As the year draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to step back and evaluate your content strategy. What resonated most with your audience? Which posts drove the most engagement, shares or saves? End-of-year content analysis isn’t just about celebrating wins; it’s about uncovering patterns, learning from missteps, and planning for an even stronger presence in the upcoming year.
We analyzed over 500+ content pieces posted to CSU’s Instagram and Facebook accounts in 2024. This blog summarizes our findings.
Key takeaways (Instagram)
Engagement metrics drive reach: Likes, saves and shares strongly correlate with reach, showing that these metrics, in general, play a critical role in expanding audience size.
Engagement rate declines with high reach: Posts with higher reach see weaker engagement rates, likely due to the audience’s broader scope and varied interest levels.
Saves are the most critical for reach, followed by shares: Saves correlate highly with reach, indicating that encouraging users to save posts can significantly enhance reach. Shares strongly correlate with likes, comments, saves, and reach, making them a critical metric for driving overall performance.
Best performing post types (Instagram)
Analyzing the most-shared and engaged posts on Instagram reinforced the findings from the Buffer report, which analyzed data from more than 4 million posts sent from Buffer between January 2022 to October 2024.
Carousel posts had the highest engagement by far, followed by Single Image posts and Reels.
Reels enjoyed the highest reach by far. Our Single Image posts had higher reach than Carousels this year, but they were boosted by a couple of once-in-a-generation events, such as the announcement of CSU joining Pac-12.
Is there an ideal caption length on Instagram?
The average caption length for our most-shared posts is around 370 characters, which translates to around 70 words. Mentions of the link in bio did not seem to have an impact on engagement and reach. Also, having multiple account handles in the caption had little-to-no impact on reach and engagement.
Most-shared vs. most-saved
Campus news and announcements (CSU joining Pac-12, Snow Day, revitalization of a building on campus), events, unique phenomena (Northern Lights seen over Fort Collins), and student life or success (student athlete Mya Lesnar winning the Mountain West Indoor Athlete of the Year) prompted the most Shares from our Instagram audience.
View this post on Instagram
On the other hand, unique phenomena (timelapse of a rare flower blooming on campus), pop culture references (actor Timothee Chalamet wearing a CSU hat) and moments of university pride prompted the most Saves.
View this post on Instagram
Key takeaways (Facebook)
Facebook content analysis yielded slightly different results, especially vis-a-vis the strongest metrics with correlation to reach.
Engagement vs. reach tradeoff: Higher reach often results in lower engagement rates, possibly due to lack of brand affinity as the content reaches newer audiences.
Shares and comments drive reach: Posts that are shared or commented on are likely to have higher reach and viral potential. Comments have the strongest correlation to reach, followed by shares.
Reactions play a supporting role: Reactions contribute to shares and comments but are not strongly tied to engagement rate or virality.
There is overlap between Instagram and Facebook’s most-engaging and most-shared content. However, a couple of content buckets stood out on Facebook – CSU professor and renowned autism activist Dr. Temple Grandin, who is a content pillar by herself. A few posts around CSU’s research found traction on Facebook in terms of reach and engagement.
Best performing post types (Facebook)
Image posts exceed other post types in terms of reach and engagement.
Videos seem to have an element of virality to them (and a longer shelf life), which cannot be discounted. Vertical videos clearly outpaced the horizontal video this year.
We leaned on fewer Link posts this year. Links had been under-performing over the last couple of years, so we really scaled back, posting whenever was absolutely necessary. However, our sprinkling of Status or Text-only posts, generated excellent engagement, primarily in the form of comments.
While the analysis above holds true for 2024, don’t underestimate the value of experimenting with new formats, themes or even caption lengths in 2025. Patterns help guide strategy, but the ever-changing nature of social media calls for continuous adaptation and creativity.