An analysis of what content type drives sharing on Facebook. A look at 62 brands across 7 industries, including luxury fashion, state tourism, apparel retail, pet foods, fast food, luxury autos and energy drinks.

1. Report Period: February 1 - February 28, 2015
Report:
Video Most Shared
Content On Facebook
An analysis of what content type drives
sharing on Facebook. A look at 62 brands
across 7 industries, including luxury
fashion, state tourism, apparel retail, pet
foods, fast food, luxury autos and energy
drinks

2. Summary and Highlights
If brands want to increase their sharing, which most do, then video is a good content type to be publishing.
That’s the repeated findings from our analysis of how users engage with different types of content. Initially, this trend surfaced in
a report we published 3 years ago. And according to our latest report, the findings still stand.
What video delivers that other content types don’t likely varies from one industry to the next, and even from one video to the
next. But one can surmise it’s multiple factors, including a heightened perceived value of video due to it’s more complicated
production, and that video can tell a story more convincingly due to it’s immersive combination of visual and audio stimuli.
Highlights
❖ For the 7 industries analyzed in this report, video was shared at a higher rate than the other Facebook content types in
every industry but one. Fast Food.
❖ Industries like Luxury Autos, Energy Drinks and Pet Foods saw video shared at about 2x the rate of any other content
type.
❖ For the Pet Foods industry, over 27% of all engagements generated by video were shares.
Report Period: February 2015

3. Video most shared content type in 6 of 7 industries
The chart shows the % of all
engagements that were shares, broken
out by content type and by industry.
In the Fast Food category, 6 of the 8
brands analyzed had the highest
sharing rate with video. However,
McDonald’s and Taco Bell had higher
sharing rates for links. McDonald’s and
Taco Bell both had high enough volume
of link posts to make that the most
shared media type for that industry.

4. Numerical breakout of sharing by media type
As an example, of all the engagements
generated by video in the Luxury
Fashion category, 7.2% of them were
shares, compared to photos, in which
2.6% of all engagements were shares.
Fast Food, with a higher sharing rate for
links than videos, still has a video
sharing rate of over 11%.
Industry Link Photo Video
Luxury Fashion 2.4% 2.6% 7.2%
State Tourism 16.3% 9.1% 18.5%
Fast Food 20.2% 2.6% 11.1%
Clothing Retail 1.5% 1.2% 5.7%
Pet Foods 16.1% 7.1% 27.1%
Luxury Autos 5.0% 3.5% 14.5%
Energy Drinks 5.8% 1.5% 14.5%
Chart: Sharing % by Media Type by Industry

5. Video is the second most popular content type
The engaging power of photos on social
media is well-known, and combined
with the relative ease of generating
photo content, it’s not surprising to see
photos as the most common media
form.
It’s notable that video is used more than
links in 5 of the 7 industries analyzed.
Industry Link Photo Video
Luxury Fashion 26 166 50
State Tourism 85 316 21
Fast Food 8 121 19
Clothing Retail 46 324 27
Pet Foods 4 137 10
Luxury Autos 7 286 67
Energy Drinks 17 148 64
Total 193 1498 258
Chart: Sum of posting volume by media type by industry

6. Tourism and Pet Foods are the most shared industries
While it might be easy to see how
content from industries with high
emotional impact like pet foods and
tourism brands can drive sharing, it’s
also important to keep in mind that
those industries typically have fewer
fans than industries like luxury fashion,
fast food, and luxury autos.
It’s well known that larger pages tend to
have lower engagement rates than
smaller pages.
So while we can compare sharing rates
across different media types within an
industry, viewing sharing rates across
industries is less comparable.
Industry Share Rate
Luxury Fashion 3.60%
State Tourism 10.07%
Fast Food 3.04%
Clothing Retail 1.34%
Pet Foods 9.67%
Luxury Autos 4.66%
Energy Drinks 6.68%
Chart: Overall sharing rate for links, photos and videos by industry

7. About This Report
All engagements are not created equal. Among the numerous ways users can engage with brands on Facebook, and social
media in general, some are certain to weigh more heavily than others. That’s an assumption we bring to this report.
On Facebook, a share is one of three major public engagement types, along with a like and a comment. And while a like shows
support, and posting a comment requires time and thought, the share is the interaction that takes the brands content and places
it more visibly in the users own timeline. For all their network to see. From the early days of online to the present, marketers have
demonstrated strong interest in having their brand stories ‘go viral’.
Thus, in an attempt to evaluate how strongly a piece of content makes the viewer feel about the brand, we can view the ratio of
shares to other types of engagement as an indicator of the inspirational characteristics of a given content type.
Facebook’s core content types are links, photos, status updates, and videos. For most brands, 95% or more of their
engagements will be among those four. We’ve eliminated status updates from this report for two reasons. A number of brands in
this analysis didn’t post any status updates for the month of February. And for many brands who did post at least one status
update, their updates received no shares.
Report Period: February 2015

8. Industries and Brands
A listing of the brands analyzed in each industry for this report.
Fast Food
Burger King, Carl’s Jr, Chick-fil-A, Chipotle, Jack in the Box, McDonald’s, Subway, Taco Bell
Energy Drinks
5-Hour Energy, Burn Energy Drink, Monster Energy, Red Bull, Rockstar Energy Drink
Luxury Automobiles
Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Infiniti, Jaguar, Land Rover, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Volvo
Pet Foods
ALPO, Beggin’, Dick Van Patten’s, Eukanuba, IAMS, Pedigree, Purina ONE, Wellness Natural
Luxury Fashion
Armani, Burberry, Calvin Klein, Chanel, Dior, Dolce & Gabbana, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Versace
Clothing - Retail
Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, Banana Republic, Diesel, Gap, H&M, Levi’s, Lucky Brand, Roots Canada, Tommy Bahama
State Tourism
Alaska Travel News, Explore Georgia, Hawaii, I Love New York, Pure Michigan, Texas Tourism, Visit California, Visit Colorado, Visit Florida

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