Statistics | Media Culpa

The brands on Facebook that most people are talking about

So you are a large brand that have managed to attract a lot of followers or fans on Facebook. That’s great, but how much engagement is there around the content that your brand is posting on Facebook? That’s what Facebook’s new metric “People Talking About” is trying to measure. The metric “represents the number of people that are talking about the page, sharing content from the page and further interacting with the page, thus creating stories. Its basically a metric of active fans”.

This number can be found on Facebook pages, below the number of fans. But what is a good number? How can you determine if you are doing better than your competitors? To get a better understanding of how the most popular brands are doing in terms of engagement, I looked at the top 40 brands according to a list compiled by Ignite Social Media. There are other pages on Facebook with more fans, like sports teams, but this is a good list to look at.

National Geographic fans are active
It turns out that for most of the top consumer brands, engagement levels are somewhere between 0.5 – 2% of the total number of fans. So if you have 10 million fans, you probably have about 50,000 – 200,000 “People Talking About” your content. That’s a good benchmark to look at when you study your own page. At the top of this list is National Geographic, which is a media brand. Media pages often have even higher levels of engagement, possibly because they are very good at creating rich content on an ongoing basis. For example, the Guardian has 124,800 fans and 8,000 (or 6.4%) people talking about its page.

Among the non-media brands, Burberry, Walmart and Disney seem to do an outstanding job in getting their fans like, comment and share their content.

All the top 40 brand pages can be found in this Slideshare document, which you can also download for better viewing.

Top 40 brands on Facebook

View more documents from kullin

Other pages with really active fans can be found among sports teams (not on this list). Real Madrid (5.28%), Manchester United (3.21%) and FC Barcelona (2.99%) are some examples.

What I haven’t been able to determine if the value of “People Talking About” will aggregate over time or if it is a measure based on a period of time, for example the last 6 months. UPDATE: it measures the number of people that have interacted with your page during the last 7 days. Do you have any other examples of Facebook pages that many “People Are Talking About”? Please share in the comments.

Footnote: This metric does not measure how many times a brand is mentioned on Facebook.

Update: Hat tip to Markus Welin for the info about the 7 day period of measurement.

H&M and Sony Ericsson among top 50 brands on Facebook

The Ignite Social Media Blog tracks the most popular branded pages on Facebook. In the September update, two Swedish brands are ranked among the top 50 pages. With 8.3 million “fans”, H&M moves up one spot to #32 and Sony Ericsson stays at #50 (with 5.7 million).

Top 10 branded Facebook pages (Sept 2011):

Facebook
YouTube
Coca-Cola
Disney
MTV
Starbucks
Oreo
Red Bull
Converse All Stars
Converse

Instagram now has 10 million users

It took Instagram, the popular photo app, less than one month to add that last million users to reach 10 million members. Instagram wrote in a blog post just a few hours ago:

“Last October, we launched Instagram live in the App Store. Today, less than one year later, we’re happy to announce that the Instagram community now consists of over 10 million registered users.”

Account number 10 million is “homer123” (view on Statigram) but it has not posted any photos yet. Since account number 1 and 2 are missing (first working account is Kevin Systrom at #3), you might say that the 10 millionth account is 10,000,002: “dinbeebis” (possibly Swedish?).

Instagram is also close to reaching a quarter of a billion hosted photos since photo number 240 million was uploaded this morning: http://statigr.am/viewer.php#/detail/240000000

Hat tip to Feber.se. I am “kullin” on Instagram.

Audi ranked the most social luxury brand in China

China became the world’s second largest luxury goods market in 2010, according to consulting firm Bain & Company. It is estimated that China will account for about 20%, or $27 billion, of the total global luxury sales in 2015, so this is the market to watch if you are a luxury brand. And social media is on the rise in China: micro blogs Sina Weibo and Tencent Weibo both have in excess of 200 million users, social network Renren has some 120 million users and there are about 300 million blogs in China. No wonder brands are turning to social media sites to engage in conversations with potential customers.

L2 is a think tank which has just released a report on the top luxury brands in China and how they are performing in social media. The L2 Prestige 100®: China IQ study attempts to quantify the digital competence in China of 100 iconic brands. The one brand with the highest overall score is Audi, followed by Burberry and BMW. Seven of the top ten are car brands, and four of these are German brands.

1. AUDI – Innovation in technology: maintains presence on six different social media sites in addition to its own OurAudi.com
2. BURBERRY – Luxury’s digital darling doesn’t disappoint. From Jiepang VIP guest passes for Beijing grandopening to Christopher Bailey soundtrack on Youku, Burberry claims the fashion crown.
3. BMW – From “beasts to joy”—sheer social pleasure; great translation of a global campaigns for the Chinese market.
4. VOLVO – C70 Sina Weibo challenges consumers to design the plot for the next Volvo commercial.
5. BENEFIT COSMETICS – Local e-commerce launch caters to consumers with samples and gift-with-purchase offer; Sina Weibo and Kaixin “Benefit Beach Honey” contests delight.
6. CADILLAC – Recently released Route 66 short film starring Karen Mok across site and social media.
6. ESTÉE LAUDER – EL-Lady BBS includes videos, games, Q&A, and link to purchase.
8. LAND ROVER – “The Evoque Effect” sets the standard for multichannel digital campaigns.
8. MERCEDES-BENZ – SLK Mask Party contest provides winners tickets to China Fashion Week and site visitors an opportunity to create their own virtual mask.
10. PORSCHE – Innovative comparison tool and stunning microsites for each model are the engines of their online presence.

L2 also compiled a list of the brands with most followers on Sina Weibo in which the ex-Swedish, now Chinese brand Volvo is at #8:

The top brands regarding organic buzz (mentions on Sina Weibo & Qzone and videos on Youku & Tudou):

Download the full report here.