In the Facebook universe, there are brands with fan bases of all shapes and sizes. But among them there are behemoths that have harnessed their brand affinity and transformative power of their products and services through digital marketing.
When it comes to creating engaging content, it’s often helpful to learn from the best. After releasing The Marketing Maven’s Guide to Facebook, we decided to take a closer at some of the brands with the most engaging Facebook content. Here are some content highlights from five of the most engaged-with company Pages on Facebook.
What better Page to start with as a paragon of Facebook engagement than Facebook’s own? All of Facebook’s top-performing posts so far this year pair copy with photos or video that illuminate the beauty of the shared human experience. These posts about friendship, travel, and hidden places, for example, have seen 1.5M interactions to date! Facebook has also leveraged their message of interconnectedness by creating content around major events, holidays, and milestones — such as this April Fool’s Day post with a video of an ultimate tin foil prank.
Starbucks
You can find a Starbucks on every corner, but that hasn’t stopped the coffee giant from expanding their brand and engaging with caffeine-lovers online. Starbuck’s Page has 36M likes to date, and averages nearly 45K interactions per post.
Thus far in 2014, Starbucks has seen several notable spikes in interactions on their Page, as we can see in the graph below.
Starbucks Facebook Interactions (2014)
The post that surpassed all others, however, is this simple quip and drool-inducing Vanilla Macchiato photo.
Not every brand has the option to post a picture of a Vanilla Macchiato and rake in 300K interactions, but let’s not devalue Starbucks’ strategy of debuting its latest coffee concoctions on Facebook. This is product marketing packaged in the form of the Starbucks lifestyle.
Take a look at this brand-lifestyle strategy in a few more of Starbucks’ most engaged-with posts thus far this year.
Intel
As we can see in the graph below, Intel has seen a steady upwards trend in its Page’s spike in post interactions over the course of the year (teal), which has correlated with a steady increase in Page Likes (purple).
This year, Intel’s Facebook following has already grown from 23.9M fans on January 1st to over 25M fans as of June 2014.
Like Starbucks, Intel has made exceptional use of its Facebook Page to debut new products (although not of the caffeinated variety.) These posts unveiling their latest tablet, for example, both received over 300K interactions.
MTV
MTV has over 50M Facebook fans and averages over 4K interactions per post. Yet comparable to HBO and Netflix — both of which harness their arsenal of memorable characters and cinematic moments to drive Facebook engagement — MTV scored its largest spikes in interactions this year from events and award shows.
While MTV has many award shows on its own network, it wasn’t the Kids’ Choice Awards that won the Page a drastic spike in interactions… it was the Academy Awards.
All three of MTV’s most engaged with Academy Awards-oriented posts paired photos of the stars with questions and hashtags. In our analysis, Facebook posts with photos see 60% more social engagement on average, while posts with photos are 37% more engaging.
MTV was even able to draft off of Ellen DeGeneres’ record-setting Oscar selfie by reposting it on their Page.
MTV’s second-largest spike in Facebook interactions this year came from an event of its own production: the MTV Movie Awards.
While MTV’s third-largest spike in Facebook interactions came during The Golden Globes.
Coca-Cola
While MTV has seen several event-related spurts of high engagement with many peaks in between, Coca-Cola’s Facebook interactions over the course of the year have remained relatively consistent in the wake of one major branding event: the Super Bowl.
Thus far in 2014, Coca-Cola is averaging approximately 4,500 interactions per post on its Facebook Page. During the Super Bowl, however, interactions on their Facebook Page peaked at nearly 40K.
Coca-Cola’s “America the Beautiful” ad was nicely repurposed with behind-the-scenes details to rake in the greatest number of interactions for the brand’s page thus far this year. Both of these “America the Beautiful” posts received over 30K interactions.
Not every Facebook Page can or should see Facebook interactions in the tens of thousands, but take some cues from Facebook, Starbucks, Intel, MTV, and Coca-Cola to engage the audience in your sphere of influence.
For more content inspiration and best practices for maximizing Facebook engagement, you might like How The Facebook News Feed Works For Brands or The Marketing Maven’s Guide to Facebook.
