Brand social marketing trends and insights

In order to measure the performance of brands on social media, Rival IQ recently released its latest social media industry report. Like previous years, this year's report also looks at the user stickiness, posting frequency, posting type and keyword tags of brands on the three traditional social platforms of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, in order to comprehensively measure benchmarks and social media trends.

RIQ randomly selected 150 companies in each industry as benchmark companies and brands from more than 200,000 brands. These companies have active users on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, with Facebook followers ranging from 25,000 to 1 million, and Instagram and Twitter followers of at least 5,000. Relatively speaking, these brands are at the top, so the samples in this report tend to be large and medium-sized brands and enterprises.

There are 14 industries selected, including wine and beverage, fashion, financial services, food and beverage, health and beauty, higher education, home decoration, hotels and vacations, Internet celebrities, media, non-profit organizations, retail, sports, technology and software, etc.

Let’s start with some key trends and insights in brand social marketing :

Due to the continued impact of the epidemic and economic pressure, 2021 will be a huge challenge for marketers and everyone, but it is also in this context that users' behavior on the three major traditional social media is also quietly changing, and the biggest change is the decline in interaction rate and activity.

The decline in user interaction rates on the three major platforms is due, on the one hand, to the distraction of people's attention, and on the other hand, to the fact that many people have turned to video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. However, based on high-quality content and a loyal fan base, user interaction in the fields of sports and higher education is actually on the rise. If we look at the entire industry, almost every industry has its own specific content to attract its own users, especially content related to holidays, competitions, etc., which has relatively strong stickiness.

For many industries, they have not yet fully adapted to video platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, so their video posting frequency is much lower than that on traditional social platforms. In fact, regardless of whether brands like these video platforms or not, video is something that must be considered and invested in in the future. Someone joked that even if you don’t make videos, you should collect more pictures and turn them into dynamic playback, which is also a way.

From the perspective of video production, video content that can attract widespread attention does not necessarily require huge investments and large-scale productions; it is also fine to shoot it with a mobile phone. At the same time, simply relying on some low-cost production of creative content and fermenting it through social networks can often have unexpectedly good results.

01

Before looking at the relevant data performance of different platforms, let’s first clarify the interaction rate measurement criteria in RIQ’s report, which is based on the total cumulative interaction of social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, reposts, shares and feedback. Then divide the combined number of interactions by the total number of followers. So, if your post has 3 comments, 5 likes, and 1 share, your engagement rate would be 9, divided by your number of followers.

Of course, some people think that a fan's random comment is more valuable than just a like, but in the RIQ system, there is no distinction in weight, and its measurement standards are unified. So, what are the differences in brand user stickiness on different social platforms?

First, on Facebook, the average Facebook user stickiness across all verticals is only 0.064%. That is to say, the average interaction rate of each brand’s post is less than 1%, which means that less than 1% of fans will participate in the interaction.

Of course, this data is not the brand’s reach rate, that is, what proportion of users have seen the brand’s push. It reflects the proportion of people who responded to the push. But in any case, judging from this figure, the interaction rate of Facebook users is still relatively low.

Moreover, comparing 2019 and 2020, Facebook's user interaction rate was 0.09% and 0.08% respectively, and then to 0.064% this year. User interaction and stickiness have been steadily declining.

Does this mean that brands should change their Facebook strategies? Perhaps they need to spend more money on ads to reach a larger audience and increase user activity?

First of all, because this number is an average, if we look at different industries and brands, the performance will be slightly different. For example, the interaction rate between internet celebrities and sports is actually quite high, while the interaction rate in fields such as technology and retail is very low. This is also determined by the characteristics of the industry.

In terms of how often brands post on Facebook, the average frequency of brands posting per week is currently 5.87. Similarly, enthusiasm varies across industries. For example, the media is a model worker, posting an average of 87.2 posts per week. The wine, food and beverage, and hotel and resort industries are more frugal with words.

Next, let’s look at Instagram. Its average interaction rate has dropped even more dramatically, from 0.98% last year to 0.67% in this year’s report. The year before that, its brand interaction rate was as high as 1.22%, which has almost been halved in two years.

