From animal welfare to arts to criminal justice and beyond, this report has it all when it comes to the ultimate guide to nonprofit social media. We studied top posts, hashtags, engagement rates, and more from 100 of the world’s most engaging nonprofits on social to help your nonprofit prepare for Giving Tuesday and the year ahead.

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Top 10 Nonprofits on Social Media (overall)

It was a great year for nonprofits on social who earned epic engagement using everything from adorable puppy adoption pleas to behind-the-scenes pointe shoe content to bats that are guaranteed to steal your heart (more on that later).

Bat fans, rejoice: Bat Conservation International has taken the gold for the second year running! American Ballet Theatre climbed the ranks in a big way to land the silver, while Planned Parenthood repeated its podium finish with a bronze. Innocence Project, Amnesty International, National Trust, and HAYTAP also pulled off top 10 repeats, while the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the ACLU, and Seattle Humane landed in our top 10 for the first time.

Top Nonprofit Overall: Bat Conservation International

Bat Conservation International is a fan favorite on social for a reason: their colorful and quirky posts engage fans on every channel they post on and go a long way towards making bats less scary. BCI uses everything from colorful graphics to weird but gripping bat memes to entice and engage followers in their quest to protect bat populations across the country.

BCI generally posts less frequently than their average competitors but makes every post count with above-average engagement rates and totals. The nonprofit pulled all that off with way fewer followers than their average rival. Fewer posts + fewer followers usually equals lower engagement, but not for BCI who harnessed the power of bats to fly straight into followers’ hearts.

BCI ranked 8th on Facebook thanks in part to posts like this featuring, wait for it, bat poetry (no, the bats did not write it). The poem by environmentalist and poet Anna Ferguson Montague delighted bat fans on BCI’s favorite day of the week: Baturday. With a 56.2% engagement rate by follower, BCI should definitely look into commissioning more bat poems. The nonprofit earned 5x the engagement rate of their average nonprofit competitor on Facebook despite having a quarter of the fans. Part of that incredible engagement can be explained by posts like this that earned nearly six million impressions, suggesting BCI’s content reached far beyond their follower count.

Adorably spooky Reels like this one helped BCI earn 2x the engagement total and 5x the engagement rate of their average competitor on Instagram. The Reel featured five spooky/sweet bats guaranteed to turn anyone into a bat conservationist. BCI earned a 147% engagement rate and more than 1.2 million estimated impressions on the post, proving that in the right hands, even the most niche causes can go viral.

This beautiful photo tweet celebrating Bat Appreciation Day earned a 14.2% engagement rate and more than 85K impressions by inviting followers to turn out for this important holiday that BCI actually did not make up. Many of the nonprofit’s posts feature real bats in all their glory, but shaking up the style to something more artistic helped engage fans new and old who might not be fully on board with bat content just yet. BCI continues to impress by doing more with less: the nonprofit earned 10x the engagement rate by follower on Twitter but tweeted about half as often as their average competitor, and did it all with one tenth of the followers.

Not every nonprofit we studied this year managed to keep abreast of the constantly-evolving TikTok trend landscape, but BCI definitely gave it their best shot. The video put a bat-themed spin on the trending clip from Lizzo’s song Boys by swapping the meaning of the song to Bats Of varYing Species. Fans and followers ate up the playful post to the tune of a 12.4% engagement rate by view and more than 340K views. Not every trend will feel applicable to your nonprofit, but videos like this remind us that getting in on the right trend at the right time can be an engagement slam dunk.

BCI has really invested in TikTok this year, with a 38% increase in follower count and above-average posting frequency by about 30%. The nonprofit’s efforts are paying off with more than 2x the engagement total and 6x the engagement rate by view.

Top Nonprofit Social Media Trend 1: Holiday-themed posts

From observing national holidays that align closely with any given nonprofit’s mission to cute manatees celebrating Halloween, holiday posts led to an engagement uptick across all four channels we studied this year.

Save the Manatee Club finished 31st on Instagram and 25th overall thanks to the success of photo posts like this one featuring a costumed manatee presiding over a gaggle of pumpkins. The Halloween-themed post earned a 27.8% engagement rate by follower and more than 7.3K impressions by keeping in the holiday spirit. User-generated content is a great way for nonprofits to stretch tight staff and tighter budgets like in this post which sourced a photo from the larger STMC community.

Environmental activism nonprofit Greenpeace took to its TikTok platform during Pride Month to remind followers that an important part of fighting for climate justice includes protecting trans rights. The nonprofit ranked 17th on TikTok this year thanks in part to this simple video that earned a 10.5% engagement rate by view, which is about 10x the nonprofit TikTok median. Making the most of holidays and themed months like Pride can help your content stay relevant all year long.

Top Nonprofit Social Media Trend 2: Giving Tuesday

Giving Tuesday is a critical time for nonprofits looking to fundraise, and many of the top nonprofits we studied encouraged donations creatively for maximum engagement and minimal grumbling.

Second-place winner American Ballet Theatre’s posts about Giving Tuesday ranked consistently across channels as some of their most engaging of the year, making the nonprofit one to watch for inspiration. ABT’s series encouraging donors to engage throughout the day to see dancers doing feats of increasing difficulty as donations rolled in led to fun and social engagement online and at the ballet studio. Not every channel saw an engagement increase with posts that mentioned Giving Tuesday, but nonprofits saw a 1.44x engagement rate lift on Facebook when talking about the day of giving.

Playful content performed well on social when it came to Giving Tuesday as well, like in this impressive bat portrait from overall winner Bat Conservation International. Rather than ask directly for donations, BCI reminded followers about Giving Tuesday with tweet content featuring Gen-Z slang about a look “giving” (which means it’s good) and “serving” (which means it’s even better). The tweet earned a 1.3% engagement rate, which is about 4x the nonprofit Twitter median this year. Not every donation request on social has to feel like a desperate or urgent plea: adding fun or casual content into your campaign can give followers a break while still keeping your nonprofit at top of mind.

Top Nonprofit Social Media Trend 3: Behind-the-scenes content

Taking supporters and donors behind the scenes is a tried and true strategy for nonprofits around the world because it helps people deepen their connection to their favorite organization’s mission and impact. Backstage content on social media can serve the same purpose, even if there’s not actually a stage to peek around the back of.

