According to marketing nerds, content isn’t king, engagement is. And much of the engagement between brands and consumers is taking place on Facebook these days. So, Socialbakers, a global social media and digital analytics company, has come up with a formula, crunched a few numbers and compiled a list of New Zealand’s top ten Facebook pages by size and engagement. But it’s missed a few big names off its list.
There’s been plenty of talk recently about whether the number of fans or followers is a misleading metric, either because big numbers don’t equate to an increase in sales or because the system can be gamed. But Socialbakers “sees the power of social media analytics in benchmarking brands to their competition or the overall industry,” which is why it works with publicly accessible data.
Its algorithms don’t include metrics like the Post Reach, which is visible only by page owners and admins. Instead, it takes into account interactions (likes, comments and shares) and the total number of fans in order to enable engagement comparisons between pages.
Lindauer came out on top in average post engagement rate, with Telecom hot on its heels. And Telecom backed it up with another second placing on the daily page engagement list behind Canterbury. The study also showed the most socially devoted Kiwi brands based on the number of questions asked and answered, with Skinny, McDonald’s, Vodafone, Spotlight and Domino’s making the top five. But judging by some of the omissions, however, we’re not sure how reliable the data is. Socialbakers missed off Stuff.co.nz (75,000), TVNZ’s U (48,000), TV2 (48,000), and TV One (23,000) from the top media pages and the All Blacks aren’t on the top brands list, despite 1.8 million fans.
Questions of reliability aside, the list was particularly pleasing for digital agency Young & Shand, with Jim Beam, Kiwi Bacon, Canadian Club, Skinny and Puhoi Valley classified in the most engaging Facebook pages list.
“We’re excited about these results. For us to effectively own a third of New Zealand’s engagement stats is a massive compliment to all the hard work our team and clients have put in,” says Ben Young, strategy director at Young & Shand.
He says engagement is one of the new marketing metrics that needs to be monitored, as high engagement signals you are providing content and information your customers value and generating a high engagement level helps develop a greater brand preference, which should flow through to higher sales.
“Brand managers can take confidence in the ability to track social media results. With digital and social you can see exactly how your media budget is performing,” says Duncan Shand, managing director. “And as we’ve seen with a number of our clients, good social will deliver strong sales.”
