NEWS4 September 2015

Social media engagement rates decline

North America

US — Marketers are posting more on social media but have seen engagement rates drop off in the past year, according to a new report.

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The report from Forrester Research, How Top Brands Are Using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, showed that over 80% of top global brands actively post on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram, and are doing so more frequently than before. The report found the average rate of posting as 6.5 posts per week on Facebook, up from 6.3 in 2014; 18.3 posts per week on Twitter, up from 17.5; and 4.9 Instagram posts per week, up from 3.1.

Google+ has also seen a marginal rise since 2014: from 3.5 posts per week to 3.6. Pinterest was unchanged on 9.9 and LinkedIn dropped from 5.7 to 4.7.

However, as Mobile Marketer reports, engagement rates do not appear to have followed the same pattern. Only Facebook has seen any growth in interaction by social followers of brands, up from 0.07% to 0.22%. This is apparently mostly due to more brands paying to promote their Facebook posts to a larger number of users.

Instagram’s engagement rate had apparently fallen from 4.2% to 2.3% and Twitter’s engagement rate fell from 0.035% to 0.027%. Pinterest and Google+ also saw slight declines (from 0.1% to 0.04% and from 0.07% to 0.04% respectively), while LinkedIn remained relatively stable at 0.05%.

“While B2C marketers are becoming more active on social networks, the vast majority of their followers haven’t seemed to notice,” said Nate Elliott, VP/principal analyst at Forrester Research and co-author of the report.

“Marketers are doing more work but generating less attention.”

@RESEARCH LIVE

1 Comment

9 years ago

It couldn't possibly be due to the fact that engagement has to be more than saying "thank you for engaging with our content.' People respond to genuine interactions not canned, branded messaging. As with many things, great ideas done wrong turn into fads that die.

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