Education Post focuses on schooling opportunities for bright kids around the world, which very much includes the stunning music coming out of this classroom in Africa. This Reel helped EdPost finish first on Instagram–no surprise with the impact of this post, which earned nearly three quarters of a million engagements and more than 11 million estimated impressions. Many organizations might feel tempted to post a slick video with high production values, but EdPost knew the content would resonate with fans based on nothing more than unbelievable music from the mouths of truly talented kids.

Going behind the scenes isn’t just for the arts. The Blank Park Zoo finished 13th on Facebook thanks to this video post about training one of their giraffes to feel calm and comfortable during x-ray imaging. The video went viral to the tune of 13 million views and more than 18K engagements by involving fans in a side of the zoo they probably would never be able to experience from a casual stroll through the park. Behind-the-scenes content like this helps strengthen followers’ and donors’ relationships with the causes they support and is an important tool in any nonprofit social media marketer’s toolkit for sustaining engagement over time.

Top Nonprofits on Social Media: Instagram

Congrats to Education Post for winning big on Instagram this year, and to American Ballet Theatre and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights on their respective silver and bronze finishes. Overall top 10 finishers Seattle Humane, Bat Conservation International, HAYTAP, and the Innocence Project also saw impressive rankings on Instagram. Doctors Without Borders, Joffrey Ballet, and Hillel International finished strong on Instagram but didn’t quite break into the overall top 10 thanks to some lagging ranks on other channels.

Nonprofits earned an average engagement rate of 0.51%, which sits well above the all-industry Instagram average of 0.43% that we saw in this year’s Social Media Industry Benchmark Report. These nonprofits posted just as frequently as the average organization on Instagram this year at 4.8 posts per week. Higher engagement rates with similar post frequency means nonprofits are punching above their weight on Instagram.

Featured nonprofit: American Ballet Theatre

American Ballet Theatre is a force to be reckoned with on social, especially on video-focused channels like Instagram and TikTok. With 4x the followers of their average nonprofit competitor, the nonprofit has a leg up (pun intended) on engagement: ABT rocked 6x the engagement total at 2.44M compared to 392K competitor average, and more than 3x the engagement rate. Especially notable is that ABT posted about 1/3rd as frequently as their average competitor on Instagram and still managed to top the engagement charts, suggesting the content they do publish is high quality and reliably able to snag those likes and comments.

Behind-the-scenes content reigned supreme for the Boston-based ballet company, from pointe shoe ASMR to rehearsal footage to seemingly impossible tasks like fouetté challenges. The nonprofit also found creative ways to encourage donations and created plenty of nostalgic opportunities for followers to wax poetic about their favorite ballets over the years.

Followers ate up pointe shoe ASMR from a corps de ballet member of ABT’s company to the tune of a 26.3% engagement rate, which is more than 50x the nonprofit Instagram average. ASMR is all about pleasing sounds and images, so the crunching, crinkling, gluing, and sewing of pointe shoes is the perfect way to tickle followers’ brains. Professional ballet dancers modify their shoes nearly every day, so capturing the ritual for social media is a great way to capitalize on content just waiting to be shared.

ABT posted a carousel with moments from the fall 2023 season to help fans remember their favorite moments with a little boost from the Instagram algorithm. The carousel post earned a 9.84% engagement rate and more than 1.37 million estimated impressions, not to mention nearly 80k likes. Instagram re-serves the second frame of a carousel to followers if they didn’t engage with the first, which often leads to higher engagement rates and means this post type should definitely remain in the mix for nonprofits.

Nonprofits constantly have to find balance between sharing the results of their mission-driven work and asking for donations to help fund it. ABT wasn’t afraid to get creative about encouraging donations with a little help from the dance company by promising amazing feats from the dance company if their online community could hit certain fundraising milestones. In this Instagram Reel, ABT delivered on its promise that dancer Léa Fleytoux would balance on pointe for an entire minute if 50 followers donated on Giving Tuesday. The feat impressed followers, earning the organization an 8.02% engagement rate and encouraged further donations for ABT’s next milestone of 100 donations. Finding new ways to ask for donations is a challenge that many nonprofits face, but they can definitely take a page out of ABT’s book with their Giving Tuesday campaign.

Top Nonprofits on Social Media: TikTok

The National Down Syndrome Society snagged gold on TikTok this year (while landing just outside our overall top 10 ) with Planned Parenthood and RepresentUs also standing strong on the TikTok podium. Many of our overall top 10 winners also performed well on TikTok like American Ballet Theatre, Seattle Humane, Bat Conservation International, National Trust, and the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. Best Friends Animal Society and the American SPCA stood out in a big way on TikTok but have some improving to do on other channels if they want to crack the overall top 10 next year.

Nonprofits earned a 0.99% engagement rate by view and posted videos about once per week on TikTok, which is about half as often as our multi-industry average. Imagine what these organizations could do with the resources to post even more frequently.

Featured nonprofit: Planned Parenthood

Health care and sex education nonprofit Planned Parenthood grabbed the silver on TikTok this year and bronze overall thanks to stellar content and strategic partnerships. With about four times the followers as their average nonprofit competitor and 4x the engagement totals, it’s no surprise that this nonprofit is ranking well this year. Planned Parenthood posted about twice as often as their average competitor at 1.87 videos per week and saw about twice the views. The nonprofit also rocked 6x the engagement rate by view at 18.8%, which is definitely a stat they can write home about.

It’s worth noting that Planned Parenthood’s follower counts and engagement totals are off the charts, but its engagement rates by follower on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are actually a little lower than the competitor average. Really big accounts like Planned Parenthood sometimes have to accept lower engagement rates in favor of eye-popping engagement totals. We balance engagement total and rate in our ranking to account for nonprofits like Planned Parenthood, which also helps smaller nonprofits and brands with impressive engagement rates but teeny engagement totals stay competitive in our rankings.

Planned Parenthood had strong success with sharing news stories about things like abortion and contraception with a related GIF playing in front of it, like in this video about expanding abortion access with Phoebe and Rachel from Friends dancing on a loop in the foreground. The video earned a 17.8% engagement rate by view and more than 12K engagements, suggesting adding a little silliness to serious news pays off when it comes to engagement.

