.m., when audience engagement reaches 3.12%. For medium and long posts, the golden hour is noon. The activity of reading posts of 160 to 1,000 characters at this time is 2.9%, and texts over 1,000 characters — 0.93%.
- It is not the texts on Facebook that the audience likes best, but the photos: the activity of user interaction with such content is 33.24%, followed by text with 29.87% engagement, then links — 21.89% and last place in terms of viewing activity belongs to video with an indicator of 14.99%.
- However, the Popsters researchers found out that the smaller the audience of a personal profile, page or group on Facebook and the less often new posts appear there, the higher the engagement of subscribers when interacting with them on the day of publication.
- Monday is the best day to post to Instagram because user engagement with content at the start of the week is over 15%. On Wednesday and Friday, engagement is at the same level of 14.9%. The least active audience is on Sunday, when user activity drops to 12.7%.
- The most active audience views and reacts to stories and posts at 5 p.m., when the audience engagement reaches 6.7%. Off-peak hour on Instagram as well as on Facebook comes at 3:00 a.m., when activity drops to just 1%.
- Instagram audience, despite the dominance of visual content on the platform, prefers posts of medium length — 160 to 1,000 characters. Activity of reading them on the social network is 44.61%. It is also worth noting that the gap between user engagement in interaction with short and long posts is less than 1%: activity of reading posts of up to 160 characters is 27.36%, over 1,000 – 28.02%.
- Medium posts of up to 1,000 characters are always the most readable regardless of the day of the week, but they are best viewed on Friday, when audience engagement reaches 7.58%. On this day, short posts are also best viewed: activity and reading is 3.76%, while long ones on the same day are read more by 0.5%. Short texts on Instagram are only read more than long ones on weekends. On all other days, the activity of reading long posts was higher, and the highest rate of engagement — 3.91% — was recorded on Monday.
- The medium post highest ratio of up to 1,000 characters will be collected if it is published at noon, when the user activity rate reaches 3.65%. The most auspicious time for the publication of long posts is 5 to 7 p.m., when the engagement rate is 1.63%. At the same time, the maximum activity of interaction with short posts is observed. It reaches 1.69%.
- The fact that the highest user engagement — 30.12% — on Instagram is generated by photos, is not surprising. Second place in terms of interaction activity belongs to text with an engagement rate of 29.49%, which is also expected, because the audience of the social network reads medium and long texts better than short ones. But the fact that video content was among the outsiders with 16.43% engagement, means that Reels did not help Instagram to attract users’ attention from TikTok.
- User engagement decreases due to the increase in the size of the audience and the frequency of posting on Instagram, as well as on Facebook.
- Twitter post success is independent of the day of the week, as engagement is at its highest on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and just 0.1% lower on Thursday than other weekdays. User engagement on Saturday and Sunday is also almost the same: 12.3% and 12.4%, respectively.
- Social network audience is most active at noon: at this time, the engagement rate reaches 5.9%. Complete inactivity on Twitter occurs from 4 to 6 a.m., when the activity of interaction with content drops to 1.6%.
- The format of the social network Twitter itself does not imply long posts of over 1,000characters, so only short and medium ones are considered. The audience interacts with the former almost 60% more actively than with the latter.
- Short tweets lead in engagement throughout the week, but they are best read on Wednesday, when the activity of interaction with them reaches 9.4%. Medium tweets are more actively interacted with on Tuesday than on other days, as evidenced by an increase in engagement to 6.23%.
- The most fertile time to attract attention to a short tweet is noon, when the maximum engagement is 3.81%, and for medium posts it is better to wait until lunch. At 2 p.m., the activity of interaction with medium tweets reaches a peak of 2.6%.
- Twitter audience responds best to texts: activity of interaction with text tweets is 38.28%. Users interact with photos and links almost equally — 28.73% and 27.55%, respectively. And videos on Twitter are almost not included, judging from the fact that audience engagement in viewing such content is only 5.44%.
