How Facebook page engagement rates, fan growth rates, and posting volumes compare across 10 industries

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

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.

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