"So, what's a good number of likes per post on Facebook?"
This is a common question, and one that's difficult to definitively answer - it largely depends your business, the content you're posting, who's reading your content. One person liking your post and going on to become a paying customer is more significant than a thousand likes and no further queries - the question itself is coloured by many other variables and further investigation is required to provide an actual, informed response.
That said, there's also an inherent value in comparison and benchmarking. Having some idea about where your brand sits in the overall social landscape can provide greater context on your strategy and its effectiveness - not a comparison, as such, but a yardstick, a means of understanding what you might be able to expect. And one place we can look for that is big brands.
With this in mind, I've had a look through the research we've conducted on brands for our Big Brand Theory column and put together a listing of some of the findings from their stats across the major social channels. These engagement and activity figures may help provide some context on what you can expect from your social media presence, and what metrics you might consider in your own measurement. In this first report, we'll look at how big brands are utilizing the big two - Facebook and Twitter - and what they're doing on those platforms.
Note: These numbers are indicative, not definitive. They're based on sample periods, which were measured at the time of research, and there are a significant number of other variables that can influence overall stats - many brands, for example, have more than one Twitter handle, so they're actual, total, audience is higher. These numbers are overview figures, designed to provide a snapshot of their overall social presence.
More page likes doesn't necessarily mean more post likes
This has been reinforced by various reports, but having more Page likes won't necessarily equate to more post likes. Obviously, in the new world of Facebook, organic reach has declined to tiny levels, so having more likes per post is important, as more likes means greater reach overall. Big Brand Theory data shows that U-Haul, for example, with their 17, 561 Page likes, is generating more likes, per post, than a bigger brand like Nissan, with its 12 million Page likes. This finding underlines the value of content, and of posting quality content that speaks to your audience. Even if you have a heap of fans, that won't matter as much, in terms of organic content distribution, as providing great content, day in and day out.
Posting more often also does not bring more post likes
This is always a difficult balance - if you post more often, you might not get as many likes, but even if you get a small percentage of likes per post, the cumulative value of more frequent updates might equate to better reach overall. In this case, it's hard to take anything definitive from the posting frequencies of big brands - for some, their presence in the market obviously holds them in higher regard either way.
In looking at the BBT data for post frequency, there's no correlation between posting frequency and post likes. Intel, for example, only posts once per week, but that one post generates 15,460 likes. KLM posts 16.9 times per week, generating 3,558 likes per post - obviously that means KLM is generating a lot more reach, overall, but how many of those people reached are unique? They could, theoretically, be reaching the same 3,558 people with every post.
On average, big brands are posting 10.2 times per week, generating 43 comments and 1663 likes per post
Those are big numbers, but they're also a good example of how averages can, at times, be misleading. Only five of the sixteen brands (31%) are posting to Facebook more than 10 times per week, with the majority posting fewer than five updates every seven days. Only six (38%) of the brands studied are garnering more than 1000 likes per post, with most getting fewer than 300 likes, and 25% are getting fewer than 10 comments for every update.
As you can see, there's a wide disparity between performance stats for each brand, highlighting that there's no definitive right way to go about Facebook engagement. All these brands are performing well, against their own benchmarks, but each is unique, within their own industry and their own strategy.
There's no correlation between total follower counts and tweets sent per day
This may be an obvious one, but the data shows that brands that have larger followings are not necessarily more active on Twitter. Tweeting more won't necessarily get you more followers. It all depends on what you're doing on the platform, what you're using Twitter for - KLM, for example, sends 270.2 tweets per day, but they pride themselves on their Twitter response stats (displaying their average response time on their Twitter background), they reply to absolutely any mention. Intel, however, only sends 4.92 tweets per day, yet they have more than double the total following of KLM. Of course, that's Intel, a major, worldwide brand, but in this sense, the amount they tweet has little direct relevance to their total follower count.
Sending more tweets doesn't increase re-tweets
I've been asked about this a few times, the impact of tweeting more, and whether being a more active brand on Twitter will boost engagement, particularly re-tweets. The data here shows it won't - of the brands that get the most re-tweets, InStyle comes in first, at 99%, followed by SAP (88.8%) and USAA (80.33%). Of the three, Instyle has a huge following (3 million+) but SAP and USAA are well down on the total follower count list, with the 4th and 6th lowest total follower counts respectively. Meanwhile KLM, with their 1.79 million followers, have the lowest re-tweet percentage (2.9%), but again, that's largely based on how they're utilising the platform - most of their tweets are replies, which are not broadcast to everyone, and not likely to inspire further shares. The best way to get re-tweeted is to tweet great content - it's clearly more quality over quantity in this regard.
There's no universal, best practice number of ideal tweets to send per day
You wanna' know how many tweets you should send per day? The only way to know is to experiment. Again, it all depends on what your purposes are on the platform, what your audience expects and wants from your brand. Tweets per day varies widely across big brand usage - InStyle sends 56.1 tweets per day, Nissan sends 1.7. Both are producing results. It's similar to reply ratio - Instyle has a 0% reply rate, while KLM is hitting 100%. Both are using the medium for very different purposes, so it makes sense that their results are equally varied. The bottom line is there's no definitive right way to go about it - as with all things social, the only true rule is "your audience rules".
These results show that there's a wide variance in how big brands are utilising social platforms and achieving the results that best suit their needs and the needs of their audience. This is why benchmarks, in themselves, are not always helpful - informative, yes, worth knowing to give you some parameters around what to aim for, but the true measurement of your brand's social media performance will be specific to your brand and industry alone. A definitive answer on "what's a good number of likes per post?" is always subjective, you can go with a percentage based on your total audience or audience reached stats, but the true measure comes back to not only how many people you reach, but who you reach. Are those you're reaching converting into paying customers? If yes, one is better than 100 uninterested parties who'll like your post because of the picture. In this sense, it's not so much the total numbers that are most relevant, but how you correlate the important numbers that define your overall performance.
In Big Brand Learnings Part 2, we'll look at how Big Brands are utilizing LinkedIn, Instagram and Google - you can read further Big Brand Theory posts, with more in-depth analysis of the brand's listed, here.