The process is usually something like this:

1. Find an interesting industry to report on
2. Develop a list of the top brands in that industry to include in the report (this is often much harder than you’d think!)
3. Look at how those brands compare to one another across social channels on metrics of audience and engagement
4. Develop best-practice recommendations for other brands in that industry.

Having written seven of these reports myself, I was excited when we chose the NFL for our next subject for a couple of reasons:

First, as a recent immigrant to the US from Australia, I’ve thrown myself into learning about college football and the NFL as a way of integrating and understanding American culture. As a result, I’m a raving fan of both the Huskies and the Seahawks (can you tell I live in Seattle?). But don’t worry: this report is completely objective.

Second, and more important, this is the first ‘industry’ that afforded me the chance to look not only at social media success, but at real-life success on the field, and to compare and contrast these two metrics. This approach resulted in some truly fascinating insights into how each NFL team engages on social media.

You can download the 2017 NFL Social Engagement Report here.

The Methodology

Before we dive into the results, I’d like to outline the method used to develop this report. I began by loading all 32 teams into Rival IQ and chose to study only the regular season (September 9, 2016 – January 1, 2017) in order to give a fair footing to all teams. I then used Rival IQ’s reporting to gather all the data on each team’s engagement rate. (Engagement is defined as measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. Engagement rate is calculated based on all these interactions divided by total follower count.)

After exporting all of this data for each team on a week-by-week basis, I then added columns for whether the team won, lost, or tied, as well as whether the team was at home or away. I then superimposed the win/loss data on week-by-week graphs of social engagement for every team.

Here’s an example of that data shown across the season for the Miami Dolphins:

Understanding loyalty with the Fair-Weather Fans Index

By tying all this data together, I was able to develop what I’ve christened the ‘Fair-weather Fan Index.’ This index takes the difference between the average engagement rate when a team wins vs. the average engagement rate when a team loses. The bigger the gap, the more fair-weather the fans.

So, who has the most loyal fans in the NFL? I’m not sure anyone would be surprised to learn that the New York Jets’ fans are at the top of the list. The Jets were the only team whose fans engaged at a higher rate when the team lost. That said, their average engagement rate (0.163%) was much lower than the NFL average of 0.23%. The Jets are closely followed by the Panthers, Redskins, and Ravens when it comes to fan loyalty.

But here’s what you really wanted to know: the team with the most fair-weather fans is the Philadelphia Eagles. (Are you really surprised?) When the team wins, their fans engage at a rate of 0.313% while when they lose, engagement drops to 0.159% – 50% lower! Accompanying the Eagles at the bottom of the list are the Vikings, Browns, and Bears fans. As someone in the office put it, ‘You can’t blame Browns or Bears fans for going a bit wild when they finally win something.’ 

You can download the report here to see the entire Fair-Weather Fans Index. Some other impressive stats are outlined in these two pull-outs from the report.

The TL;DR is that fans engage at higher rates and teams post significantly more often when they win or play at home.

Some observations and musings

The average engagement on Instagram across the 32 teams was 2%, compared to 0.16% on Facebook and 0.046% on Twitter. Teams need to start focusing more in Instagram if they want to improve social engagement.

In every other report I’ve written, there’s a clear trend: the larger a brand’s following, the lower their engagement. This report is the only one where that trend hasn’t surfaced. The Cowboys are the best example of this: they’re ranked 1st for following and 2nd for engagement. Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it right.

As I designed this report, I began by creating the engagement rate graphs without knowing which weeks the teams won or lost, or who they played. After the first few teams, I began to be able to accurately predict whether the team had played a rival that week or whether they’d won or lost, purely by looking at social engagement.

NFL marketing teams would do well to look at this data and find ways to capitalize on rivalries, as well as develop content that still engages fans when their team loses.

The post Which NFL team has the most fair-weather fans? appeared first on Rival IQ.

Facebook doesn’t have that natural ‘fit’ that, say, LinkedIn or Adwords have when you’re targeting people in a business capacity. But it’s time to stop thinking like that. When you’re a B2B brand, you’re not actually selling to business: you’re selling to humans.

Go where your audience is

When I’m drafting channel strategy for a campaign, my first thought is: Where do my ideal customers spend their time online? For almost everyone under 65, that answer is going to include Facebook. There’s a misconception amongst B2B marketers that Facebook is a place where people go for personal time, and that B2B marketing is, therefore, unwelcome on that platform.

