Ready to work smarter when it comes to social media involvement in 2015? There’s no shortage of research on making the best use of your “social” time online. For this post, we’ve pulled statistics from reputable sites such as FastCompany.com, SocialMediaExaminer.com, Mashable.com and Facebook to help you plan for making the greatest impact.

Here’s a look at some of the statistics we found about using social platforms most effectively:

Increase Facebook engagement:

  • 180% by including a photo album
  • 120% by including a single photo
  • 100% by including a video
  • 86% with 40 characters or less in your status update or sharing comment. (Less is more!)
  • 66% with 80 characters or less in your status update or sharing comment.
  • 100-250 characters (the equivalent of 2 lines of text) = the MAX for optimum engagement
  • Ask, don’t tell. Should, would, which and who questions tend to get the most response.

For Twitter best results:

  • 100 characters = ideal length (Allows others to retweet and respond easily)
  • Place links at the one-quarter point (rather than the beginning or end) in your tweets for the best click-through rate 

For Google+ best results:

  • 60 characters or less = best headline length (Tip: Add *asterisks* at the beginning and end of the headline to make it BOLD.)
  • 156 characters = average post length
  • 200 characters = target length advised by most social media experts.

Best days/times/frequencies for posting per platform:

  • Facebook: 2x per day, 7 days a week, between 10:08 AM & 3:04 PM
  • Twitter: 14x per weekday between midnight & 10 PM once per hour max; 7x per weekend day between 3 AM & 9PM, roughly every three hours
  • Google+: 2x per weekday between 9:03 AM & 7:04 PM; No weekends

To read more about using social media most effectively, check out these links:

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