If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, it’s easy to believe that video is the be-all and end-all. Instagram Reels, TikToks, LinkedIn’s new video feed: it’s everywhere, and it feels like every platform is building for it.
If you’re looking to build an audience, “more video” is often touted as the answer.
But is that true? It turns out — as is often the case with social media — it depends. Video certainly performs best on some platforms, while it’s not quite as cut-and-dried on others.
We dug into Buffer’s recent data, analyzing millions of social posts from multiple platforms to find out. And, at the risk of sounding like a clickbait-y video hook (sorry) — the results might surprise you.
While video often gets the spotlight, it’s not always the best path to engagement. Let’s examine how different content types perform on Threads, TikTok, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Facebook.
Before we dig in, the usual Ts and Cs: The best content for you depends on your target audience. Every audience is different, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach that’s going to work for every social media account.
To pinpoint what works best for you, I’d encourage you to start with a social media content strategy and, from there, experiment with different types of content in your social media content calendar.
Use the data in this article as a springboard to help you figure out what kind of content is most likely to resonate with your followers.
💡 Another quick note: In our various analyses, we used different metrics to measure content success for each platform. These networks are used in vastly different ways, so what makes for a “successful” post on one doesn’t necessarily mean success on the other.
For example, on TikTok, we thought views were the best measure of performance, while on conversation-focused Threads, we opted for engagement. Since we’re not comparing apples and apples here, take it all with a pinch of salt (and a healthy dose of common sense).
Got all that? On to the data. Here are the best types of social media content for each platform in 2025
The best content format on TikTok
Let’s start with what is perhaps the least surprising finding in our analysis: on TikTok, video really does reign supreme. The short-form video-sharing platform is, after all, just that.
Despite TikTok introducing carousels (effectively photo posts) and even text-only posts in recent months, videos are still the TikTok algorithm’s bread and butter. What is interesting is how close the race has become.
TikTok may have started as an exclusive video platform, but carousels and text posts are proving surprisingly competitive. The gap in performance there really isn’t that big, especially when you consider the numbers on some of the other social media platforms, below.
In this analysis, we measured success by median* video views. We found that videos tended to get the most views, followed by carousels, then text-only posts.
Even so, if you’re aiming to reach as many people as possible on TikTok, video is still your best bet.
Here’s a closer look at the numbers:
- 🏅 Videos claimed the top spot, earning 18% more views than text posts and 7% more than photos or carousels.
- 🥈 Pictures and carousels held their own, with 10.5% more views than text posts.
- 🥉 Text posts came in last, attracting the fewest views overall.
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Using the median (middle value) rather than the average helps give a more realistic picture of how video content performs for most creators and brands, without extreme outliers distorting the numbers.
The best content format on Instagram
It often feels like Instagram has gone all-in on video, with Instagram Reels getting their own discovery feed, and even an exclusive video editing app.
At face value, this seems to be the case — when it comes to median reach per post on Instagram, video does come out tops.
Reach on Instagram measures, as the platform defines it, the “total number of times the account’s media objects have been uniquely viewed.” In layman’s terms, the total number of unique users who have seen your post or video.
Here’s a look at the rankings:
- 🏅 Reels led the way on Instagram, pulling in 39% more reach than carousels and a huge 122% more than single-image posts.
- 🥈 Carousels performed strongly, earning 60% more reach than images.
- 🥉 Single images landed in last place for reach on the platform.
Carousels weren’t too far off from reels, and streaks ahead of single-image posts. But our data shows things are a little more nuanced than that.
Instagram was originally a photo-sharing app, so while some folks are excited about the shift to video, not all Instagram veterans are fans of reels. (A quick peek at Instagram head Adam Mosseri’s comments section is enough to tell you it’s a bit of a contentious issue.)
This — along with the fact that Instagram has several feeds and algorithms, while most platforms will have one — is why we decided to dig a little deeper in another study.
We also looked at median engagement per post. Engagement is the “number of likes, saves, comments, and shares on the post, minus the number of unlikes, unsaves, and deleted comments.” In a nutshell, that is how many interactions you get on your posts, including likes, comments, and shares.
In this analysis, it was carousels, rather than reels, that came out on top.
Here’s a closer look:
- 🏅 Carousels claimed the top spot for engagement on Instagram, earning 12% more engagement than reels and 114% more than single-image posts.
- 🥈 Reels performed strongly as well, generating about 91% more engagement than single-image posts.
- 🥉 Single-image posts came in last for engagement on the platform.
Fascinating, right? So while reels are great for discoverability, if your goal is deeper engagement from your existing audience, carousels might deserve more space in your content plan.
The best content format on Facebook
On old faithful Facebook, things look similar to Instagram.
Here, we looked to median engagement, a strong signal to Facebook’s algorithm, as a measure of success. Despite Facebook’s push into video (and even reels), photos remain the engagement winner.
Here’s a look at the numbers:
- 🏅 Pictures took first place for engagement on Facebook, earning 35% more engagement than text posts and nearly 44% more than videos.
- 🥈 Text posts followed in second, with 6.7% more engagement than videos.
- 🥉 Videos landed in third place, though they still saw 58% more engagement than posts with links.
- 4️⃣ Posts with links came in last, drawing the lowest engagement of all content types on the platform.
So on the Facebook news feed, photos still reign supreme. While I’m definitely not saying you should be posting 345 images to an album after your latest creator event, à la 2017, it’s definitely worth prioritizing images in your Facebook marketing strategy.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, posts that contain links got the least engagement, which makes sense. We’re increasingly seeing platforms’ (and social media users’) preference for high-quality zero-click content.