- Accounts with an audience of 10 to 20 thousand subscribers, posting up to four tweets a day, have the best indicator of engagement for a single post on Twitter. A little less — 4.54% – users with 20-50 thousand subscribers and eight tweets a day. But these accounts have better engagement during the day — 63.38% and more than twice exceed the daily engagement of the first category of users.
YouTube
- User activity on YouTube begins closer to the weekend – on Thursday and Friday, the maximum activity of video hosting users approaches 15.6%, and by Sunday it drops to 11.9%.
- Videos on YouTube are best watched at lunch — at 2 p.m., the audience engagement reaches 6.4%, and from 2 to 3 a.m. it drops to a minimum and stays at 1.8%.
- Surprisingly, the text volume in the video description on YouTube is reflected in the indicator of engagement. Popster found out that videos with a description of 160 to 1,000 characters have the highest audience engagement — 44.72%. A little lower is the activity of user interaction with videos, where the infobox has a long description: it is 38.73%, and videos with a short description have an engagement rate of only 16.55%.
- Videos with a medium description best engage the audience from Monday to Sunday, but the highest rate of user interaction with such videos is on Thursday — it reaches 7.6% on this day. Videos with a long description are best viewed on Friday, when their engagement reaches 5.85%, and it is better to post videos with a short description on Wednesday, because on this day the maximum audience activity increases to 2.45%.
- The best time to publish videos with a short and medium description is 2 p.m., because at this time they show their maximum user engagement rates – 0.98% and 3.45%, respectively. Audience interacts more actively with videos that have a long description in the next hour.
- The highest rate of audience engagement when watching a particular video and the highest rate of daily engagement was found among channels with less than 1,000 subscribers, where no more than one video appears per day.
TikTok
- TikTok’s short video service audience is most active on Tuesday, when user engagement approaches 15.3%. And on the last day of the week, the indicator drops to 12.6%. On Wednesday and Friday, the engagement rate is the same — 14.7%.
- The audience prefers to watch TikTok after work: the highest user engagement — 8.6% – is observed at 7 p.m. And from 04:00 to 06:00 a.m., users are obviously asleep, so their activity is reduced to 1.2%.
- For TikTok, a pattern is also relevant: the smaller the audience and the less frequent the posting, the higher the engagement of the video and the overall engagement during the day. So the highest rates are shown by accounts with less than a thousand subscribers, where no more than two videos are posted a day.
Telegram
- The most active day in the messenger is Thursday. Audience engagement on this day reaches a maximum of 15.2%. The lowest engagement rates are on weekends, when the activity of interaction with content drops to 12.9%.
- Telegram audience is also most engaged in the evenings from 6 to 7 p.m., when the activity of interaction with content reaches a peak of 6.7%. And engagement drops to a minimum of 0.9% by 5 a.m.
- Telegram has quite high engagement rates for text of almost any volume, but medium texts engage the best – 39.75%. The activity of interaction with short ones is estimated at 35%, and long ones – at 25.19%.
- With medium texts, everything is clear: they engage better than others all week long, but especially well — 6.6% – on Tuesday. Short texts are best read on Friday, when the interaction activity rate reaches 5.56%, and long texts are more often preferred on Thursdays, when such texts achieve engagement of 3.46%.
- Medium texts are best read from 6 to 7 p.m. on Telegram, as indicated by the maximum engagement rate of 3.24%; for short ones the activity of interaction at this time of evening reaches 2.67%. And long texts are best published at noon, when they can get 1.51% of user activity.
- Telegram has become an exception to the rule — on this social network text engages the audience better than images. Activity of users’ interaction with text reaches 29.17%. Moreover, on messenger, photos are even inferior to links in terms of engagement: 24.91% vs. 26.35%. Videos on Telegram have the worst engagement – 19.57%, but here the audience interacts with them more actively than on most other social networks.
VKontakte
- The activity of users of the social network does not change much during the week: the highest engagement rates -14.8%, fall on Wednesday, on Friday – 14.7%, on Tuesday and Wednesday – 14.6%, and on weekends it drops quite a bit — to 13.3%.
