Facebook communities can rate their performance against industry benchmarks

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HaveYouHeard has analysed 200 brands' performance on Facebook, and compared this to similar research completed during 2014. As a result, it was able to calculate benchmarks for several of South Africa's important economic sectors, including airlines, the auto industry, beauty, finance, FMCG food, retail, services and telecoms.

Explaining the science behind the research, joint MD, Jason Stewart, said the way to judge a Facebook page's performance was to examine the total number of interactions the page had, and then divide this figure by the number of fans, to calculate an interaction engagement score. This allowed comparisons between brands with different sizes of Facebook communities.

Drilling down into the figures, identified interesting trends, highlighted poorly performing brands and identified opportunities for brands by economic category.

Airlines

Airlines have the largest community sizes (528,453) but one of the lowest engagement rates (PTAT - people talking about this - 2%), and a very disappointing interaction/fan engagement rate of 20%.

There is no brand worth mentioning as a good performer. However, it is worth noting that one of South Africa's favourite brands, Kulula, is grossly underperforming. At the time of the study, only 263 of its 90,000+ fans interact with the page, generating 13,577 interactions and a 30% response rate. This is very much a lost opportunity for this great brand, which could create some phenomenal results given its status.

Automotive

Content posted by car manufacturers is similar to that posted of kittens - it very easily goes viral. As a result, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Ford and BMW all ranked within the Top 20 of South Africa's favourite Facebook brands and achieved the second highest post shares as an industry. Mercedes-Benz is definitely doing a great job and is a leader to watch. While both it and BMW have been overtaken by other brands in terms of community size, this year to date, they are still outperforming the others.

Beauty

Beauty seems to be a highly competitive space with 19 brands making the Top 200 list and the highest rate of fan community growth taking place within this industry. Growth averages at 5%, led by Hairsavvy at 17%, Axe SA at 12%, Being Girl at 10% and Ponds at 9%.

However, none of these brands has really driven any true engagement, with these top four brands only managing 66%, 57% and 50% engagement (based on interactions/fans).

Further, it is important to note that while Being Girl is still growing, it grew much more last year, and in effect dropped almost 50 positions this year while also dropping 125% in its interaction engagement rate.

Most importantly, beauty also has the unenviable position as the lowest performing page score, meaning the pages as a whole within the industry are poorly managed.

Finance

The finance industry also has untapped opportunity. It has the lowest average engagement rate as an industry, a travesty given that this industry historically has the largest budgets; a PTAT engagement rate of 1% and an interaction engagement rate of 26%. There is a great potential, but currently very disappointing results.

FMCG Food

The FMCG Food is a low-level performer with a PTAT engagement of 1% and an interaction engagement rate of 28%, putting it in seventh position out of the eight industries the research was able to isolate.

WhatsForDinner is the pack leader in almost all aspects with a community page size of 737,993 local fans, a PTAT engagement rate of 6.7% and an interaction engagement rate of 87%. However, it has dropped in interaction engagement rate since the last quarter by 69%.

Retail

In contrast, the retail sector is a middling performer coming third in terms of comments, leading in joint first place for PTAT engagement rate (3%), but fourth for interaction engagement rate.

Pick n Pay is the best performer overall, leading the grocery pack on a very good 98% interaction engagement rate, beating off Checkers (76%), Shoprite (74%) and Woolworths (60%). Mr Price is the best fashion retailer on 68%, showing that the clothing industry has a lot of scope for improvement.

Services

According to the research, the services industry is one of the best performers. It has the highest amount of average shares at 8,671, over twice the amount of all other industries, second highest in terms of comments and the highest growth rate - 5%. Much of this can be attributed to Gumtree, which leads with 52,647 shares and a growth rate of 26%.

Telecoms

Telecoms has a incredibly high comment rate as an industry, most probably reflecting complaints and queries as consumers take their frustrations online. This should be viewed in line with its just over a 50% response rate, a 1% PTAT engagement rate and a 53% interaction engagement rate.

What is interesting is that, while MTN has been listed as having the second most interactions and comments on its page, its response rate since the last quarter of last year has dropped by 80% while total interactions have also dropped by 76%. In addition, Vodacom has also seen a significant drop in activity by 90%. "Reads like an industry in trouble to me," comments Stewart.

HaveYouHeard used the SocialBakers analytical tool for the study, the reliability and consistency, and the 200 brands analysed were selected based on local community size (the smallest had just over 83,000 local fans and the largest just over 997,000 local fans). The period reviewed was the first four months of 2015, (January 1 to April 30, 2015).