More fans, more followers, stricter algorithms, tougher competition: a recipe for a dramatic decrease engagement across the board, right? Perhaps, but what do the numbers tell us when we look at YOY social engagement? Here’s what we found.
The Goods To find our answer we looked at over 1,000 resort and hotel Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. We took average engagement rates by type for the last 12 months (Sep 2014 – Aug 2015) and compared it to the previous 12 months (Sep 2013 – Aug 2014).
Only Twitter favorite rate (+26%) and Facebook share rate (+6%) saw an increase compared to the previous year. Everything else saw a decline with Instagram like rate (-21%) and Facebook comment rate (-27%) recording the largest drop.
What This Mean Surprisingly, there doesn’t appear to be a common thread between the platforms. Instagram likes are down, Twitter favorites are up, and Facebook likes are level. Facebook comments are down but Instagram comments are nearly level. In other words, while the results are interesting, they may not be very actionable.
But it’s important to keep some of this in perspective because Instagram like rate is still miles ahead of other engagement. And although Instagram’s comment rate is down, it’s still 8x higher than Facebook’s.
