• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, December 16, 2014

Talk is cheap, as they say -- and, in the world of social media, not nearly as engaging as a winning image.

As such, photos accounted for 62% of all brand posts -- and were responsible for 77% of total engagement -- during the third quarter of the year, according to new findings from social analytics startup Simply Measured.

That said, the actual number of posts featuring photos dropped year-over-year — down from 75% — as brands began to utilize links and, thus, rely a little less on visual content.

Among brand posts, link usage grew from 13% to 27% — and from 1% to 16% of total engagement, per Simply Measured. This suggests that brands are utilizing more diverse tactics to garner engagement than they did a year ago.

The analysis was based on the activity of Interbrand Top 100 Global Brands, which altogether boast about 1.1 billion fans. Independently, a clear majority (77%) of the companies have individual audiences of greater than a million fans.

Facebook has never been more popular among brands. In fact, Facebook adoption is virtually 100% among the top global brands, Simply Measured found. Some might find that figure surprising following criticism over changes to Facebook’s algorithm, which appeared to lower the organic reach rates of brands’ respective Pages.
   
On average, brands are posting on Facebook about 10 times per week, while 65% of the brands post an average of five times a week or more, according to Simply Measured. Brand status updates on Facebook tend to stay between 75 and 175 characters, with only 7% of updates contain more than 300 characters.

That’s because brands are well aware of the short attention span on social media, according to Michael Thomason, Marketing Analyst for Simply Measured.

While some companies, such as MTV, post an incredible amount of content, a large number of companies have found a moderate cadence works best, the study found. As a result, “Interactions between brands and fans are happening more frequently now than in the past," Thomason said.