
Brand engagement is plummeting on Facebook - rblion
http://contently.com/strategist/2014/06/12/new-report-reveals-just-how-drastically-brand-engagement-is-plummeting-on-facebook/
======
malloreon
This seems like a good place to ask:

Why do people "become a fan" of a brand on fb? What value do people get from
publicly declaring they like gatorade? I contrast this with the implicit
declaration that occurs when I carry a gatorade bottle around, because in that
situation presumably I'm enjoying drinking it.

I cannot see how doing so would benefit a) me or b) my friends who might see
that I like gatorade.

It just seems like I'm a) giving fb more information about me and b) inviting
gatorade to try and sell me things.

Am I wrong or is becoming a fan of a brand just all bad for the user and all
good for fb/the brand?

~~~
tptacek
People who wouldn't declare themselves "fans" of Gatorade might still be OK
declaring themselves "fans" of The Glenrothes Distillery, or of The Butcher
and Larder in Chicago, or of Merge Records. Doritos doesn't have much social
signaling value, but the St. Louis Cardinals do.

Also: 99.9% of people who use Facebook don't think at all about how much
information they're giving Facebook. They don't care. So Facebook knows I like
Bob's Burgers but not The Family Guy. And?

~~~
gedrap
>>> So Facebook knows I like Bob's Burgers but not The Family Guy. And?

This. While in general privacy is definitely a concern, I see "don't give your
information" way too often and it's becoming sort of a cliche.

How might the fact that I like some certain artists affect me in the future?
No one is going to blackmail me for the fact that I liked Wu Tang Clan. I
won't get denied some visa or whatever because I liked Donnie Darko movie.

Privacy is important but let's stop from making it a cliche or some 'easy
win'.

~~~
tptacek
Perhaps a good rule of thumb: if, fashion sense aside, you'd wear the t-shirt,
it's probably not a privacy threat.

~~~
Fuzzwah
You can easily stop wearing a shirt when you change your mind about the topic.

Once it has been on the internet, it is forever.

Not saying you're wrong, but I don't think it is exactly the same.

Maybe tattoos?

~~~
mpyne
> Once it has been on the internet, it is forever.

If that were truly the case, we wouldn't be so worried about NSA retention of
data.

~~~
bronson
My phone conversations aren't supposed to be "on the internet."

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batiudrami
I've noticed that brands now post far too much stuff. Back in the day, if you
'Became a Fan' of a brand/band/organisation, you might expect maybe two posts
a week, maybe less. Now liking a page means you can expect to be subjected to
5+ posts _per day_. No wonder people are hiding them from their feed/being
more careful with what they follow on Facebook. People don't necessarily want
to see 20.1% more posts from a brand than they did this time last year (and
from a user end, it's good to see that Facebook is cutting it back).

On a related note, recently my group of close friends created a group on
Facebook, which was originally to help with organising events/activities
(because group messaging was becoming unweildy and distracting). The
requirement for adding someone to the group is 'would anyone else be upset if
the new member invited themselves along to anything posted here', so it's
relatively small - about 20 members. But we've been using it for about 3
months, and it has almost become a social network in itself - people post
things during the day, we interact without worrying how it looks to outsiders,
and there are no posts which are 'showing off' the way facebook status updates
sometimes do. I'm not being constantly marketed to. Facebook is fun again -
like it was in university.

~~~
ejain
I'd follow more companies on Facebook (or Twitter) if most of what they posted
where product updates etc, not inspirational messages and fitness tips.

~~~
e40
Agreed. Before I follow someone on Twitter I look at their recent stream of
posts. More than one or two a week, you don't get a follow from me. It's not
worth the clutter in my stream.

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possibilistic
When every company under the sun is pitching to you, trying to engage you on a
personal level, it seems like it would become tired and old. Maybe there was a
point when it was novel, but now everyone is doing it. As the level of
advertising increases, it seems logical to me that engagement will decrease
across the board. There's only so much a person can handle before they become
saturated.

But what do I know? I don't use social media or willingly look at ads.

~~~
timdorr
This article is very sympathetic to the brand pages and wants to make Facebook
out as the bad guy (which I'm not saying they aren't). But while they'll
certainly make money by making pages pay for exposure, they also need to
maintain as many eyeballs as possible so there's a supply to sell.

The brand messages that were mixed in my news feed would usually be disruptive
to me. I'd rather have them be an ad so that I can distinguish them more
easily. It's a better user experience, which results in a larger supply of
eyeballs.

Boo hoo for the brands. This seems like a win for the user, in my eyes.

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taurath
What happens when facebook engagement as a whole starts dropping? My news feed
is maybe 5 real posts, 10 "upworthy" style video shares, top10 lists and
"brand" content. The whole thing feels useless, and all the things I actually
care about are buried under ads and crapware. Events and messaging are the
main usable portions of the platform - I only know a few people who use those
exclusively, and once they're off I'm done with facebook entirely.

