Social Media Content Report

Jan 9, 2012

Facebook Page Data Averages

How Facebook page engagement rates, fan growth rates, and posting volumes compare across 10 industries

Report PeriodQ4, 2011

Industries AnalyzedAirlines, Automotive, Bands, Fashion Retailers, Hospitals, Quick Serve Restaurants, Snack Foods, Sports Footwear, Soft Drinks, YouTube Stars, Presidential Candidates

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About This Report

Notes• All data was gathered using the Zuum tool (www.ZuumSocial.com)• Brands were selected for each category based primarily on page fan count size.• Engagement Rate definition: Engagement Rate data is calculated based on the combination of Likes and Comments for

posts, divided by the total number of fans. A post-by-post breakout of the ratio between Likes and Comments can be found in the Zuum tool. 

At Zuum, we feel that knowing the details of how other Facebook pages perform adds significant insight to making your own page more successful. With this top line report, we're taking a look at engagement rates, page growth rates, and posting volume, across a number of different industries, to see how performance compares across and within the different industries. 

The full reports presented here can be viewed free by simply registering with Zuum at ZuumSocial.com/user/register

If you have any questions about the report, data, or methodology, feel free to reach out. 

Doug

Doug SchumacherCo-Founder / Digital Media StrategistZuum

@MemeRunnerdoug@zuumsocial.com

Key Findings

Industries with emotional subjects tend to have higher engagement rates• The top 3 industries were Presidential Candidates, YouTube stars, and Hospitals. All three

deal with highly engaging issues, albeit in different ways.• This supports the link between emotional Facebook content and engagement.

Page engagement rates within an industry often vary significantly• This indicates that most brands have an opportunity to positively impact the engagement

level of their community, regardless of industry. • The challenge for brands is to determine which types of content drive engagement, and

which don't, for their given industry and target audience.

The more Likes a page has, the harder it is to get high engagement• This is general, however, and within most industries there are clear exceptions to that rule,

demonstrating that strong content can engage a community of any size.

High posting volume often aligns with high engagement rates• This points to a willingness among fans to be highly active with the brands of their choice,

providing the brand is posting relevant, interesting content.

Q4 2011 Industry Facebook Page Averages

* Percentage increase in fans for Q4 2011** "Post Likes + Comments / Page Likes for the related Brand" across all posts

US Presidential Candidates

Demonstrating the emotional impact of politics, this category has the page with the highest engagement rate of any in this report (Rick Perry), the page with the highest quarterly posting volume (Rick Santorum), and the only page with negative fan growth for the quarter (Michele Bachmann).

Also note that Barack Obama's fan count heavily skews the average fan count for this industry.

YouTube Stars

It's rare to see such a strong inverse relationship between posting volume and engagement rate. It's likely that their specific primary content type -- YouTube videos -- is the real driver of engagement. Interestingly, the top two pages in terms of engagement rate posted about the same amount of video as the others, but far less other content types.

Hospitals

Cleveland Clinic demonstrated the largest increase in fans during Q4 2011 of any page in this analysis. And they did that while maintaining a strong engagement rate.

Airlines

There's an uncommonly large spread between the most engaging pages and the least. Comparing the content between those two groups would be a good additional analysis. 

Quick Serve Restaurants

Jack's low fan count certainly helps boost their engagement rate, although the gap between their engagement rate and #2 Taco Bell is the most sizable gap of any #1 and #2 companies in this analysis.

Auto Manufacturers

Note that these are the auto manufacturer's corporate sites. Engagement rates for individual model pages would likely be higher, as model-specific pages would be more targeted, and thus the content more relevant. 

This industry had the highest average fan growth rate in this analysis.

Bands

It's seems odd that an industry with such natural engagement potential would have such low engagement rates, although the extremely high fan counts would be a mitigating factor. 

Still, the low posting volume is surprising and indicates a lot of fan engagement potential is

being left on the table.

Snack Foods

It's notable that the two largest pages in terms of fan count are both above average in engagement rate. Those same two pages also have the highest posting volumes.

Fashion Retail

Notice the high overall posting volume for all pages in this industry. That makes sense given that the fashion industry frequently rolls out new products that are of high interest to their followers.  

Sports Footwear

Surprisingly little variance in engagement rate among the different pages. 

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