The report analyzes Facebook engagement rates, fan growth, and posting volumes across ten industries for Q4 2011. Industries such as presidential candidates, YouTube stars, and hospitals showed significantly higher engagement rates, highlighting the importance of emotional content. The report suggests that brands have opportunities to improve engagement regardless of their industry by optimizing their content strategy.

1. Know what works on Facebook Social Media Content Report Jan 9, 2012 Facebook Page Data Averages How Facebook page engagement rates, fan growth rates, and posting volumes compare across 10 industries Report Period Q4, 2011 Industries Analyzed Airlines, Automotive, Bands, Fashion Retailers, Hospitals, Quick Serve Restaurants, Snack Foods, Sports Footwear, Soft Drinks, YouTube Stars, Presidential Candidates www.zuumsocial.com

2. About This Report Notes All data was gathered using the Zuum tool (www.ZuumSocial.com) Brands were selected for each category based primarily on page fan count size. Engagement Rate definition: Engagement Rate data is calculated based on the combination of Likes and Comments for posts, divided by the total number of fans. A post-by-post breakout of the ratio between Likes and Comments can be found in the Zuum tool. At Zuum, we feel that knowing the details of how other Facebook pages perform adds significant insight to making your own page more successful. With this top line report, we're taking a look at engagement rates, page growth rates, and posting volume, across a number of different industries, to see how performance compares across and within the different industries. The full reports presented here can be viewed free by simply registering with Zuum at ZuumSocial.com/user/register If you have any questions about the report, data, or methodology, feel free to reach out. Doug Doug Schumacher Co-Founder / Digital Media Strategist Zuum @MemeRunner [email_address]

3. Key Findings Industries with emotional subjects tend to have higher engagement rates The top 3 industries were Presidential Candidates, YouTube stars, and Hospitals. All three deal with highly engaging issues, albeit in different ways. This supports the link between emotional Facebook content and engagement. Page engagement rates within an industry often vary significantly This indicates that most brands have an opportunity to positively impact the engagement level of their community, regardless of industry. The challenge for brands is to determine which types of content drive engagement, and which don't, for their given industry and target audience. The more Likes a page has, the harder it is to get high engagement This is general, however, and within most industries there are clear exceptions to that rule, demonstrating that strong content can engage a community of any size. High posting volume often aligns with high engagement rates This points to a willingness among fans to be highly active with the brands of their choice, providing the brand is posting relevant, interesting content.

4. Q4 2011 Industry Facebook Page Averages * Percentage increase in fans for Q4 2011 ** "Post Likes + Comments / Page Likes for the related Brand" across all posts

5. US Presidential Candidates Demonstrating the emotional impact of politics, this category has the page with the highest engagement rate of any in this report (Rick Perry), the page with the highest quarterly posting volume (Rick Santorum), and the only page with negative fan growth for the quarter (Michele Bachmann). Also note that Barack Obama's fan count heavily skews the average fan count for this industry.

6. YouTube Stars It's rare to see such a strong inverse relationship between posting volume and engagement rate. It's likely that their specific primary content type -- YouTube videos -- is the real driver of engagement. Interestingly, the top two pages in terms of engagement rate posted about the same amount of video as the others, but far less other content types.

7. Hospitals Cleveland Clinic demonstrated the largest increase in fans during Q4 2011 of any page in this analysis. And they did that while maintaining a strong engagement rate.

8. Airlines There's an uncommonly large spread between the most engaging pages and the least. Comparing the content between those two groups would be a good additional analysis.

9. Quick Serve Restaurants Jack's low fan count certainly helps boost their engagement rate, although the gap between their engagement rate and #2 Taco Bell is the most sizable gap of any #1 and #2 companies in this analysis.

10. Auto Manufacturers Note that these are the auto manufacturer's corporate sites. Engagement rates for individual model pages would likely be higher, as model-specific pages would be more targeted, and thus the content more relevant. This industry had the highest average fan growth rate in this analysis.

11. Bands It's seems odd that an industry with such natural engagement potential would have such low engagement rates, although the extremely high fan counts would be a mitigating factor. Still, the low posting volume is surprising and indicates a lot of fan engagement potential is being left on the table.

12. Snack Foods It's notable that the two largest pages in terms of fan count are both above average in engagement rate. Those same two pages also have the highest posting volumes.

13. Fashion Retail Notice the high overall posting volume for all pages in this industry. That makes sense given that the fashion industry frequently rolls out new products that are of high interest to their followers.

14. Sports Footwear Surprisingly little variance in engagement rate among the different pages.

15. Know what works on Facebook FREE: Try Zuum free with your Facebook page for one month. Just register at ZuumSocial.com/user/register Facebook Twitter Zuum gives marketers the most actionable insights for optimizing their Facebook page performance www.zuumsocial.com Know what works on Facebook www.zuumsocial.com Know what works on Facebook www.zuumsocial.com