With Thanksgiving weekend now behind us, we can assess the performance of our social campaigns, and look at which platforms drove the most conversation and engagement, in order to better focus our efforts in future.
To help with this, Facebook has released a new report which looks at the Thanksgiving conversation on both Facebook and Instagram, analyzing which of the major shopping days generated the most interest among users, and what types of content helped boost engagement.
First off, on the overall conversation – Facebook says that more than 130 million people joined the Thanksgiving shopping discussion across the two platforms over the five days.
Discussion around the holiday, and surrounding shopping events, was big on both platforms, with Instagram coming in relatively close behind Facebook, despite having many fewer users.
Black Friday was the most popular of the shopping days, while Small Business Saturday came out above Cyber Monday in shopping discussion.
In terms of specific content types, Facebook says that videos, in particular, were popular:
“On Facebook, there were 450 million views of Black Friday and other related videos, documenting everything from shopping guides to in-store wins. And, on Instagram, more than 1 in 3 businesses posted to Instagram Stories during this same timeframe.”
Probably no major surprises there, given Facebook’s emphasis on video content – though the use of Stories is interesting to note as it becomes an increasingly important consideration.
While there are no major revelations from the latest Facebook data, it does provide some additional context as to how users are discussing such events across The Social Network, and which content types are helping to drive the conversation.
Indeed, Facebook says that nearly 1 in 3 mobile shoppers surveyed in the US said that video is the best medium for discovering new products – which, again, is in line with the platform’s bigger video focus, but also underlines the rising importance of the medium.
And as we head into Christmas, this could be crucial info – the two mediums of specific note here are video and Instagram Stories. Both are worth adding into your holiday outreach mix where possible, especially considering the recent changes which enable you to cross-post your Instagram Stories to both Facebook and Messenger (though be aware, Insta Stories are cropped in the cross-posting process).