The nonprofit wasn’t afraid of humor, especially when it comes to raising awareness for reproductive freedom. This video features Planned Parenthood providers looking around their clinic for medical reasons to restrict abortion everywhere from desks to drawers and coming up empty, earning a 13.3% engagement rate by view and nearly 400K views. Tone matters when it comes to storytelling, and many nonprofits have learned that going playful instead of somber can engage more supporters in their causes.

Many nonprofits rely on partnerships to boost awareness and reach new audiences, and Planned Parenthood is no exception. Partnering with TikTok celebs like @JamesIsSmiling earned the nonprofit a 9.95% engagement rate on TikTok this year. Switching up your brand’s representative online can help new audiences and followers find your nonprofit’s content while offering variety to your existing fanbase. In this case, James has partnered with Planned Parenthood since 2023 to share stories about STDs, reproductive rights, trans rights and more and their posts are always thoughtful, conversational, and engaging. Many nonprofits don’t have the budget to pay an enormous roster of influencers, so finding the right alignment is critical for nonprofits looking to stretch their dollar while reaching new audiences.

Top Nonprofits on Social Media: Facebook

The Alzheimer’s Assocation topped the Facebook charts for nonprofits this year, with PetSmart Charities and Seattle Humane hot on its heels. The rest of the Facebook top 10 ranged far and wide, from healthcare nonprofits American Cancer Society and Red Cross to animal welfare organizations Anti-Cruelty, the Humane Society of the United States, and Bat Conservation International, with the Wounded Warrior Project and Carnegie Hall coming in as wild cards.

Nonprofits on Facebook earned a 0.06% engagement rate and posted just under 6x per week, which is more than on any other channel we studied this year. This high post frequency makes sense even with lower engagement rates on Facebook, since posting on Facebook is often a lot less labor-intensive than creating TikTok videos or Reels. As we can see in the chart below, status updates and photos are the most engaging post types by rate for nonprofits on Facebook, so it makes sense that nonprofits are churning them out more frequently.

Featured nonprofit: Seattle Humane

Rival IQ is based in Seattle and filled with pet-loving humans, so it’s no surprise we were jazzed to see Seattle Humane topping this year’s Facebook charts. The animal welfare nonprofit had about ⅕ the Page Fans of their average nonprofit competitor while boasting 4x the engagement total and rate, suggesting their social strategy is seriously dialed in. Posting more than twice as often as their rivals certainly helps explain those big engagement totals, and strong content that tugs at everybody’s heartstrings explains the rest of Seattle Humane’s success on social this year.

As you might imagine for an animal shelter, Seattle Humane was all about calls for adoption on Facebook this year, like this post about pup Pretty Girl that earned an impressive 12.3% engagement rate. With so many followers looking for their next furry family member, these posts performed well consistently for the nonprofit. We used our natural language processing to analyze popular topics and phrases, and posts that celebrated a successful adoption earned a 2.41x engagement rate lift over Seattle Humane’s average posts–no surprise, since everyone loves a happy ending.

Every animal welfare nonprofit is bound to rely on cuteness at some point or another, and Seattle Humane was no exception. The nonprofit showed off cute dogs to their full potential in this post about 18 tiny doggos that were surrendered to the shelter that earned a 5.58% engagement rate and more than 500K estimated impressions. Sharing pets for adoption is an important part of Seattle Humane’s mission, but telling the stories behind the surrendered or found pets is critical for connecting pets with their forever homes like in this heartstring-tugging post.

A big part of nonprofit communications has to be about donations and giving, but Seattle Humane gives equal air time to thanking donors for their contributions large and small like in this video post. The post rocked a 2.39% engagement rate which is nearly 40x the nonprofit industry median thanks to cute dog-friendly baked goods and even cuter pups. Asking for donations and thanking donors is a constant cycle for nonprofits around the globe, and while balancing the two can be tough, Seattle Humane has it down.

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Top Nonprofits on Social Media: Twitter

The Innocence Project had a big year on social including snagging the Twitter gold, and other top 10 overall finishers US Campaign for Palestinian Rights and HAYTAP also have a lot to be proud of on Twitter this year. Amnesty International, the ACLU, and Bat Conservation International also rode their Twitter success all the way to our overall top 10, while Heartfulness, Carter Center, Save the Manatee Club, and Doctors Without Borders had stronger showings on Twitter than on other channels we studied.

Nonprofits saw lower engagement rates on Twitter compared to other channels in our report at 0.03%. This stat isn’t too surprising, since Twitter consistently earns lower engagement rates than any other channel across all the industries we track in our Social Media Industry Benchmark Report. Small engagement rates didn’t slow down their post frequency which came in at 4.6 tweets per week.

Featured nonprofit: Innocence Project

Legal justice advocacy nonprofit the Innocence Project is no stranger to topping our engagement charts placing third overall and 15th on Twitter in last year’s nonprofit report. The nonprofit zoomed to first place on Twitter thanks to gripping tweets calling for support for exoneration. The Innocence Project tweeted about 50% more frequently than the average nonprofit which gave them lots of opportunities to connect with concerned and motivated followers. With an eye-popping engagement total of 539K compared to 38K for the average nonprofit and more than 5x the engagement rate of their peers, this nonprofit is one to watch.

The Innocence Project focused heavily on turning the nation’s eyes towards Marcellus Williams’ execution by the state of Missouri this year in many of its social posts and tweets. These compelling and somber tweets generated action and support but were sadly unsuccessful at saving him from his fate. This tweet in the final lead-up to his execution saw a 39.7% engagement rate and more than 10 million impressions from followers tracking his story around the globe.

Tweets tagged #MarcellusWilliams saw a 12.4x engagement rate lift compared to the Innocence Project’s average tweets as followers shared their support for Williams and followed the news about his appeal and sentencing. Our AI-powered Popular Topics feature also analyzed language from Innocence Project’s tweets and found that tweets that mentioned “innocent man” performed 14x better than the nonprofit’s average tweet, suggesting having a clear point of view on Williams’ sentencing and execution helped the Innocence Project reach further than they might’ve with more neutral language.

