It’s a truism that brands must be on social media. The important question, though, is what platforms are best for your brand? In terms of Twitter, it depends on whether or not you are a B2C or B2B brand, according to data from Shareablee provided exclusively to PR News Pro.
In Q3 2016 (July 1 - Sept. 30), engagement, or total actions, defined as the sum of consumer reactions and comments to brand tweets, fell 20% compared to Q3 2015, Shareablee’s Nathalie Nuta says. Even video engagement fell 11% in the quarter. This follows a trend where Facebook and Instagram continue to outpace Twitter in year-over-year growth, Nuta says.
Once again, brands with the largest audiences don’t necessarily garner the most engagement. While Pokémon, through its app, topped the consumer engagement list (see chart on the left), several brands dwarf its Twitter audience. Of note, No. 2 Starbucks enjoyed 30% year-over-year growth in consumer engagement with its video posts during the quarter. Overall, consumer engagement with the coffee brewer’s posts on Twitter was up 67%, Nuta says.
Moving to nonprofits on Twitter in Q3 the story was different. In this category of brands, consumer engagement with tweets rose a whopping 99% for the quarter, the data show. Total actions during the quarter for nonprofits was in excess of 17 million.
In terms of individual brands, Wikileaks was the story during Q3. Its 3.4 million consumer actions were more than triple the total actions of PETA, number two on the list. The politically themed leaking nonprofit saw consumer engagement with its tweets jump more than 1,000% vs. Q3 ’15.
Its most-engaged tweet was a video of Hillary Clinton strategist Bob Beckel calling for Wikileaks editor Julian Assange to be assassinated and included the hugely popular hashtag #DNCLeaks. The post captured more than 30,000 actions and was retweeted more than 18,000 times.
Perennial social media powerhouse PETA saw consumer engagement with its tweets jump 20% vs Q3 ’15, with video making up just 5% of the total content it shared on Twitter. Its top post was a video, though, showing extreme abuse of animals at a Chinese circus.
At press time, Twitter was assessing a paid service for super users, The Verge reported.
