Study: Brands Using Hashtags In Facebook Posts Show No Signs Of Higher Engagement Levels

Analytics firm Simply Measured conducted a study of the Top 100 Interbrands on Facebook and discovered that even though the usage of Facebook hashtags by brands has increased nearly 20 percent between June 12, when hashtags went live on Facebook, through the end of June, hashtags are not resulting in any additional engagement.

The study analyzed the Interbrand Top 100 Brands on Facebook between May 1 and June 30, 2013 to see how brands are leveraging the social media network, and to identify which brands and industries are experiencing the most success on Facebook.

According to the findings, 98 percent of the Interbrand Top 100 brands have Facebook fan pages, with 60 percent of those brands posting at least once per day. While the average number of posts for the brands was 1.5 posts per day, some brands are posting as many as eight times per day.

Simply Measured reported that total brand engagement does not appear to be greatly impacted by a brand’s average number of daily posts; although, it did confirm that Ferrari’s engagement rate, a brand that averages eight posts per day, is nearly three-times the average engagement of the Interbrand top 100 brands.

Visual content drives the most engagement for brands on Facebook, with photos averaging more than 9,400 engagements per post and videos averaging over 2,500 engagements per post.

The study also found that the sweet spot for the length of a post is somewhere between 50 and 250 characters, with engagement dropping off significantly for posts with less than 50 or more than 250 characters.

According to Simply Measured, the top performing brand vertical on Facebook is the automotive industry which posts an average of 2.1 posts daily and earns nearly double the average engagement per post. The study attributed the automotive vertical’s Facebook success to the large quantity of high quality car photos available.

Five of the top ten brands with the highest level of engagement on Facebook are in the automotive vertical: Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Harley-Davidson and Audi USA. With an average of 2.5 posts per day, top ten brands average 19.8 million fans and 39,500 engagements per post, more than five times the average engagement for Interbrand top 100 brands.

About The Author

Amy Gesenhues

Amy Gesenhues is Third Door Media's General Assignment Reporter, covering the latest news and updates for Marketing Land and Search Engine Land. From 2009 to 2012, she was an award-winning syndicated columnist for a number of daily newspapers from New York to Texas. With more than ten years of marketing management experience, she has contributed to a variety of traditional and online publications, including MarketingProfs.com, SoftwareCEO.com, and Sales and Marketing Management Magazine. Read more of Amy's articles.