While the Innocence Project is great at encouraging urgency around upcoming exoneration opportunities, the nonprofit also excels at telling the stories of innocent men and women failed by the US justice system like Kalief Browder. This photo tweet featured an eye-catching image and an invitation to followers to remember Browder for his wrongful death and fight for justice. The tweet earned a 2.21% engagement rate and more than 75K impressions as followers left their remembrances of Kalief and called for investigation into his innocence even after his death by suicide in 2015.

While urgency is really the name of the game for the Innocence Project, the nonprofit also peppers in plenty of hopeful stories like Sandra Hemme’s. This photo tweet celebrating Hemme’s freedom from jail after 43 years of being wrongfully imprisoned earned a 0.70% engagement rate, which is more than 23x the average nonprofit engagement rate this year. Reminding followers of the life-saving impact the Innocence Project and other exoneration-focused organizations can have is critical for fostering and maintaining the financial and community support needed to sustain criminal justice nonprofits.

Check out the latest Social Media Industry Benchmark Report for even more benchmarks.

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How is My Nonprofit Performing on Social Media?

See what the best nonprofits are up to on social with our Live Social Media Benchmarks featuring top posts, engagement rates, high-performing hashtags, and tons more. Pro tip: you can even add these benchmarks directly into your Rival IQ account for always-on monitoring of these top organizations.

Or, go head-to-head with a free report on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter to see how you stack up against your top competition. Discover what makes your competitors tick with key insights and actionable advice you can start using now to come out on top.

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Methodology

We surveyed hundreds of nonprofits between October 1, 2023 and September 30, 2024 on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. We included a selection of nonprofits from Forbes’ Top 100 Charities list and a sample of nonprofits from our broader database of organizations around the world. Using this data and a weighted formula, we generated an overall engagement ranking for each nonprofit and narrowed the list to the top 100 brands based on our criteria. The top-ranked nonprofits have high engagement rates with average or better audience size and posting volumes. We reviewed a mix of boosted and organic posts.

We define engagement as measurable interaction on nonprofit social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. Engagement rate is defined as the total engagement divided by audience size except on TikTok, where it’s defined as the total engagement divided by views.

Due to Instagram API limitations, we’re able to pull accurate Instagram engagement numbers only for creator and/or Instagram business accounts.

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The Case for Benchmarking

Why benchmark instead of just measuring how your nonprofit’s individual performance changes over time? Because social success is relative. Benchmarking means figuring out what’s working (and what isn’t) for organizations in your industry and measuring your success against that.

It’s really important to go beyond likes and favorites because audience size matters: 200 likes is great engagement for a nonprofit with 1,000 followers but is a drop in the bucket to an organization with 100,000 followers. Engagement rate helps us take audience size into account to see who’s really reaching the highest percentage of their fans and followers with their social posts, which are the nonprofits you need to beat.

Wrapping it up

Congratulations to all the organizations in this report for continuing to lead and redefine nonprofit social media! We can’t wait to see what you get up to in the year ahead.

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The post Top 100 Nonprofits on Social Media appeared first on Rival IQ.

From creative campaigns to more community management than your dog can shake a stick at, pet brands have a whole lot to be proud of on social this year. We looked at who’s outbarking the competition on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter for the definitive round-up of all things pet brand social media. We’ve got all the metrics you care about from engagement to posts per week, plus oodles of content inspo from top-performing campaigns.

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Top Overall Pet Brands on Social Media

The Farmer’s Dog grabbed the overall gold this year thanks to stellar finishes across all four channels we studied. BarkBox and Chewy.com snagged the silver and bronze respectively and will no doubt be hot on The Farmer’s Dog’s heels next year.

Litter-Robot, Redbarn Pet Products, and Outward Hound finished just outside the winner’s podium, with Bullymake, Stella and Chewy’s, CatIt, and Blue Buffalo rounding out the overall top 10.

Top Pet Brand on Social Media: The Farmer’s Dog

What made human-grade dog food brand The Farmer’s Dog stand out from the rest? With top 10 finishes on Twitter and TikTok and top 15 ranks on Instagram and Facebook, the brand has clearly cracked the pet brand social media code. The Farmer’s Dog invested a bunch in its online presence this year with everything from a breakneck posting frequency to a super successful Super Bowl spot that it made the most of during and way after football season.

The Farmer’s Dog made so much hay on social about its heartwarming Super Bowl commercial this year, with engaging reposts across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. In this Reel version of the commercial, followers lapped up the touching commercial about extending the all-too-short time we get with our pets to the tune of a 12.7% engagement rate by follower, 34K engagements, and more than 661K estimated impressions. Big-budget content like this definitely helped the brand reach new heights on social, but the Farmer’s Dog earned 2.5x the engagements of their average pet brand competitor thanks in part to being nearly twice as active as other pet brands on Instagram.

The Farmer’s Dog was more likely to post a photo on Facebook than any other post type by a mile, and this post about dog tattoos was their most engaging photo of the year by rate. Every pet owner knows how precious toe beans and snoots can be, so this user-generated content (UGC) post grabbed attention and got followers sharing their own ink tributes to their beloved pets. The post earned a 1.54% engagement rate and more than 165K estimated impressions, helping The Farmer’s Dog maintain an engagement rate about 35% stronger than its average competitor on Facebook.

If you’ve been on the internet in the last five years, you’ve more than likely heard of cult favorite social account We Rate Dogs, which offers humorous and oh-so-memorable “ratings” of people’s pets. The Farmer’s Dog teamed up with We Rate Dogs for an adorable commercial which excited followers to the tune of a 40.2% engagement rate and more than 554K impressions. Collabs are a strong strategy in nearly every industry, but the top pet brands we studied had a lot to show for picking the right brand to partner with, especially when pairing the partnership with inventive content.

The Farmer’s Dog was extremely active on Twitter, with 4x the tweets per week as the average pet brand. The vast majority of these are replies, indicating a really active community engagement strategy. The brand rocked 5x the engagement total and 41x the engagement rate on Twitter compared to its average competitor thanks in part to successful content like this video.

Speaking of big-name pet brand partnerships, this TikTok video from beloved dog influencer @AGuyAndHisGolden made big waves as a repost on The Farmer’s Dog account. The repost rocked a 5.03% engagement rate by view, more than 95K engagements, and nearly 2 million (!) views thanks to an adorable (if a little weird) golden retriever’s love affair with his toy. UGC is a strong strategy for any pet brand on social media, and the viral reach of this video definitely backs up The Farmer’s Dog’s decision to bet big on a behind-the-scenes partnership with A Guy and His Golden.

