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Part
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Top Players in Social Media: Part 1
The five brands that have the highest engagement on their social media platforms, including Nike and Patagonia, are Lego, Starbucks and Airbnb.
NIKE
- Nike has 33,311,922 Facebook followers, 92.9 million Instagram followers (s14), 7.95 million Twitter followers, and 1.14 million subscribers on YouTube.
- The company uses the hashtag #justdoit for its posts and promotions.
- In 2017, Nike had its biggest moment on social media, which was caused by the launch of a hijab sportswear product.
- Nike made a bold move featuring Colin Kaepernick after the national controversy with the NFL in 2018. The controversy centered around Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem as a way to raise awareness for race and social issues.
- Nike added 30 times more Twitter followers with their ‘Colin K’ ad campaign and saw 312 times more @-mentions by users on Twitter.
- Nike's average engagement rate on Instagram is 444, 175 posts per day. The company has a 0.21% fan growth on Facebook.
- Nike also registered 538,566 engagements per post in September, with an average engagement rate of 0.58%. (Estimated)
PATAGONIA
- Patagonia has 1,596,529 followers on Facebook, 40.2 million followers on Instagram, and 445,000 followers on Twitter.
- Patagonia uses their social media platforms to showcase its commitment to the environment and build a community of people who share its values.
- The brand only posts once per day on all of its channels.
- Patagonia's "Dirt Magic" video was able to gain 504,559 in just 2 weeks.
- Patagonia added 19 times more fans on Facebook with the ‘The President Stole Your Land’ campaign.
- On Facebook, the 8,200 people that commented on Patagonia’s post spoke most frequently about “Obama”, “Trump”, “money”, and “business”.
- Patagonia registered 159,200 engagements per post in the last 7 days, with an average engagement rate of 3.79%. (Estimated)
STARBUCKS
- Starbucks has 35,660,548 followers on Facebook.
- The company has 18.1 million followers on Instagram, with an average of 169,575 likes and 2,276 comments per post.
- Their Twitter account has 11.4 million followers and a total of 198,000 tweets.
- Starbucks' engagement rate on Instagram in 2019 was 370 and had a Facebook fan growth of -0.01%.
- Starbucks has been very effective in building momentum around their drinks on social media and often post images of the staff's and customer's favorite drinks as well as relatable GIFs and memes.
- Influencers are also used to build excitement around their most popular products, like the pumpkin spice latte.
- Starbucks had an average of 122,200 engagements per post in the last 7 days, featuring a 0.67% engagement rate. (Estimated)
LEGO
- Lego has 13,311,999 followers in Facebook and 623,000 followers on Twitter. It usually posts 2-3 updates per day on each of the platforms.
- The company features 4.6 million followers on Instagram and uses the hashtag #LEGO for its posts and promotions.
- Their YouTube channel has 7.97 million subscribers and posts exclusive webisodes and stop motion videos from LEGO Elves, The LEGO Movie, LEGO CITY, LEGO Star Wars™, LEGO Ninjago, and LEGO Bionicle to inspire the future generation of builders and engineers.
- Lego had an average of 551 engagements on Instagram in the last month and had a 21% fan growth on Facebook.
- The main goal of Lego's social media accounts is to emulate familiar social tropes in a classic Lego way like the life-sized flying car from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets which garnered more than 86,000 likes.
- Lego's YouTube video "THANK YOU FOR 5 (6!) (7??) MILLION LEGO SUBSCRIBERS !!" garnered 2,469,317 views in a year.
- Lego had an average of 125,500 engagements per posts and a 2.72% engagement rate in the last 7 days. (Estimated)
AIRBNB
- Airbnb has 16,010,894 followers on Facebook.
- Their Instagram account has 4.4 million followers, with the majority of the images coming straight from travel bloggers or other guests that have used the Airbnb service.
- The Airbnb Twitter account has 701,000 followers and showcase unique hosts and booking options and promotes some of the company's newer services, such as Airbnb for business travel.
- Airbnb's YouTube account make an effort to show the unique experiences of their members and the people, the spaces, and the faces that make up the community. The channel has 192,000 subscribers.
- Airbnb has an average of 1,035 engagements on Instagram last month, 522 posts on Twitter, and a 27% fan growth on Facebook.
- In 2016, the most successful #livethere hashtag was created as part of Airbnb’s new ‘Live like a local’ campaign.
- Airbnb saw 17 times more @-mentions by users on Twitter from their ‘We Accept’ ad campaign while the post was shared 438 times more than the average.
- On Facebook, the 9,770 people that commented on the post had good things to say, with words like “beautiful”, “love”, “amen”, and “acceptance” being the most used in the comments.
- Airbnb has an average of 23,300 engagements per posts and a 0.52% engagement rate in the last 7 days. (Estimated)
Research Strategy:
We began our research by looking for data on brands with excellent social media strategies. Based on this search effort, we were able to find credible data published by Econsultancy, Newship, Hubspot, Business News Daily, Hopperhq, Growwire, and Fundera. We focused on brands that were popular and often talked about on expert blogs, and leading publications. We then searched through each brand's social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube to provide the number of followers and subscribers.
We also search through Unmetric, a social media intelligence platform that provides the average engagement rate of brands. We also looked for ways to calculate an engagement rate by post by using Hootsuite. Using that approach, we determined that the best way to do that would be to analyze how many posts the brands publish each day on each of their top platforms and calculate the average. This formula measures engagements by followers on a specific post, usually for posts in the last 7 days or within the month (in Nike's case). As such, we used the most recent posts on Instagram because they are always shown at the top.
ENGAGEMENT RATE CALCULATION BY POSTS:
ER = Total engagements on a post / Total followers *100
Average ER per post = Total ER per post / Total posts
AVERAGE NUMBER OF ENGAGEMENTS PER POST:
Total number of engagements per posts in the last 7 days / Number of posts in the last 7 days
NIKE: Latest Instagram posts for the month of September
1. 599,700 views / 92.9 Million followers * 100% = 0.65%
2. 374,000 / 92.9 Million * 100% = 0.40%
3. 642,000 / 92.9 M * 100% = 0.69%
Average ER: (0.65% + 0.40% + 0.69%) / 3 = 0.58%
PATAGONIA
Total number of engagement in the last 7 days: 185,000 + 485,000 + 26,800 + 24,700 + 30,800 + 203,000 = 955,300 engagements
Average number of engagements per post: 955,300 / 6 = 159,200
Engagement rate: 159,200/4.2 million * 100 = 3.79%
STARBUCKS
Total number of engagements in the last 7 days: 103,00 + 166,00 + 97,700 = 366,700 engagements
Average number of engagements per post: 366,700 / 3 = 122,200
Engagement rate: 122.2k/18.1Million *100 = 0.67%
LEGO
Total number of engagements in the last 7 days: 26,400 + 87,600 + 27,000 + 175,000 + 337,000 + 100,000 = 753,000 engagements
Average number of engagements per post: 753,000 / 6 = 125,500
Engagement rate: 125.5k / 4.6M followers * 100 = 2.72%
AIRBNB
Total number of engagements in the last 7 days: 9,245 + 32,2K + 12,4K + 17,4K + 46,3K + 35,4K + 20,6K + 12,9K = 186,445 engagements
Average number of engagements per post: 186,445 / 8 = 23,300
Engagement rate: 23,300 / 4.4 million * 100 = 0.52%