I’d argue that Facebook isn’t a personal platform these days: it’s a media outlet in much the same way that the New York Times or the Washington Post are. In fact, more than 60% of US adults get their news from their Facebook Feed. So if your audience is there: why wouldn’t you be?

Start with your objective

When you’re creating a Facebook Ads campaign, the first thing you’ll need to do is set your objective. Facebook’s platform has evolved to feature ten different ‘objective’ options, from video views to in-store visits. For B2B brands, the two most relevant objectives are Conversions and Lead Generation.

Conversions

Conversions are measured by installing the Facebook pixel on your website or landing page. The pixels allow for you to track when a lead has completed the action you’ve specified (such as downloaded content, registered for a webinar or signed up for a trial).

Lead Generation

The ‘lead generation’ objective is somewhat more complex. It’s a relatively new feature from Facebook and was developed with B2B advertisers in mind. A lead generation ad will look exactly the same to the user, except that when they click the call-to-action (sign up, learn more, download, etc.), a form appears right within Facebook’s interface. The in-platform experience is designed to lower barriers to completion by keeping people on Facebook’s website rather than sending them off-page (ie., to a landing page).

There’s another benefit to these forms: Facebook already knows most of the salient details about its users. It uses these details (Name, email, phone number, location, job title, company and so on) to auto-fill the form, further lowering the barrier to completion. Sounds pretty great, right? It is. In all of my tests, lead generation campaigns have outperformed conversions campaigns by an average of 20% based on cost per result.

However, there is one caveat: you’ll need a little technical wizardry to run a lead generation campaign. As of now, Facebook hasn’t added the ability for advertisers to deliver content after a user completes a form. An example of this would be an ebook download campaign (see .gif example below). Once a user completes the form, Facebook has no way of delivering the ebook to them.

If you have HubSpot, you’re in luck. HubSpot’s brilliant new Ads feature connects natively to Facebook and will instantly import the lead into your system. From there, you can set up a workflow that triggers when a form is completed and sends the ebook via email immediately. HubSpot will also directly attribute ROI right down to the individual ad.

If you’re not using HubSpot, don’t worry. There’s always a Zap for that. Zapier has ready-made zaps that will help you get leads directly into your CRM or marketing automation system, or send emails to leads.

Should I trust Facebook’s algorithm?

While we’re on the topic of objectives, it’s important to note that Facebook’s algorithm is key to helping you achieve them. But I wanted to test exactly how effective the algorithm is, so I devised a little experiment.

The Experiment

I ran two campaigns with the same audience, and the same ads, but assigned different objectives. I gave one campaign a ‘Traffic’ objective and the other a ‘Conversions’ objective, even though my real goal was to generate traffic. I believed that Facebook would display the ad to users it knows to be prolific clickers. On the other hand, I expected the conversion’s campaign to have a higher cost per click and lower click-through rate because Facebook would optimize delivery for higher-value conversions. So, I hypothesized that the traffic campaign would have a higher click-through rate and lower cost per click.

The Results

As usual, Facebook turned my hypothesis on its head. These were the results:

This experiment dissolved any doubts I ever had about the magic the Facebook algorithm weaves behinds the scenes of my conversions campaigns. But it also highlighted the fact that you should test everything. After all, my objective was to generate traffic, but the conversions campaign was far more successful than the traffic campaign.

Audience is everything

When I launch a new campaign, I’ll usually run it across multiple channels. The two biggest channels being LinkedIn Sponsored Content and Facebook Ads. I’ve seen success with both channels, but it really depends on the audience you’re targeting.

Let’s use my recent craft beer campaign as an example.