The Farmer’s Dog has 6.5x the followers of their average pet brand competitor on TikTok, suggesting strong investment on this channel. That investment is definitely paying off with 2x the engagement total and 3x the engagement rate by view of the average pet brand.

Top Pet Brand Trend 1: Dog and cat memes

It seems like every pet brand on social this year used memes as part of its strategy, and with many meme posts topping the engagement charts, we’re not complaining.

Memes are popular for a reason: they’re easily shareable and even easier to giggle at. Spot & Tango boasted the top four Instagram posts by engagement rate this year, and three of four were memes in the brand’s signature blue. The photo post earned a 291% engagement rate and more than 3 million estimated impressions from pet lovers who can relate to the desire to share memes with their furry friends.

Of course, memes are popular with pet brand content creators too because they’re way less work to put together than, say, a studio-shot video with a camera-shy pup.

Taste of the Wild ranked first on Twitter and 13th overall thanks in part to the success of meme tweets like this one about substituting fur babies for real ones. The tweet rocked a 43.8% engagement rate with nothing more than a simple meme branded with Taste of the Wild’s logo. Memes that last are scannable and relatable, and Taste of the Wild was one of the most successful pet brands on social this year at finding ones that would resonate with their audience of pet lovers.

Top Pet Brand Trend 2: Macro- and micro-influencer partnerships

Pet brands made the most of partnerships and collabs this year with a strong mix of human and pet celebs. From reposts to contests to original content, partnership posts topped the charts for pet brands on social media.

Meow Mix is known for its earworm jingles, so a collab with NSYNC band member JC Chasez feels almost inevitable. Meow Mix ranked 20th on TikTok and 14th overall thanks in part to this campaign, which encouraged fans to duet with JC to create the next big Meow Mix single. Just five posts featuring Chasez and more than a few dancing cats earned Meow Mix an eye-popping 500 million views, not to mention tons of repostable UGC they could use on their channel. The partnership can’t have been cheap, but with numbers like that, it certainly seems like it paid off.

Pet brands, don’t sleep on more niche brand partnerships or even reposts from accounts you know your followers will love. Oxbow Animal Health ranked 18th overall and 13th on Facebook thanks to the success of videos like this featuring beloved bunny TikTok account @JoJosBunBuns. The bunny account is a perfect fit for Oxbow, which focuses on food and gear for smaller pets. The humorous “day in the life” video took off on Facebook for the brand with a 13.4% engagement rate and nearly 1.5 million estimated impressions. Bunny content won’t be relevant to every pet brand in our study, but the video reminds us that finding your content niche is the ultimate way to reach your followers on social.

Top Pet Brand Trend 3: User-generated content

User-generated content is a social media marketer’s favorite strategy because it combines already-vetted content with freedom from having to produce something from scratch. UGC was a popular strategy for pet brands on social media this year and led to a 1.43% engagement rate lift on Instagram alone, with extra bonus points for particularly heartfelt or tear-jerking content.

Instagram Reels were a great way for pet brands to show off relatable (if weird) behavior from pets all across the world. Second-place pet brand BarkBox found a ton of success with this strategy on social, including this goofy video of dogs at their weirdest right before company comes over. The Reel rocked a 41.2% engagement rate and nearly 13 million estimated impressions. UGC when done right can feel more authentic and resonant with users than a highly-produced ode to pet ownership, and is a key tool in the toolbox of any pet brand on social media this year.

The only thing better than a weird pet behavior repost is UGC that encourages other pet brands to post their pets online like this Facebook post from Diamond Pet Foods which ranked 4th on Facebook this year. This simple photo post earned an amazing 37.5% engagement rate by asking pet owners to share their best nap photos, and Diamond’s community turned out. The comments section is filled with adorable photos and odes to sleepy pets. Is there anything more wholesome?

Top Pet Brands on Instagram

Congratulations to Spot & Tango for grabbing the Instagram gold this year, narrowly beating out BarkBox and Honest Kitchen for the top of the winner’s podium. Kinship, Bullymake, and Pet Meds barely missed the top three, and Oxbow, Pooch Perks, Stella and Chewy’s, and Tiki Pets rounded out the pet brands top 10 on Instagram.

Pet brands earned a median engagement rate of 0.33% on Instagram this year, which is a little below the all-industry average of 0.43% we saw in our Social Media Industry Benchmark Report. Pet brands also posted about half as often as the median brand in that report at 2.5 posts per week.

Featured brand: Bullymake

How did dog subscription box brand Bullymake snag 5th place on Instagram and 7th overall in our rankings? Twice the Instagram followers of their average competitor definitely helped, as did posting twice as often. Combine those stats with more funny dog memes than Fido could shake a stick at and you’ve got a foolproof formula for earning 5x the engagement total and about 20% more engagement by rate than its average pet brand competitor.

Bullymake’s repost of a short and sweet dog comic by illustrator Becky Barnicoat went seriously viral among dog owners who totally grokked how different our dogs look without their collars. The post earned an eye-popping 49.5% engagement rate by follower and more than 2 million estimated impressions, indicating the photo post traveled even further than Bullymake’s impressive follower list. Any brand can repost UGC, but selecting content that’ll truly resonate with followers is the art of good social media content, and Bullymake has it down.

Heartfelt, tear-jerking content like this post about service dogs on September 11th performed really well with BullyMake’s audience this year. This UGC Reel memorialized the heroic sacrifice of pups who searched for survivors and resonated with followers to the tune of a 3.94% engagement rate, which is about 6x Bullymake’s already impressive average engagement rate. Bullymake deftly strikes a balance between playful and more serious content to maintain a cohesive Instagram feed.

This goofy Reel that’s oh-so-relatable for dog owners earned more than 8.6K engagements and more than 152K estimated impressions. The Reel features a “velcro dog” (IYKYK) and his beleaguered owner trying and failing to spend time on his phone while slowly losing all sense of personal space. The Reel rocked because of a universal dog owner experience and didn’t need any fancy lighting or equipment to shine with followers. Bullymake did a great job of finding simple but relatable user-generated content to serve its Instagram followers, who ate it up on the reg.

