Analyzing social media posts
As we know, the amount of social media content being posted each day is endless. The persistent cycle of posting, liking, commenting, sharing, saving, reposting, and more has become second nature for many users. Yet, some experts say there is a method to this madness.
Take news outlets for example. As someone who works in the news industry, I have grown to understand that there are “best” and “worst” times for certain posts to go out on social media. For example, a post that we predict may do well on social media will be posted in the “peak” evening hours such as 6 pm, 7 pm, or 8 pm because many people are on the apps at that time. A post we think may not do as well, will often get posted in the overnight hours of 3 am, 4 am and 5 am.
Let’s analyze this ‘X’ post from the New York Times.
SOURCE: New York Times
The first important detail about this post is the type of content this is. This is a post about Apple, which is one of the most popular and widely used companies in the world, therefore it should generate lots of interest among the audience. Since a majority of people have iPhones rather than Androids, more people should be interested in clicking on this post to learn more.
Going back to the value of timing in social media posts, the New York Times digital team also likely took this into consideration. This was posted at 5:20 p.m., a time when many people are ending their work day and on their phones. Additionally, since this content applies to a large majority of people, this timing was likely on purpose to catch a lot of people’s attention.
The second important detail is to take a look at the interactions that the post has. Interactions are a key way to tell if a post did well or not. Interactions such as the number of likes, comments, shares, reposts, and more, all give insight into the degree of interest that the post provides.
In my analysis, the first interaction I examined was the number of likes the post had. This post beat many others with 125 likes. Other posts from just a few hours before got 81, 96, and 93 likes. This likely means that a higher number of people saw the post compared to others.
A good way to see if people thought the post was interesting enough to share their thoughts on it would be to look at the comments. This post had 34 comments which seems to be an average for the New York Times. The post also has 23 reposts which is high compared to other posts earlier in the day.
Therefore, after analyzing this post, it seems beneficial for the team to continue posting important content during the evening hours such as 5 pm, 6 pm, and 7 pm because many people interacted with it. Additionally, while this post was relatable, it wasn’t anything controversial or emotional that might cause longer conversations in the comment section. Therefore, next time the New York Times may benefit from choosing a more conversational post for the 5 pm time slot in the future.