Report: Facebook Engagement Surges Year Over Year For Top Brands

With all the talk about organic reach for Facebook Pages shrinking to next to nothing, you might think that there would be a corresponding drop in brand engagement on the social network. But according to a new report from analytics provider Simply Measured that’s not the case, at least for major brands.

In fact, total Facebook engagement for the top global brands has surged 43.5% in the last year, Simply Measured reported today in its Facebook 2015 Industry Report that tracks Facebook activity by the Interbrand 100. And the increase has come despite brands making 5% fewer posts in the last three months compared to the same months in 2014.

Brands have dialed back their Facebook posting even more — 12% — since the fourth quarter of 2014, and their total engagement level has remained flat, dropping 0.11% according to the report. That, Simply Measured concluded, is a sign that major brands are being more strategic with their posts, concentrating on quality rather than flooding the zone.

It’s not stated in the report, but Simply Measured told us that per post engagement for the group has increased about 53% YoY. [Update: Also not in the report is a distinction between organic and promoted posts, because Simply Measured doesn’t have access to data about which posts have been boosted with advertising dollars. That means it’s likely that some of the engagement improvements can be tied to paid promotion. However, a Simply Measured spokesperson noted that brands have been able to promote posts since 2012, so the trends shown in the report are still significant.]

So what’s working the best? Simply Measured, looking at 11,522 posts by the 96 Interbrand 100 companies with a Facebook Page, found that links and photos are driving the most engagement, with video — only a blip on Facebook this time last year — also showing strength. Facebook video, of course, has been making a serious run since the company started favoring it in the News Feed last June. Last month Facebook said videos get more than 4 billion views a day on the network.

The Simply Measured report doesn’t track video views, but it found engagement on videos — likes, comments and shares — has increased 8% since the fourth quarter of 2014. Much of that growth came from a 43% increase in users sharing brand videos. Engagement on photos also was strong, increasing 6%, with a 53% increase in shares.

Brands appear to be responding to the positive feedback for video, although it’s not quite a gold rush yet. Videos were the only content type that Interbrand 100 companies posted more of during the quarter, showing a 2% uptick.

One brand, Adidas, was more aggressive, posting 13 videos in the quarter, up from seven in Q4, increased activity that fueled 1,487% more comments, 9,398% more Likes, and 9,041% more shares. The company’s most engaging video, which has received more than 17 million views to date, has nearly 600,000 likes and 26,000 shares.

Some other interesting notes in the report:

• Engagement on status posts — text posts without links — fell 72% in the quarter as brands posted 40% fewer such updates.
• Likes on Facebook Pages fell 3%, a likely consequence of Facebook’s removing of inactive and memorialized accounts from like totals in March.

You can download the full report here.