Top Pet Brands on TikTok

Pet lifestyle brand Kinship rocked first place on TikTok this year, edging out Spot & Tango for the gold. BarkBox and The Farmer’s Dog were the only overall top 10 finishers in the TikTok top 10, with Frenchie Bulldog, Wellness Pet Food, PetSmart, Solid Gold Pet Nutrition, Nulo, and Ruffwear standing out on TikTok but not performing well enough on other channels to rank competitively overall.

Pet brands earned a median engagement rate by view of 2.8% on TikTok this year, which is nothing to sneeze at. These brands posted videos just under once per week on TikTok, which definitely has some room for improvement.

Featured brand: BarkBox

BarkBox was just one of two brands from our overall top 10 that also had a dynamite finish on TikTok — we brands that have cracked the code on multiple channels. The pet gear subscription brand had plenty of personality on TikTok to grab attention and engagement from viewers. Posting about twice as often as their average competitor also helped the brand’s engagement skyrocket this year to nearly 5x the engagement total and 4x the engagement rate by view of its average competitor. Posting often helped BarkBox snag more bites at the engagement apple, and the brand really stepped up its posting after an epic summer of engagement.

Sharp-eyed readers might be wondering how BarkBox ranked so highly while actually earning about half the views of its average competitor. The tl;dr is that social media success is a blend of engagement rate, engagement total, views, comments, shares, and so much more. Sure, earning fewer views than your competitors is a bummer, but what’s a view worth if it doesn’t come with an engagement? BarkBox was four times more likely to garner a like or a share for every view its earned compared to their average competitor, which is a sure sign of the quality of their content.

Like many pet brands we studied, BarkBox leaned hard into UGC this year. This photo carousel post featuring an adorable weiner dog named Leroy and his outfits earned an unbelievable 20% engagement rate by view and more than 800K views, not to mention 166K engagements. Leaning on carousels like this one to share photos or even posts from other channels with TikTok followers is a great way to repurpose content to get more bang for your buck.

The brand also employed the sneaky strategy of encouraging people to stay until the end of a carousel or video in the caption. BarkBox used this caption strategy in a few of their top videos to boost the reach of their posts, and it’s very safe to say it was successful.

Influencer partnerships are a tried and true strategy for social media engagement, and this post featuring TikTok’s own Noodle has to be one of the most successful examples of a killer partnership in recent memory. The elderly pug went viral back in 2021 for predicting Bones/No Bones Days, which is the simplest possible fortune telling about whether you should stay in your (dog) bed or go out and see the world. Reposting his owner’s journey of inking Noodle’s adorable mug on his arm for BarkBox’s National Dog Day tattoo campaign resonated strongly with fans to the tune of a 10.7% engagement rate by view, which is more than 3x the pet brand median.

BarkBox has had success with this campaign multiple years running, but partnerships and posts like this help its message soar far beyond their impressive follower list. Picking the right influencer to collab with works well in every industry, and pet brands and famous pups are no exception.

The BarkBox team wasn’t afraid of a little behind-the-scenes fun, and many of the brand’s top TikToks featured quick shots of BarkBox office life, like this video about the team’s supposed big ideas for a new line of Pride-themed toys. The video features more than a little sass with some NSFW toy ideas and had viewers laughing and cheering in the comments to the tune of an 8.73% engagement rate by view and more than 122K views. Viewers loved the snark and the LGBTQ-positive message of the video, reminding pet brands that it’s okay to live your values and have a little fun along the way.

Top Pet Brands on Facebook

We’re raising a glass to pet gear brand Kurgo for its top finish on Facebook this year, and Fromm Family Foods and PetSafe for its respective silver and bronze medals. Taste of the Wild, Ziwi, and Litter-Robot used their impressive Facebook ranks to finish strong in our overall top 20, while Diamond Pet Foods, NutriSource Pet Foods, NaturVet, and Sleepypod stood out on Facebook but struggled a little more on other channels.

Pet brands earned a median engagement rate of 0.04% on Facebook and posted just over twice per week, which is only a little less frequently than it posted on Instagram and way more often than it did on TikTok or Twitter.

Featured brand: Litter-Robot

If you have or know an animal in your life, you’ve probably heard of self-cleaning litterbox company Litter-Robot thanks to its ubiquitous ads. The company has worked hard to build its presence online between heavy social investment, creative ads, and an influencer program, all of which helped the brand skyrocket to 4th overall in our rankings and 9th on Facebook.

Litter-Robot rocked more than 2x the engagement total, and a 50% higher engagement rate than its average competitor on Facebook this year. With just a third of the Facebook followers of its average competitor, Litter-Robot’s impressive engagement tells us they’re making the most of the attention from every one. The brand also posts just as often as the average pet brand.

Litter-Robot wasn’t afraid to get a little funky on social like in this out-of-this-world Facebook video featuring a cat entering a psychedelic new dimension via its litterbox. The groovy video went seriously viral to the tune of a 23.6% engagement rate and more than 1.83 million views. Fans raced to the comments to talk about how much their cats love using the Litter-Robot and to giggle about the brand’s playful video. The video delivers info on the product’s key features while also emphasizing the true promise of their brand: kitty nirvana.

Many of Litter-Robot’s top posts by engagement rate were videos, which had 10x the engagement of other posts for the brand. The brand is investing heavily in this post type and has the engagement rates to back up their strategic decision to do so.

The brand was all about celeb endorsements, with several of their top posts by engagement rate featuring everyone from Jenna Fischer to Ted Allen to YouTube influencers. Hearing your favorite TV star endorse a product can go a long way to establishing trust with a brand you maybe haven’t heard of, and Litter-Robot put serious effort (and likely $$$) behind securing and posting about these endorsements. This video post had just 3.26K engagements but more than a million video views, suggesting that Litter-Robot also employed boosting to make sure the post reached fans of The Office far beyond their follower count.

Litter-Robot kept its ear to the ground about trending content across its channels and took care to emulate some of social media’s biggest trends of the year. This video features a day in the life video of adorable black cat Bali narrated in the Trickster voice, which was a hugely popular voice effect on TikTok last year. Bali’s narration is fun and funny, and focuses on how thrilled she is about getting to use a Litter-Robot. Many of the brand’s top posts focus on how their product benefits both owners and pets themselves by pulling at pet owner’s heartstrings, showing how happy their cats will be thanks to Litter-Robot. Every pet brand needs to separate itself from their competitors by demonstrating clearly how their product works, but Litter-Robot was one of the most successful at going beyond the feature to focus on the true benefit their product provides.