The platforms want to keep their users within their app or on their site, and users are less inclined to click on a link and consume their content elsewhere.
When it comes to video, this relatively low rank could relate to how Facebook’s feed prioritizes easy-to-consume visuals like images and carousels, especially for casual browsing. Another theory I have here is that the Facebook Reel feed, where most video lives, is not particularly comment and reaction-friendly. It’s best suited for passive viewing.
Still, reels are seeing growing traction on the platform, and it’s clear Meta is working hard to improve that experience, so it’s worth experimenting with a variety of formats depending on your goals.
The best content format on Threads
Threads is… well, probably the one that surprised me the most on this list, to be honest.
It’s primarily a text-based platform, a sister to Instagram where words rather than visuals are the order of the day.
But despite that, our analysis showed that posts with images performed best when it came to median engagement per post. (We opted for median engagement as our measure of success here, since conversation and community are the primary focus of the app.)
The numbers:
- 🏅 Pictures claimed first place for engagement on Threads, earning 0.6% more engagement than videos, 37% more than posts with links, and 60% more than text posts.
- 🥈 Videos followed closely in second, with 36% more engagement than posts with links and 59% more than text posts.
- 🥉 Posts with links landed in third place, drawing 17% more engagement than text-only posts.
- 4️⃣ Text posts came in last, seeing the lowest median engagement on Threads.
The really surprising item on this list was that text-based posts ranked lowest on engagement.
Images narrowly outperform videos on Threads, but both formats far exceed text or links for engagement. So, even in a conversation-centric space like Threads, visuals — including short videos — help you stand out in the feed.
All that said, don’t take this early data as gospel. Threads is still refining its algorithms, and I strongly suspect it will make some shifts that prioritize text-based posts, lest Threads simply become a poor man’s Instagram. Keep an eye on the Buffer blog for more on this.
The best content format on LinkedIn
My personal favorite personal brand-building platform, LinkedIn, has exploded with creators in recent years — many of them building a following by helping others build their personal brands on the platform.
As such, the former professional networking platform has embraced video. LinkedIn now boasts a dedicated video feed, making it easier than ever to share video content.
In the wake of these fun new feeds and features, creators — including me — saw wild levels of virality in 2024. There wasn’t a lot of video on LinkedIn at the time, so it made sense that what the platform did have was surfaced a lot.
Now, as more users have adopted the format and LinkedIn has refined its algorithms with the influx, things have settled down.
Video still performs well, but carousels (PDF documents) perform best when it comes to median engagement.
The numbers:
- 🏅 Carousels (document posts) earned 278% more engagement than videos, 303% more than images, and a massive 596% more than text-only posts.
- 🥈 Videos came in second, with 7% more engagement than images and 84% more than text posts.
- 🥉 Pictures followed in third, generating about 72% more engagement than text-only posts.
- 4️⃣ Text posts landed in last place, with the lowest engagement across content types on LinkedIn.
All that said, this is another platform where things are evolving fast, and I encourage you to keep a close eye on your analytics if you’re serious about growing on LinkedIn.
In an episode of our podcast, Buffer Chat, LinkedIn’s Head of Scaled Programs, Callie Schweitzer, strongly recommended creators explore video in 2025.
“Video, Video, Video, Video,” she said, when I asked her to share her advice for creators looking to grow their followings in 2025.
When I asked to give us a hint about what features creators can look out for in 2025, all she would say was, “Keep an eye on video.”
The best content format on X
Text still sees the most median engagement on X (formerly Twitter).
Even with the social network’s much-talked-about desire to become “the everything app,” they can’t escape their microblogging roots.
When it comes to median engagement, text-only posts beat out videos, images, and links, and even images, according to our 2025 data.
Here’s a closer look:
- 🏅 Text posts saw 30% more engagement than videos, 37% more than pictures, 53% more than link posts, and 113% more than retweets.
- 🥈 Videos followed in second, with 5.4% more engagement than pictures, 18% more than link posts, and 64% more than retweets.
- 🥉 Pictures landed in third place, getting 12% more engagement than link posts and 56% more than retweets.
- 4️⃣ Posts with links came in fourth, drawing 39% more engagement than retweets, but less than other formats.
- 5️⃣ Retweets (including quote tweets) saw the lowest engagement of all post types on X.
So, while there is a place for video on X, it is fundamentally a text-first platform. Hot takes, real-time news, and punchy one-liners thrive there. That said, video can still outperform images, so adding short video clips might give you an edge.
So, which content format is the best?
As I touched on above, that really depends on you and your audience.
What works for most creators or brands might not be the sweet spot for you, and it’s always, always worth experimenting with other content types to see what works.
Perhaps even more importantly: What is the content format you’re going to be able to create most consistently?
In other studies, we’ve found that content performance on all platforms is strongly linked to consistency. (In fact, it might yield as much as 5X more likes, comments, and shares across the board.)
So if you’re going to be able to show up more consistently with text-based posts, great — stick to those.
Back to video: while it performs well across nearly every platform — and is often really great for reach — it’s not universally the highest engagement format. On some platforms, like LinkedIn and Facebook, carousels and photos steal the show. On X, text still rules.
My (probably oversimplified) summary of all these numbers: video is fantastic for reach and discoverability, helping you attract new followers and audiences.
Other formats (carousels, images, text) can be better for engagement, deepening connections with your existing audience.
Ultimately, the best content format is the one you can produce consistently — and the one that resonates with your unique target audience.
