Absolute engagement (total interactions) is gaining more and more importance, as relative engagement is being influenced by the increasing use of native ads on Facebook. Here’s a breakdown.
Interactions By Page Size
As the graph below shows, larger pages have more interactions. This is to be expected, as naturally you have a higher reach, are more likely to post more frequently, and have more potential for interactions if you have a larger audience.
Interactions are constituted by Comments, Shares, and Likes.
This highlights the need for increased customer care as your page grows as the number of interactions will grow side-by-side with page size.
Interactions By Industry
Interaction levels naturally vary by industry too, with industries like automotive, fashion, and airlines on top when looking at average interactions per post, with the likes of finance and telecoms brands coming out at the bottom. It comes down to the type of content people like to talk about.
It’s also important to consider how different industries use Facebook. Automotive, fashion, alcohol, and FMCG brands focus a lot on brand awareness and therefore engagement is the focus of their strategy. This often means they can underestimate the importance of reactively communicating with their clients, and don’t always respond to questions and comments. On the other hand, finance and telecom brands find it harder to create naturally engaging content so they tend to focus more on customer service. Airlines are typically the industry that crosses the bridge and delivers consistently well both in terms of engagement and customer care.
Interactions are constituted by Comments, Shares, and Likes.
When we look at types of interactions by industry, the differences between industries is seen more clearly.
Take telecoms for example – as an industry, the average interaction per post is amongst the lowest; however, in terms of the share of interactions, it receives a disproportionate amount of comments compared to likes and shares versus other industries. This would naturally create a large need for additional customer care, as many of these are likely to be service enquiries.
Alcohol brands outperform other industries in terms of having a higher proportion of shares in their total interactions. This may be due to the creative shareable content they are able to create, or the increasingly popular "share this with friends to arrange a night out” types of posts. Like alcohol brands, finance brands also have 11% of their interactions as shares. Shares are the most powerful type of interaction due to the added reach they give, and while finance brands have the lowest average interactions per post, having a high proportion of shares is positive news.
Not all interactions are equal, and there is a large variation between industries in terms of average number of interactions per post and the types of interactions they are achieving.
But in order to differentiate between these interactions on an industry-wide, competitive scale, you need access to an independent analytics tool. To see what a real solution can do for your marketing team, try a free trial of Socialbakers Analytics – find out what kind of a difference the right interactions make for your brand.
Editor's Note: This article was originally published on socialbakers.com. Any statistics or statements included in this article were current at the time of original publication.