How does your pet brand stack up?

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Top Pet Brands on Twitter

Okay, hear us out: you might be wondering if Twitter is even relevant for pet brands in 2024 since the median engagement rate is 0.0% and the median tweets posted per week is…also 0.0. Does that mean not a single pet brand invested in Twitter this year? No, but it does mean that more than half of the brands we studied were putting their social media content energy elsewhere. As we’ll see in the top 10 Twitter rankings below, Twitter is still very much alive and well for the top pet brands on social media this year, so let’s focus on pet brands that are using Twitter to connect with their followers and customers.

There’s a metric ton of overlap between the overall top 10 rankings and the Twitter top 10 rankings, with seven of our top 10 overall winners also topping the charts on Twitter. Taste of the Wild came in first this year, with The Farmer’s Dog and Blue Buffalo close behind. Chewy.com, CatIt, Outward Hound, BarkBox, and Bullymake all used top 10 Twitter finishes to skyrocket in our overall rankings, while NaturVet and Ziwi stood out on Twitter but didn’t quite make the cut across every channel we studied.

Featured brand: Blue Buffalo

Blue Buffalo has a lot to brag about this year, with a 10th place finish overall thanks in part to their highest-ranking channel, Twitter. Funny memes and drool-worthy giveaways helped catapult the brand to success, as did an absolutely die-hard community management strategy. Blue Buffalo tweeted 9x as often as the average pet brand, and with the vast majority of those tweets being reply tweets, it’s easy to see the brand is dedicated to robust convos and community management on Twitter. This strategy is definitely paying off, since the brand is rocking 64x the engagement total and 9x the engagement rate of the average pet brand.

Photo tweets+pet memes=a match made in heaven for Blue Buffalo, and many other pet brands this year. Pet brands are all about combing the web for trending memes and serving them up to their pet-loving followers, like this tweet about a sassy cat with a thousand-yard stare. The simple tweet rocked an impressive 20.1% engagement rate by follower and performed about 10x better than Blue Buffalo’s average engagement rate this year. Photo tweets averaged a 2.19% engagement rate for Blue Buffalo this year, which is, well, a lot more than the industry average of 0.0% engagement rate.

Contest and giveaway posts performed well for the brand on Twitter to the tune of a 2.37x engagement rate lift over their average tweet. Blue Buffalo held giveaways regularly on Twitter this year, with its most dedicated and effective giveaway campaign taking place leading up to the holidays. The adorable photo tweet earned an 8.4% engagement rate and 500 (!) comments from followers excited about winning a cozy hoodie complete with a kitty pouch. The success of this tweet reminds us that giveaways don’t have to be over-the-top to be effective, so grab some swag or industry-related merch and get givin’.

We’ve gotta give it up to Blue Buffalo’s community manager featured in this tweet, who must be glued to her phone to pull off the kind of reply pace we see from the brand. The brand replies to nearly every conversation started by fans online, especially on tweets that are performing well. This strategy requires a ton of person power but can really pay off by effectively doubling the number of comments on a post. It also taps into Twitter’s OG purpose, which was one-to-one convos between everybody on the internet, very much including brands. Not every pet brand has the bandwidth to approach community management this way, but connecting with your community can be a great way to cement your position on a social channel, particularly conversation-friendly Twitter.

Check out the latest Social Media Industry Benchmark Report for even more benchmarks.

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How is my Pet Brand Performing on Social Media?

Comparing your pet brand’s social performance has never been easier. Browse our pet brand live benchmarks for a real-time look at a selection of top pet brand posts, engagement rates, high-performing hashtags, and tons more. You can even add these benchmarks directly into your Rival IQ account for always-on monitoring of these top brands.

Methodology

We surveyed pet brands on social media between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023 on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Using this data and a weighted formula, we generated an overall engagement ranking for each pet brand. The top-ranked brands on social media have high engagement rates with average or better audience size and posting volumes.

We define engagement as measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. We used engagement rate by follower to measure engagement on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of followers. We used engagement rate by view to measure engagement on TikTok, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of views.

The Case for Benchmarking

Why benchmark instead of just measuring how your pet brand’s individual performance changes over time? Because social success is relative. Benchmarking means figuring out what’s working (and what isn’t) in your industry and measuring your success against that.

It’s crucial to go beyond likes and favorites because audience size is hugely important: 100 likes is great engagement for a pet brand with 1,000 followers but is a drop in the bucket to a pet brand with 100,000 followers. Engagement rate helps us take audience size into account to see who’s really reaching the highest percentage of their fans and followers with their social posts, which are the pet brands you need to beat.

Wrapping It Up

We hope all the pet lovers out there enjoyed this report as much as we did. It was a great year for pet brands on social media, and all the brands we studied have a lot to be proud of. We can’t wait to see what pet brands get up to on social media in the year ahead!

By the way, if you need even more competitive analytics, you can go head-to-head with a free report on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to see how you stack up against your top competition. See what makes your competitors tick with key insights and actionable advice you can start using now to come out on top.

Want to continue the pet brand conversation or share photos of your favorite furry friend? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter!

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The post Top Pet Brands on Social Media appeared first on Rival IQ.

We’ve analyzed every D1 and D2 school across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok to bring you engagement numbers, key trends, case studies and campaigns from top schools, and of course rankings for each division.

We won’t blame you if you skip right to the rankings, but read on for all the Higher Ed social media intel your school needs to trounce the competition this year.

Spoilers! See the full Higher Education rankings.

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Higher Education Social Media Trends

We’re the first to shout from the rooftops about the importance of research and experimentation in your social media content, but there’s no denying that Higher Education social media had a few key themes emerge this year that are definitely worth covering. These themes bubbled to the top across divisions, regions, and channels to dominate many of Higher Ed’s top posts by engagement rate this year.

Top Trend 1: #Winning

Everyone loves a win, and colleges and universities are some of the best at showing off about everything from sports blowouts to alumni achievements to academic excellence and beyond. These posts are a surefire bet for stoking community enthusiasm and excitement, not to mention a fun way to remind parents and alumni about all the good things happening on campus.