Rival IQ’s social analytics platform is already helping loads of craft brewers to improve their social engagement, so I developed an industry report that examined the social media success of the top 20 craft beer companies in the US. The campaign objective was to get other marketers in the craft beer industry to download this report, see how they’re doing relative to their peers and learn some great techniques to use in their social media campaigns. Once someone downloads the report, we have further activities in place to encourage trial sign-ups and move them further down the funnel.I chose to run ads for this campaign on both LinkedIn and Facebook for a number of reasons:

1. LinkedIn allows the targeting of people at specific companies, with specific job titles. Facebook also allows this, in theory, but if a business has fewer than 5,000 employees I’ve often struggled to get Facebook to target them. With this campaign, I managed to get LinkedIn to target employees of every company in the top 50 list of the craft brewers association. However, on Facebook, I could only get it to target employees of massive brewers such as MillerCoors.
2. In my anecdotal experience, LinkedIn leads tend to cost significantly more than Facebook leads, sometimes up to six times as much. However, I trust the veracity of LinkedIn’s first-hand data much more than Facebook’s third-party data. I’ve often had Facebook leads appear in our CRM and been unsure of how they possibly got through my stringent targeting.

Given these two points, you might be wondering why I would run ads on Facebook. The answer is that Facebook leads can be plentiful, cheap and high-quality if you can get the targeting right. It just requires a little creative thinking. Because Facebook doesn’t list ‘Craft Beer’ or even ‘Alcoholic Beverages’ as a B2B industry, and I couldn’t target employees of the top 50 craft breweries, I had to think hard about how I could identify people who work in the marketing or management function within this rather small vertical.

I did a little research on the industry and decided to target people who are Facebook Fans of particular beer-industry publications such as The Brewers Association, CraftBeer.com or BeerAdvocate. But being a fan of these pages wasn’t enough. I designed three audiences to branch off from this initial interest.

1. Fans of brewing publications who are also Facebook Page Admins in the United States (this tells me that they are involved in social media in some way, shape or form). I’d call this a loose target.
2. Fans of brewing publications who are also fans of Social Media Today or Social Media Week, in the United States. I guessed that people who are fans of both of these things had a good chance of working in social media in the brewing industry.
3. Fans of brewing publications with our ideal social media/marketing job titles in the United States. This segment is an even tighter audience, targeting people with a specific set of job titles.

When you’re testing different audiences, I recommend using different ad sets within one campaign but using identical ads within them. Otherwise, you’re not truly comparing apples to apples.
Let’s take a look at the results of this audience targeting:

At first glance, you’d think that I would be smart to turn off Audience 3 – it’s doing worse by almost every metric. Its performance isn’t surprising – in my experience, the more tightly honed the audience, the more expensive the leads.

But let’s add some new data:

Here’s what this data tells me:

• While Audience 3 may be more expensive at first glance, the cost per MQL is lower than Audience 2. This audience is more aligned with our internal lead scoring, and thus more leads are making it through to sales.
• Audience 1 is getting me some very, very inexpensive leads. But only around half of them are meeting the lead scoring criteria to become MQLs. Ultimately though, it’s the most effective ad set.
• LinkedIn is damn expensive (I’ve never seen a click cost less than $6): but look at the Lead to MQL rate. Only two leads failed to hit our MQL threshold. Qualitatively, I can tell you that these leads tend to be more qualified with higher purchase intent than our cheaper Facebook leads. For this reason, I’m willing to pay the premium as long as it’s balanced out by the cheaper Facebook leads.
• That LinkedIn CTR is off the charts. For reference, the benchmark CTR on LinkedIn campaigns sits around 0.3%

Where to from here?

When you’re starting out with your first B2B Facebook Ads campaign, the first things to test are audience and objective. But there are myriad other levers to push and pull in your quest to obtain the most cost-effective, high-quality leads.

I like to test at least four different ads within each ad set (Two variations on image and two variations on call-to-action) as well as things like the optimal number of form fields or network and device placement (Facebook/Instagram/Audience Network/Mobile/Desktop etc.).

The best advice I have is to start with only a couple of tests at a time. You don’t want to become overwhelmed with too many data points at one time. Aim to learn one thing each time, then apply that learning to your next campaign. Keep testing, keep improving and remember the need to balance quantity with quality.

The post Getting Started with Facebook Ads for B2B appeared first on Rival IQ.

Craft beer has enjoyed a resurgence in the last few years, growing to $23.5b in 2016 sales in the United States capturing 12 percent market share of the overall beer industry. As breweries proliferate across North America, they are looking to social media as a way to engage with fans and acquire new ones.

Social media provides a cheap, effective way for marketing teams to create an authentic brand. It’s one of the best ways for breweries, big and small, to grow brand awareness and focus their marketing efforts.

