Social media gurus frequently talk about the importance of great content for social media engagement.  But did you know that simply adding an emoticon “:D” can increase your Facebook interactions by 138%?  Check out the infographic below for other interesting Facebook statistics.

The biggest engagement booster on social media is simply appearing human.  So how does a business account achieve the human element?  There are a few tricks in the infographic below that might help your accounts become more approachable.

Not every Facebook profile will react the same to these tidbits. Although statistics find that “caption this” posts receive 5.5 times more interaction, your content and audience still matter more than that statistic.  The results of these suggestions on your accounts may be considerably better or worse depending on your audience.  However it’s a good idea to look through these statistics and consider which ideas you might be able to easily incorporate into your social posts.

Statistics help us understand patterns of behavior, and help us to arrive at best practices for social media.  For example, one thing that we can learn from these statistics is that people prefer posts that are visually engaging.  You might not think of an emoticon as a visual, but they do stimulate the visual part of the brain to help guide the viewer toward an emotional reaction to the substance of your posts.  The statistics show that emoticons, some in particular, have a positive effect on interaction rates of your fans.

Consider the difference between these three possible Facebook messages:

We had 200 customers today in our new store 😀
We had 200 customers today in our new store : P
We had 200 customers today in our new store 🙁

What different meanings do these posts take on with the visual element of the emoticon? Think about how you would react to this news, and then ask your self if you would react the same way if the post was simply:

We had 200 customers today in our new store.

The emoticons engage you emotionally and draw you to care more about the news. Share your thoughts about this infographic on our Facebook page.

Infographic originally posted on www.searchenginejournal.com