Dive Brief:
- TikTok is proving impactful over its competitors, pulling a higher per-post engagement rate (5.69%) than those of Twitter and both Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, according to Rival IQ’s Social Media Industry Benchmark Report, which analyzed 2022 social media performance.
- The report, which compiled from data over 2,000 companies that maintain active social media presences, also found that Facebook and Twitter post engagement rates were relatively flat compared with the previous year. Instagram’s engagement rate came in at 0.47%, dropping 30% year-over-year, its third consecutive year of decline.
- Post frequency also shows signs of slowing, falling over 20% YoY on both Twitter and Facebook with a median of 3.9 and 5 posts per week, respectively. Instagram’s post rate remained steady with a median of 4.6 posts per week.
Dive Insight:
Less is more is seemingly the way for social media these days, according to Rival IQ’s latest findings. While posting frequency on both Facebook and Twitter dropped, engagement rate per post remained steady at .060% and .035%, respectively. TikTok – which drew a much higher per-post engagement rate than its competitors — tracked a median post-per-week rate of 1.75 videos. Conversely, Instagram’s post frequency remained steady, but its engagement rate fell.
Rival IQ’s report included the social media data of 150 companies across 14 different categories, including alcohol, fashion, retail, nonprofit, media, travel and sports for a total of 2,100 companies. Each company evaluated had between 25,000 and one million Facebook followers and more than 5,000 followers per platform on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. Rival IQ defined engagement as a “measurable interaction” (including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions) on organic and boosted posts.
TikTok’s strong performance in the report should come as little surprise. The ByteDance platform has repeatedly been the center of attention, even despite ongoing data privacy concerns. The app has also risen as the second most-popular app among U.S. consumers under 35. Meta’s findings also line up with the overall business outlook — the company just reported that its fourth quarter revenue dipped 4% to $32 billion, representing the third straight quarter of declines. Though later in the year, Twitter’s dramatic Elon Musk takeover likely factored into its performance.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, engagement rates per platform were spearheaded by different categories. For example, sports teams and influencers had the highest engagement rates on Facebook at 0.24% and 0.20%, respectively, while higher education and sports teams engaged best on Instagram (2.58% and 1.49%, respectively) and Twitter (0.058% and 0.078%, respectively).
On TikTok, higher education scored a significantly higher engagement rate per video (16.26%) than the next closest industry category, which was sports teams (9.2%). Engagement on higher education-focused content is likely spurred by a wave of consumers who cling to educational content shared by influencers, according to research from agency Matter Communications, which found that 42% of consumers prefer to watch influencers who share how-to content like recipes and tutorials.