We wanted to find out which breweries are killing it when it comes to social – Who’s growing their audience? What sort of content are they posting? How can other breweries use this data to help them build smarter social media strategies?

We used Rival IQ to answer those questions and provide in-depth analysis and recommendations for craft brewers that want to up their social media game.

Instagram blows other channels out of the water

We looked at the average engagement per post across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as how frequently brands are posting on each. There’s a pretty consistent split regarding posting frequency by channel: 1.5 times a day for Twitter, and around 0.8 times a day for both Facebook and Instagram.

However, the engagement per post on Instagram is 5x higher than Facebook and 40x (yes, 40) higher than Twitter. Craft brewers should start to reexamine their channel-by-channel strategy and make sure the Instagram thinking is sound.

Audience is only half the equation

Some of the biggest craft brewers have built sizable followings across all three channels, particularly on Facebook and Instagram. But having a lot of fans doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing well; often, the more followers you have, the lower your engagement rates will be. This is a trend we’ve seen in every industry report, bar none. Bigger brewers can turn to photos and videos, as well as boosted posts, to increase their engagement.

It’s time for craft brewers to explore paid social

Engagement rates were quite consistent across almost all brewers, but Shiner Beer and Ballast Point stand out. Of the top ten performing posts (calculated by engagement rate), nine were boosted by either Shiner or Ballast.

These two brands also grew their Facebook fans by substantially more than the average growth of 2.07% (Shiner: 4.09%, Ballast: 3.5%). Boosting posts has helped expose their brand to a new audience, and in turn, build their communities.

The full report includes 28 pages of in-depth analysis, best practice recommendations and a complete ranking of the top 20 companies we studied. Download it today for free.

The post The Craft Brewing Social Media Engagement Report appeared first on Rival IQ.

While social media is responsible for much of that fragmentation, it’s also a useful platform for building a dynamic and engaged community.

We wanted to find out which publishers are killing it when it comes to social – Who’s growing their audience? Which organizations see the most consistent engagement? What sort of content are they posting? How can other publishers use this data to help them build smarter social media strategies?

We used Rival IQ to analyze 662,000 social media posts across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram from the top 50 legitimate news organizations in the United States across the 90 day period commencing February 1, 2017. What we found may surprise you.

Key Takeaways

1. The news outlets with the most followers performed the worst when scored on engagement

The top three news organizations with the biggest audiences, BBC, CNN and the New York Times, didn’t even make it into the top 20 when it comes to engagement. Incongruency between audiences and engagement rates is a trend we see across most industries we study, but it’s even more pronounced in the news business.

2. Smaller, newer organizations like Mic and Axios are winning the engagement game

Founded in 2011, Mic has quickly grown its following and is leading the pack on engagement rates. Axios, founded in 2016, is nipping at Mic’s heels in third place. It’s no surprise that younger, most Millennial and Gen Z-focused organizations are finding unique ways to engage with their followers – and win new ones.

Both Mic and Axios tend to use more videos and photos in their posts, as well as occasionally boosting their Facebook posts to help them broaden their reach and acquire fans (and subscribers).

3. Instagram is where the engagement is – but not where the media is

Instagram’s average engagement rate across the top 50 news outlets was 9x the Facebook rate, and 16x the Twitter rate (Instagram 0.66%, Facebook 0.07%, Twitter 0.04%). However, the organizations we studied tended to focus the majority of their activity on Twitter (67% of posts) and Facebook (43% of posts).

There’s a huge opportunity for media companies to create engaged Instagram communities that, in turn, build loyalty to the brand.

Your Free Report:

The full report includes 38 pages of in-depth analysis, best practice recommendations and a complete ranking of the top 50 companies we studied. Download it today for free.

The post The News & Media Social Engagement Report appeared first on Rival IQ.

Looking Forward

With the 2018 midterms on the horizon, congressional politicians should be seeking to develop smart social media strategies that will help them engage on a one-to-one basis with their constituents. The groundwork for that should be taking place right now, with politicians building their audience, diversifying channels, crafting concise messaging and using analytics to understand how they can cut through the social media noise.

The Political Report

At Rival IQ, we built our software to help digital marketers not only analyze, interpret and improve their organization’s social media presence, but also enable them to compare their own metrics to all the competitors in their landscape. So we thought we’d take this technology and use it to see how Senate Democrats and Republicans are harnessing the power of social media.