- On VKontakte, users most actively interact with content at noon, as with most other social networks. At this time, engagement reaches a peak of 6.3%, and drops to 1.2% at 4 a.m.
- Users of the social network better read and interact with short texts, while their activity with posts of up to 160 characters is 51.5%. Medium texts with a length of 160 to 1,000 characters reach an engagement rate of 30.11%, while short texts – only 18.4%.
- According to the activity of user interaction, throughout a week short texts will not be displaced by medium ones or long reads. The best time to engage in short texts is Monday, when the activity rate reaches 7.51%. The best day for medium texts is Wednesday: on this day, the activity of interaction with such posts is close to 5%. For long texts, the optimal posting day is Monday or Friday, because on these days the maximum engagement rate of 2.46% is reached.
- Short texts are best viewed by the audience in the morning before the start of the working day: from 10:00 a.m., the activity of user interaction with short texts reaches its maximum of 3.26%. With medium texts and long reads, the VKontakte audience interacts best at 5 p.m. with an engagement rate of 2.27% and 0.99%, respectively.
- The majority of users of the social network are picture people, since photos have the highest engagement rate — 37.08%. Text engages 31.16%, and videos and links – almost the same — 15.92% and 15.94%. By the way, VKontakte is still the first of the social networks with a multi-format content, where videos engage, although not much, but better than links.
- The axiom “the smaller the audience and the less frequent the posting, the higher the engagement” is also relevant for VKontakte.
Odnoklassniki
- On Odnoklassniki, posts get the best user activity on Monday and Tuesday, when the maximum possible engagement of 15.2% is reached. By the way, from Wednesday to Friday, it is close to the maximum and is 15%. Users of the social network react to new content the worst on Sunday, when audience activity drops to 12.1%.
- The best time to post on a social network is 6 p.m., when people want to distract themselves after work and are engaged at 7.6%. From 2 to 5 a.m., a post can give out, because the activity of interacting with content during these night hours drops to a minimum of 0.8%.
- Odnoklassniki audience responds best to medium posts of 160 to 1,000 characters, the engagement rate of which reaches 42.08%. And in the competition of short and long posts, the first ones have an advantage — posts of up to 160 characters engage 36.84, while texts over 1,000 characters — only 21%.
- Medium posts are read better than others all week long, but especially on Tuesday: engagement is at a maximum level of 7.47%. Short texts are most actively interacted with on Friday — engagement rate reaches 5.57%. And if you post longreads on Odnoklassniki, it is better to do this on Monday, when they engage 2.64%.
- A post of 160 to 1,000 characters published after 6 p.m. is the key to success, because it will engage the audience at the maximum possible of 4.08%. From 6 to 7 p.m., both short text, with an interaction activity of 2.57%, and long reads, which engage users at 1.3%, will also work best.
- In terms of preferences, the Odnoklassniki audience is not original: it also interacts best with photos and pictures, engaging at 32.87%. Next comes text engaging at 31%, and video engaging is noticeably better than links — 19.89% vs. 16.48%.
- A small audience and rare posting is the key to high audience engagement on Odnoklassniki.
Bottom line
- On average, throughout all social networks, users interact most actively with content on Friday, when the engagement rate reaches 15.2%, and the worst on Sunday, when it drops to 12.4%.
- The maximum number of reactions and interactions with a post on social networks is more likely to be at noon, engaging the audience at a maximum of 6.4%. But publishing posts from 3 to 4 a.m. is not a good idea: on average engagement drops to 1.2%.
· When writing posts, it is better to follow the sweet spot principle and fit text into a volume of 160-1,000 characters, because such texts engage most effectively — 39.75%.
- Medium and short texts show the best results on Friday — 6.6% and 5.5%, respectively, and long texts — on Tuesday, when they engage 4%.
- The best time for posting medium, short, and long texts, is midday, when they can engage the maximum possible – 3.15%, 2.3%, and 1.38%, respectively.
- Photo+text is the optimal strategy for engaging the majority of users on any social network. Although the photo itself may be even better.
