Australian brands on Facebook: statistics and best practice

There is no shortage of social media statistics out there – we are basically bombarded with different ‘studies’ relating to social networking every day. How many people are on Facebook now, why people follow brands and what businesses are doing on Facebook, Twitter and all those other networks.

The problem for anyone (like me) who is working in the field of social media in Australia is that these are all too often studies based on U.S. data. And whilst it’s interesting to know how many American businesses are on Facebook and all the wonderful shit they are doing, I really would also like to know the equivalent statistics for us Aussies.  We have to face the fact that the U.S. are ahead of us in the social world (despite the fact Australians spend more time on social networks) and also acknowledge that often their big brands have a much higher volume of customers given the size of the country compared to us and our baby population. So I’d like to compare capsicums with capsicums, not bell peppers (that made total sense to me, i think.).

Anyway I did a bit of research and couldn’t find any relevant statistics for Australian brands on Facebook so I took it upon myself to do some.  Being the brilliant mastermind I am, I then created a whitepaper on the subject and a pretty little infographic (hurrah!).  But to get to these you will first have to read my summary below. Or scroll past it to get to the good stuff. WHATEVER.

So, how are Australian brands using Facebook?

After analysing the Facebook presence (or lack there-of) of Australia’s top 50 brands (extracted from the Nielsen Top Brands Report 2009 and Interbrand’s Australian Best Brands Report), this is what I found:

• 48% have a Facebook page
• They have an average of 40,780 fans (however if you take out the three with the most fans this was reduced to 10,740)
• They post 4-5 times per week
• They post the most about product/company information and competitions and the least about sales/promotions, service updates/announcements and industry content
• They post most often on afternoons on week days and rarely on weekends or after hours
• Their posts are an average of three lines
• Their posts attract an average of 35 likes and 14 comments
• Typically 0.3% of their fans like each of their posts and 0.11% comment on their posts
• They use the page for at least a basic level of customer service

Here is a nice infographic I have constructed for you to display the above statistics in a more aesthetically please (and highly appropriate) way.

So what practices produced the best engagement results?

• Posting 2-4 times per week
• Posts involving a question, product/company information or competitions or those designed for pure engagement (eg. Have a great weekend)
• Posts that involved a charity, posts that specifically asked for fans to like or comment on the post, posts that asked for feedback and those that were personalised by the inclusion of the poster’s name
• Posts posted during work hours
• Shorter posts (1-3 lines)
• Larger community size (no-brainer)

This is just a basic overview of the findings, if you’d like to read the detailed whitepaper, which includes more statistics and lots of pretty graphs, you can find it at the e-marketing connected website here. If you sign up as a member (for free), it’s free to download.  Alternatively if you’d like any more specific information please feel free to contact me.