~~~
aragot
New trend to expect: People are so afraid of posting their real status because
of privacy, that you won't expect anything meaningful from your newsfeed.

~~~
sharpneli
There is another problem. Namely not wanting to bother some segments of your
contacts. Twitter and linkedin suffer from the same problem.

As an example if I post something to facebook is it the sharpneli that loves
to fish? Is it the one who plays esports at somewhat competitive level? Is it
the one who posts an example how to do something with OpenCL?

All of those circles are mutually exclusive and frankly posting something
regarding esports would bore majority of my friends. Same applying to any
other subset.

That's why my own postings are always in sites that are very specific and
focused on a certain topic.

~~~
jonathansizz
This is why I'm frustrated that G+ (or something similar) hasn't taken off.

Facebook's usefulness is limited to friends and family. Twitter is good as a
fine-tuned information feed. I've also tried using Twitter for two-way
communication on very specific topics, but there's an immediate problem: I
have many and varied interests, so I know that most of my followers won't be
interested in most of my tweets. The character limit is also a significant
handicap (and makes little sense now that SMS is being replaced by IM).

Google+ with its circles seemed like a perfect solution to this problem, but
unfortunately, except for topics related to technology, there seems to be very
little interaction going on. So this means I'm limited to specialist websites
or sites like Reddit. While this isn't awful, I think that having a genuine
interest-based social network (that isn't just a mouthpiece for the powerful
and famous) would offer several improvements.

For a start, I'd have control over my 'circles', eliminating the troll problem
that plagues all forum-based websites. I could make my circles as large or
small, and as specialised or general as I wished. This ideal social network
would emphasize mutual following and active participation, and provide many
tools for discovery of relevant connections.

Maybe there just isn't the demand for this, I don't know.

------
Swizec
If Facebook stopped promoting brands above my friends then maybe I'd stop
unliking/hiding brands. Seriously, when I'm on Facebook I want to see
_people_. One or two brand posts here and there is okay, but when I have to go
through 10 brand posts to get to a real person that's a problem.

My friends aren't going to pay your stupid "Promote your content" fees. Stop
asking.

------
jwheeler79
wtf is 'brand engagement'? does that mean likes and comments on a post? it
would be great if either article spelled that out because if companies are
just chasing eyes and clicks, that seems like a stupid game to play that could
lose value as brand realize it doesn't necessarily mean conversions.

~~~
hatsix
Simply Measured Engineer here! To clear up your question, we define Brand
Engagement as:

"The total number of likes, comments, and shares on Brand Posts that occurred
during the reporting period." \-- SM Help Docs

I'm guessing that it wasn't spelled out in the post because Contently and our
original article are primarily aimed at Social Media Marketers, and the
definition is fairly well established.

While the definition is established, we've published some articles that dig
deeper into engagement:

Looking into the different pieces/parts:
[http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2013/11/18/likes-are-
passive-...](http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2013/11/18/likes-are-passive-
the-3-strongest-forms-of-engagement/)

and looking at a more relative number:
[http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2014/02/19/facebook-
engagemen...](http://simplymeasured.com/blog/2014/02/19/facebook-engagement-
rate/)

~~~
jwheeler79
maybe a hotlink to the def in future articles. this comment got a dozen
upvotes fyi

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fbailey
Let me explain, some parts of this, I have been working mostly as a UX
strategist and growth hacker for a lot of startups and somehow I ended up
leading a small social media consultancy and helping a lot of brands. (Don't
ask me why - I have no idea - it just happened).

Facebook has always been a very weird communication medium, it's the only
algorithmic communication medium that people actually use. One truth about
this is, that 99% of all brands and companies are not able to use this,
because optimizing your communication and ads for an algorithmic model is too
complex. Brand Communication has always been quite simple: Find some values
you want to attach to your brand, find something creative that sticks and mix
these values and your brand... then publish.

Facebook is insanely complex, because you have a third layer: find something
users want to interact with. Now you have three layers and those three are
mutually exclusive for many brands. A Toilet paper company may find some ideas
people want to interact with, but those ideas will probably not match their
idea for their brand or values. And even if a brand finds a sweet spot between
those three coordinates, they have to use right technique and be insanely
creative to stay in that spot.