We’ve developed an in-depth report that sees Democrats and Republicans go head-to-head based on their cross-channel metrics as well as specific platforms audience and engagement. You can find the methodology for this report at the bottom of this blog.

This blog covers some of the highlights of our report, but you can download it in its entirety here.

The full report covers:

• The top ten senators by audience and engagement on each platform
• Top performing posts from both sides of the aisle on each platform
• Engagement rates by post type and day
• Analysis on top hashtags used by both parties and average engagement per hashtag

Your sneak peak at what’s inside

Cross-Channel Metrics and Analysis

Cross-Channel Audience Total, as of March 1, 2017

Average engagement rate per post, per channel

Top ten senators by total followers as of March 1, 2017

Top ten senators based on average engagement rate per post across all channels

Key observations from cross-channel research:

• Democrats have more followers overall but also see far higher levels of engagement across all three channels.
• The ten senators with the biggest following don’t make it into the top ten based on engagement.
• The biggest gap in audience is on Instagram, where the Democrats’ Millennial support is helping them build a significant following.

Facebook Metrics and Analysis

Average Engagement Rate per Post Type

Key observations from Facebook research:

• Democrats overwhelmingly favor posting links, while Republicans post status updates 40% of the time.
• Status updates are far more engaging than videos for Republicans, while Democrats are making the most of Facebook’s native video platform to engage their audience.
• Democrats saw soaring engagement rates on events. Facebook served as an important medium in organizing protests, town halls and marches for Democrats.

Instagram Metrics and Analysis

Average Instagram Engagement by Day

Key observations from Instagram research:

• There is a glaring gap in engagement when it comes to video content: Republicans have an average engagement rate of 1.05% on video posts, while Democrats see 5.66% on average.
• Instagram is the channel where Republicans see engagement plummet the furthest on Saturdays.
• Democrats have a far larger Instagram audience, likely due to their Millennial-skewing base.

Twitter Metrics and Analysis

Top ten senators by total Twitter following as of March 1, 2017

Top ten senators by average engagement per Twitter post

Key observations from Twitter research:

• While Republicans have a substantial Twitter audience, they fail to match Democrats when it comes to Twitter engagement.
• Senators from both parties post links more than any other type of medium, but links have the lowest engagement rate of any post type.
• The three top-performing Democratic Twitter posts have one thing in common: they all ask for Retweets to get the message out. With engagement rates ranging from 81.2% – 294% it’s clear that this approach is working.

Conclusions

Data doesn’t lie: on nearly every measure, Democrats are outperforming Republicans (except in the Electoral College). This is especially true when it comes to engagement metrics. We’ve developed some main findings for both sides of the aisle:

1. Audience does not equal engagement

On every platform, almost none of the top ten senators by audience make it into the top ten measured by engagement. This data goes to show that there’s a significant opportunity for politicians to focus on engaging their constituents rather than just acquiring followers.

2. Video is great – if you know how to do it

One of the most glaring differences we found in the data was the gap between Democrat and Republican Instagram video engagement (5.66% vs. 1.05%). This gap carries over to Twitter (1.05% vs. 0.28%) and Facebook (2.75% vs. 0.55%). Democrats are doing something right when it comes to native video – Republicans should take heed and invest in creating valuable video content.

3. Hashtags really do make a difference

Our data shows that by using the right hashtags, engagement rates can soar from a baseline average of 0.78% to 6.46% (#LetLizSpeak). Senators should be using data to determine which hashtags are truly engaging with their audience and quickly responding to the with relevant content.

Our Methodology

We use Rival IQ to analyze 31,200 social media posts of all Democratic and Republican senators for a three month period between December 2016 – February 2017.

We gathered data across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram as well as cross-channel metrics.

Engagement is defined as measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. Engagement rate is calculated based on all these interactions divided by total follower count.

We chose to analyze senators rather than House members and other prominent leaders (e.g. Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Cabinet members) to get a fair assessment of politicians elected to the same level of office.

Bernie Sanders, formally elected as an Independent, has been included as a Democrat because he caucuses with the Democrats, ran for the Democratic nomination and serves as part of the Democratic party leadership.

The post Democrats vs Republicans: Who’s Winning the Social War? appeared first on Rival IQ.