1) The interaction rates for each president's Facebook page ranged from 0.51 to 4.57, with Adams having the highest rate and Harrison having the lowest. 2) There are two factors that influence interaction rates: the size of the audience base and the total number of comments and likes. Pages with smaller fan bases tend to have higher interaction rates, and having many comments/likes does not necessarily lead to a high rate. 3) High interaction rates can be achieved in two ways: through an extremely high rate for one post, or relatively high average rates across all posts.

1. PRESIDENTS ON FACEBOOK
L2 CASE STUDY
QIUYUN TAN
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2. Imagine the past US presidents
are on Facebook…

3. Question:
What are the interaction rates for
each President’s Facebook page?

4. No.1 Adams: 4.57
Factors Influencing Interaction Rates
No.2 Washington: 4.18
•Pages with relatively small fan bases tend to have high
No.3 Jackson: 3.29
interaction rates.
• Having large numbers of comments and likes does not
necessarily lead to high interaction rates.
• Among the most “interactive” pages, some have
extremely high interaction rate for one post, some have
average relatively high interaction rates for all the posts.

5. Variables
Activities of Page
Audience Reaction
1) # Page Likes
2) # Fan Comments
3) # Fan Likes
Used to calculate
interaction rates

6. Definition

Conceptual Definition:
Engagement rate (interaction rate) is the percentage
of people who saw a post that liked, shared,
clicked or commented on it.
—— Facebook

Mathematical Definition:
Number of Comments + Likes
Interaction Rate =
Total Fan Number

7. Assumptions



The fan numbers grow in a linear pattern
between date 1, Apr 25, 2011 and date 2, Jun
20, 2011.
The five posts of each president are equally
spread between the two dates.
Thus, we have:
Posts
Post 1
Post 2
Post 3
Post 4
Post 5
Time
11-4-25
11-5-9
11-5-23
11-6-6
11-6-20

8. Total Fan Number
•
According to the previous assumptions, we can
calculate the fan numbers of the ten presidents
when each post is put up.
•
The fan numbers of all the pages increase over
the course of five posts.
•
At date 1, Van Buren (6,780,116), Polk (4,103,477),
and Harrison (1,531,658) have significantly larger
fan numbers than the other presidents (ranging
from 9550 – 356,006).

9. Number of Comments and Likes
1. Van Buren, Harrison, and Washington all have one post that is
liked and commented by far more people than the others posts.
2. The other presidents’ pages have approximately consistent
number of comments and likes.

10. Interaction Rates
Rank
President
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Adams
Washington
Jackson
Tyler
Monroe
Jefferson
Madison
Polk
Van Buren
Harrison
Average
Interaction
Rates
4.57
4.19
3.29
3.14
3.04
2.43
1.34
1.19
0.52
0.51
1. Washington, Adams, and Tyler rank high because of their
extremely high interaction rates of one post.
2. Jackson and Monroe rank high because they have relatively high
interaction rates for all the posts.

11. Relationship between Interaction Rates
and Initial Fan Numbers
There is a negative relationship between the size of initial fan
numbers and the interaction rates, with a relatively large
coefficient of determination.

12. Relationship between Interaction Rates
and Sum of Comments and Likes
There is a negative relationship between the sum of comments
and likes and the interaction rates, but the coefficient of
determination is smaller.

13. Summary
• To sum up, the observations from previous
calculation and linear regression show two factors
that affect interaction rates:
1. Audience base
Pages with relatively small fan bases tend to have high
interaction rates.
2. Sum of Comments and Likes
Having large numbers of comments and likes does not
necessarily lead to high interaction rates.

14. Summary
There are two scenarios where pages achieve high
interaction rates:
1. Extremely high interaction rate on one post
2. Relatively high interaction rates on average

15. Features



None of the pages used feature 4.
The ranking of Polk and Madison shows that, by not
using any features, they fall into the lower half of
interaction rates among the ten pages.
There is not enough information to decide how the
use of the other features affect the interaction
rates.

16. Posts Per Week
•
Linear Regression shows that the coefficient of
determination is very small (R2=0.00355).
•
Therefore, there is not an obvious linear relationship
between the posts per week and the interaction
rates.

17. Appendix
•
Calculation of Fan Numbers:
•
Step 1: # Likes of Date 2 - # Likes of Date 1
•
Step 2: Divide the difference by 5
•
Step 3: Add the result of step 3 for each post

18. •
Fan Numbers of Ten Presidents Over Time:
Post
Post 1
11-4-25
Post 2
11-5-9
Post 3
11-5-23
Post 4
11-6-6
Post 5
11-6-20
Fan Base Increase
between any two
posts
Jackson
55970
61203.75
66437.5
71671.25
76905
5233.75
Van Buren
6780116
7511840.75
7755749
243908.25
Washington
356006
367699
379392
391085
402778
11693
Jefferson
13975
14404.25
14833.5
15262.75
15692
429.25
Tyler
11298
11608.25
11918.5
12228.75
12539
310.25
Monroe
27625
28144
28663
29182
29701
519
Harrison
1531658
1559418
1587178
1614938
1642698
27760
Adams
9550
9720
9890
10060
10230
170
Polk
4103477
4171861.5
4240246
4308630.5
4377015
68384.5
Madison
258332
260763
263194
265625
268056
2431
7024024.25 7267932.5

19. •
Linear Regression of Posts Per Week and Interaction Rates:

20. THE END
BY QIUYUN TAN