This is something brands and companies are learning very very slowly, so
Facebook is not really changing anything in a way, it's just adapting to the
situation.

~~~
hnnewguy
> _Facebook is insanely complex... they have to use right technique and be
> insanely creative to stay in that spot._

Inevitably when one of these articles crops up, someone "in the business"
comes out of the woodwork to say, "Everything is fine, these brands just don't
know what they're doing."

I'm not sure I buy it. I dabbled in the space a few years ago, so spent more
time than I ever intended reading about FB advertising. It seems to me that a
long predicted issue is slowly developing: ad space and eyeball time are
limited, so as people "like" more and more material over time, Facebook will
have to cull and restrict to keep the news feed relevant to its users, most of
which don't really _want_ advertising.

Facebook is not really changing? Am I to assume that with another year
experience these social media teams got _worse_ at doing the things you
suggest? That's hard to believe.

Sure, I'll bet that these teams can be doing some things better. On the other
hand, how many brands are going to continue to spend money on a constantly
evolving, unpredictable advertising platform that requires outside consultants
to navigate properly?

------
gfosco
This article reeks of cherry picked data and is written with a vitriolic bias.
When you get to the end and "Fuck you, pay me" is repeated three times, it's a
good reminder that you're reading some bullshit on the internet. Facebook is
an affordable and effective place to advertise a brand, and it's worth paying
much more than they charge.

~~~
inthewoods
Well, I viewed the article as nothing of value - the actual study (done by
Simply Measured) is more interesting. This article is nothing more than a
republishing of the results with the vitriol that you rightly call out.

------
Fuzzwah
I wonder how much of this is due to people realizing that interacting with the
types of people who are "engaged" by these big brands on facebook doesn't lead
to interesting conversations?

The small amount of such brand engagement I've witnessed has reminded me of
the rule of thumb: "just pretend comment systems on large websites don't
exist."

------
Gustomaximus
I'd be interested to see how corporate engagement is shifting compared to
overall engagement. Also to look at things in absolute numbers.

Are people simple interacting less and this is a general trend across FB? Or
are people just getting better at ignoring corporate posts?

Also do we have a finite interest/time to interact? As every company flogs the
FB horse, have we hit a limit to the number of posts we will interact with in
total and this is just being distributed over a wider no. of companies?

I was looking at FB social media marketshare the other day and was impressed
how they continue to grow market share. Less engagement or not they remain
completely dominent in this space: [http://gs.statcounter.com/#all-
social_media-ww-monthly-20090...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#all-social_media-
ww-monthly-200903-201406)

~~~
hatsix
The assumption is that the majority of this downturn is because facebook has
reduced how many users even see the content... given how closely it correlates
to the FB News Feed Algorithm releases.

Alas, FB doesn't expose views on normal posts, so we'll never know the actual
numbers.

The consensus seems to be that Brands should post more often, as their posts
are only being shown to legitimate followers half as often... :-(

------
AznHisoka
"Build an audience that secretly belongs to a social media mob at your own
peril, and don’t be surprised when the brands and publishers that own their
audiences are the only ones that survive."

Umm.... Buzzfeed's audience doesn't belong to FB. Neither does Upworthy's.
Anyone can visit BuzzFeed.com without going thru FB. Anyone can receive an
email link to BuzzFeed.com without FB. FB is just ANOTHER distribution method.
It's a bonus, like search engines. Of course everyone wants to take advantage
of it, if it's there. What the hell is this article even saying? Don't go to
FB. It's an additional distribution method, that's all! Nobody is putting all
their eggs in it.

~~~
themonk
Audience does belongs to FB. See upstream traffic report of Upworthy. Alexa
[1] says 50% traffic is from FB.

[1]
[http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/upworthy.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/upworthy.com)

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nraynaud
That's quite a good news if that means less spam.

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quadrangle
Well, that's some nice news, if mild. Cheers!

------
arikrak
What should companies use instead of Facebook to reach users with small
updates and the like?

~~~
pcurve
I'm seeing a lot of baffling names on the Top 10 list.

What are all the aspirational car brands doing up there?

And Intel?

I doubt BMW or Intel is selling any more cars or chips because of facebook
engagement.

Their products mostly sell themselves.

~~~
judk
BMW products don't sell themselves, they are constantly advertised to push an
image in your mind of their upscale luxury materialistic desirability.

------
PaulHoule
And who cares except for the brands?