This is not surprising. Part of the reason is the intensified competition between platforms. Many brands are gradually shifting to new platforms along with their users. On the other hand, there is also competition between brands to grab the limited attention of users, which will be reflected in the overall interaction rate.

According to RIQ, brands post on Instagram 4.55 times per week.

Twitter's user interaction rate has dropped from 0.045% in 2020 to 0.037% today. Brands tweet an average of 5 times per week.

Considering Twitter's product form, that is, its dense and rapid information flow, Twitter's user interaction rate has always been low, so it is not surprising that this data has always been low. On the other hand, although its data changes are not as significant as those of Facebook and Instagram, its interaction rate is also declining, and fans are not particularly interested in what brands say. Even for sports, which have a particularly high interaction rate on every platform, the interaction rate on Twitter is only 0.084%, far lower than the other two platforms.

The report does highlight the changing trends in social media and the need to continually evolve your social media strategy based on user response. Overall, there are opportunities for brands on every platform, but data shows that most brands still do not make full use of such opportunities.

02

Of course, industry-specific trend analysis based on each platform also provides certain value and guidance for brands’ social marketing planning. We can look at the social platform preferences and performance of different industries.

For example, the fashion industry.

Although fashion brands often publish different content on these three platforms, their overall interactivity is relatively low.

However, the same content published on different platforms will have different interactivity. For example, when posting photos, the interactivity on Facebook will be much higher.

But on Instagram, the engagement rates for posting photos and carousels are comparable. Therefore, on this platform, it is good to try more thematic carousels. On the contrary, on Twitter, posting videos has a much higher interaction rate than posting photos.

In addition, different platforms respond differently to keywords. For example, on Instagram, #competition-related topics have an interaction rate of 3.22%, far higher than all other keywords. On Twitter, the keyword related to the fashion industry is #Valentine's Day, which ranks first, far higher than other keywords such as #Summer, #Mother's Day, #Black Friday, etc. Perhaps this keyword can continue to be used next year.

In general, for the fashion industry, RIQ’s advice is to pay more attention to the use of popular tags, such as #competition and #Valentine’s Day, which are very effective for fashion brands; at the same time, use more content forms such as pictures and videos. At the same time, brands should pay attention to measuring the actual effects of different topics, and learn from the successful experiences of other brands and apply them to their own marketing work. For example, some brands that performed well include Lounge Underwear, Uniqlo, Fjallraven, Adrianna Papell, Halston, House of CB, etc.

Another example is the food and beverage industry.

The frequency of food and beverage brands posting content on the three major social platforms is in the median among all industries, but in terms of interaction rate, their performance on Twitter is better than many industries, with an interaction rate as high as 0.627%. Brands that performed well include Noosa Yoghurt, Gardein, Beyond Meat, Almond Breeze, Luna Bars, Spindrift, etc.

Because of the particularity of the industry, those particularly beautifully made pictures of food and beverages can indeed arouse great interest among users. This is particularly obvious on all platforms. However, if some particularly high-quality videos can also be shot, the effect will certainly be worth looking forward to.

From the perspective of interest keywords, on Instagram, the interaction rate of topics related to #赢了（赛事） is as high as 7.469%, far higher than the second-ranked #赠品 at 3.052%. However, on Twitter, the interaction rate of #Mother'sDay related topics ranked first this year. Under this topic, most people posted some food related to mothers.

In general, for the food and beverage industry, RIQ’s advice is to pay more attention to topics related to events. It and topics such as giveaways are the key to success for food and beverage brands. In addition, unlike many industries, the effect of publishing pictures for food and beverages is no worse than that of videos, so more marketing costs can be invested in static visuals.

In addition, there is the technology software industry, which performs the worst on various platforms. Although the amount of content released by these industries is not low, due to the vulgarity of the industry, interactivity has always been a big problem. In this regard, RIQ's marketing advice is to try more lively videos and be good at using some interesting keyword tags, such as #StarWars related topics, etc.

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Author: Successful Marketing

Source: Success Marketing