Facebook Users 'Like' Concise Posts And Long URLs

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If you write great tweet copy - in 140 characters or less, of course - maybe it's time to also employ your talents on Facebook. Marketing posts on the social site that are less than 80 characters create 27 percent more engagement, according to a new study by Buddy Media.

Buddy Media measured engagement rates by considering how many comments a post created and what percentage of a brand's Facebook audience "liked" it. The New York-based company's research entailed 200 brand clients from major verticals and was recorded from January 30 through February 12.

Other key findings:

• Retail, automotive, and sports marketers need to post more on Sundays. Retail posts get about a 39 percent engagement rate on Sundays - by far the best result for any day of the week. Automotive sees more than five times the engagement than it does on the second-best day, which is Wednesday. Sports-related posts are even more positively received on Sundays when compared to automotive. But Sunday only accounts for five percent of retailers' posts and eight percent for automotive marketers, while sports brands use the day less than every other day of the week besides Saturday.

• Fashion and healthcare/beauty verticals see the best engagement on Thursdays. Brands in the fashion niche received three times the engagement, while health/beauty marketers saw over four times more engagement.

• Time of day matters. Early morning, end of day, and nighttime posts achieved 20 percent more engagement. But, brands were posting 60 percent of their posts during business hours.

• Facebook messaging is a different animal than email. While email marketers over the years have often found Tuesday and Wednesday to be the best days to send, Facebook posts on Thursday and Friday got 18 percent better engagement than all other days. Everybody's working for the weekend: This finding fits in well with recent Facebook proprietary research that showed the site's "Happiness Index" - which measures the positivity of users’ posts - lifts by 10 percent on Fridays.

• Lastly, something for everybody: Despite the relative popularity of URL shorteners, full-length URLs cultivated 3 times the engagement.