Last month, social-media analytics company Rival IQ launched its seventh annual Social Media Industry Benchmark Report which measures social-media engagement across 14 different industries with 150 brands represented in each. The brands studied had at least 5,000 followers apiece on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok, and 25,000 to 1 million followers on Facebook. Influencer content was analysed as its own industry.
It is certainly worth a read, however, we know you’re a busy bee and seeing that the report is 136 pages long we thought we would summarise the highlights for you…
- TikTok’s median engagement rate in 2022 was the highest among the major platforms in the study at 5.69%, compared to 0.06% on Facebook, 0.47% on Instagram, and 0.035% on Twitter.
- General engagement rate on Instagram fell 30% year over year in 2022… the straight third year of Insta declines in the Rival IQ study. Nevertheless, Instagram’s short-form videos, known as Reels, have been a bright spot, though the study did not include engagement data on Reels. Furthermore, Reels outperformed photo posts in every engagement metric except for comments, which was ahead by a margin of 2%, based on data from HypeAuditor.
- Higher-education brands, like colleges and universities, have consistently ranked highly in terms of engagement each year of Rival IQ’s study. The firm even published a separate report dedicated to the industry’s success on social media where it highlighted schools like the University of Iowa and Santa Clara University. The category has found success with both short-form videos as well as static content, such as live tweeting play-by-plays.
- Posting frequency by brands on Twitter and Facebook declined by around 20% from 2021 to 2022.
That could be because brands were focusing more on videos for TikTok and Instagram, which can take more time to produce than static content.
