10 Yetis Insight Blog - Does posting more content on social mean better engagement?

It's safe to say that we all know the power of social media. It's revolutionised the way we communicate and share information, but it has also completely reinvented marketing strategies, turning traditional practices on their heads and disrupting what seemed like quite a content industry. With so many brands tapping into social media to share, engage, intrigue and promote, the question is how do you make sure you're heard among the masses? Does a large number of followers necessarily mean that your audience is engaged with your brand, or that you're delivering on your social media goals?

Consumers today hold all the cards and can determine whether a brand flies or flops. A brand’s reputation and success has never been in such jeopardy; social media has facilitated this shift in power, which leaves brands battling it out to not only gain new fans, but keep them. This is why hero content is super important when it comes to social media. If your content stirs emotions, is relevant to your audience and offers something unique, interactions will increase and your brand’s messages will cut through the social space.

This could be the main reason why brands are producing much more content now; not only to battle it out with the hoards of competitors, but to retain customers. However despite this, and I don't know if anyone else has noticed, engagement with each piece of content is decreasing across the board. According to a recent report from Track Maven, who analysed the past two years of marketing activity for 8,800 B2C and B2B brands, including 13.8 million pieces pieces of content spanning seven digital marketing channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, as well as blogs) and 7.2 billion combined interactions.

Upon deep analysis, Track Maven found that the output of content per brand across all platforms increased by 78% on average, but engagement in content decreased by 60% (on average). Which means that despite brands generating a higher volume of content per channel, individual pieces of content are getting fewer interactions per 1,000 followers (including likes, comments, shares, retweets, favourites, etc.).

Almost a quarter (23%) of blog posts generated by brands received zero interactions, and nearly half (43%) of all brand blog posts received 10 or less interactions, which, if you are currently sat writing a blog for your business, will make you wonder what's the bloody point?

The next finding isn't really a massive shocker for me as we have been experiencing this here at 10 Yetis, but the report found that Twitter has the lowest engagement on average of all the social networks examined. A whopping 73% of tweets received 10 or fewer interactions. On the flip side, Instagram has the highest average engagement, with 10% of images and 6% of videos receiving 10 or less interactions. It also has the highest percentage of "viral" content, with 49% of images and 60% of videos receiving more than 250 interactions.

Surprisingly for me, Facebook was found to have the second highest rate of interaction, with 36% of its content delivering more than 250 interactions. However, it's important to note that Facebook's sponsored content now accounts for the vast majority of posts that have more than 250 interactions.

So how can you improve your brand’s social engagement?

There are a lot of tactics brands can use to improve engagement. But the thing that always stands out to me is that you just have to engage. Simply replying to your fans, in a fun or useful way, can deliver more benefits than pushing out overly sales focussed messaging. It’s like socialising at a party or networking event. Hold relevant, interesting, two-way conversations, listen (and listen some more) and always respond! Don’t forget, it is after all ‘social’ media.

A couple of brands stand out here for me. Firstly, Superdry (shameless plug of a client coming...). The brand posts regularly, not too often, but gets great engagement from its content as it's relevant and well-timed. For example, today is International Beer Day. As soon as the hashtag started trending on Twitter we had a quick chat about content and got it out there. Nine times out of ten it's down to response speed, as you don't want to be late to the party. But a fun gif, coupled with friendly content (and an emoji thrown in for good measure), delivered 44 retweets, 38 favourites and 9,374 impressions and a total of 1,523 engagements (as it stands).

Another brand nailing the social-sphere is Converse. It doesn't post a massive amount on social, sometimes once in three days, but the levels of engagement are MEGA! The key thing I noticed about them is that they share and engage in lots of user-generated content (which is very visual and helps build relationships with fans) as well as beautifully-branded videos and images. Beautiful imagery is highly shareable as it is aspirational but in this case achievable, which is I think the reason for the high engagement rate here.

The power of engagement cannot be underestimated, not only to build brand awareness but as a way to strengthen relationships and build brand loyalty. In my opinion, social media is, and will remain for the immediate future, the best channel to do this.