Virginia State University rounded out our D2 top 10 thanks in part to a silver medal-worthy performance on Twitter with videos like these about Trojan dominance on the football field. The tweet blew the D2 Twitter engagement rate median out of the water (much like VSU’s epic victory over rival Bowie State seen in the video) by more than 100x at 7.17%. The video featuring slick footage from the big game and between the football, cheerleaders, and marching band really had something for everyone in the Trojan community. VSU wasn’t afraid to get a little sassy by calling out the fact that the win put a damper on Bowie State’s homecoming week . Playing up rivalries and going hard at a brag can make a post about a big win even more fun, and in the case of VSU, resonate with your community on and off campus.

One win is great, but how about two at the same time? D1 school Arkansas State University ranked 10th on Instagram this year thanks in part to the smashing success of this post about drum major Alandria snagging the homecoming queen crown and still going on to conduct the band. The celebratory Reel earned more than 529K engagements and nearly 9 million estimated impressions, with fans crowding the comments to congratulate Alandria on her big night. Telling the story of Alandria’s big win via Reels helped ASU’s fans feel like a part of her success even if they couldn’t be in the stadium that night.

Top Trend 2: Famous alums

A recognizable alum can go a long way towards catching attention on social outside of your school’s immediate sphere of influence, and colleges and universities weren’t afraid to remind their followers about just how far you can go in the world with a degree from their institution. From throwback posts to reunion footage to keeping fans up to date on alumni accomplishments, D1 and D2 schools leaned hard into their celeb alums this year.

D1 school North Carolina Central University ranked 25th on Facebook thanks in part to the success of posts like this one about famed NCCU alum artist Ernie Barnes. The painter was famous for both his art and his NFL career, and NCCU never missed a chance to post about his accomplishments during and after his time at the school with nearly two dozen posts about the artist throughout the school year. This Facebook photo in particular encouraged followers to learn more about Barnes’ legacy via a New York Times article and earned an impressive 18% engagement rate and nearly half a million estimated impression. NCCU is a shining example of reaching back a few generations in your alumni catalogue to show off your school’s legacy while also educating current students and followers about notable celebs they might not know owe a thing or two to their alma mater.

Spoilers: University of Nebraska at Kearney’s posting about pro wrestler Tyrus’ triumphant return to campus years after he couldn’t afford the commencement gown helped propel the D2 school to 6th overall and 2nd on Facebook. With nearly 25K engagements and more than two million estimated impressions, the post highlighting what Tyrus’ time at UNK meant to him resonated far beyond UNK’s 24K page fans and helped the school reach new fans and followers previously unfamiliar with the school. It’s worth noting that our boosted post detection picked up some $$$ behind the post, reminding us that pay-to-play is an important tool in the HESM toolbox, even with a famous wrestler to feature in your posts.

Top Trend 3: Authentic campus moments

From glamour shots to behind-the-scenes of move-in day, nearly every D1 and D2 school we studied this year worked hard to make campus life accessible to all the prospective students, parents, and alumni unable to participate in person as part of the day-to-day.

D2 school Oklahoma Baptist University ranked 11th on TikTok this year thanks in part to fun and fresh videos like this one asking faculty and staff about the last time they’d thought about the Roman Empire, which trended on TikTok this year. Many schools’ TikTok feeds are filled with Gen-Z and Gen Alpha faces, but OBU won big with featuring a slightly older demographic. Campus giggles like these require both a creative social team and willing participants, but as seen with this OBU post, combining the two can bring about true social magic.

Hilarious viral posts like this one about different types of campus dads on move-in day propelled Bryant University to 10th on D1 TikTok. The video is a compilation of clips from move-in day on the Rhode Island campus with some cheeky labels about dads who always have a snack ready or are more than a little eager to pose with Bryant’s bulldog mascot Tupper. Capturing campus life by sending your social media team out to actually live it alongside parents and students goes a long way towards authentically representing your school’s signature experience, and this TikTok is a great example of strong content that doesn’t need to be professionally produced to succeed.

Top D1 Higher Education Institutions on Social (overall)

Epic, heartfelt congrats to the University of South Carolina for beating out their social media rivals University of Iowa to clinch the overall gold! The Gamecocks have been hovering near the top of our overall top 10 for years, but they channeled stellar finishes across the board into dethroning the reigning champ for the ultimate social media bragging rights.

It was definitely a year of shake-ups in our top 10: University of Connecticut, Oklahoma State University, Michigan State University, Colorado State University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, The Ohio State University, and Ohio University all managed to break into the top 10 after scoring lower last year, while James Madison University and Bowling Green State University were the only other universities to repeat their top 10 finishes.

Top school: University of South Carolina

The Gamecocks had a huge year on social, with three top 10 finishes on Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok, and a still-impressive 29th finish on Instagram. USC seriously improved on all three of the channels on which they finished in the top 10 while sliding slightly on Instagram, proving there’s always room for improvement even if you’re at the top. USC struck the perfect balance between school spirit and heartfelt campus storytelling to engage fans on and off campus. Let’s get into University of South Carolina’s stellar school year on social.

Speaking of beating Iowa, University of South Carolina had a lot to brag about this year, including beating the Hawkeyes in the NCAA women’s final. USC finished 10th on Facebook by centering celebrations like this photo post which rocked a 6.41% engagement rate by follower, with fans turning out to congratulate their alma mater on going all the way. The Gamecocks scored 3x the engagement total and 50% more engagement rate by follower than their average D1 competitor on Facebook. Not every school has a championship like this to brag about (though it sure does help), but centering wins is a surefire engagement strategy for colleges and universities year after year.

Reels have never been more important than in this past school year, and USC definitely made the most of this medium by being 7x more likely to post a Reel than any other post type. This dedication to Instagram’s favorite post type helps the app’s algorithm distribute USC’s content to followers and new fans alike.

Picking the right post type helps, as does super-engaging content like the moment Gamecocks wait all year for: the reveal of the top-secret identity of this year’s mascot Cocky the Gamecock. USC always makes a big deal about this reveal by having Cocky attend the ceremony in cap, gown, and rooster shoes. Fans went wild in the stadium and online watching the full student body cheer on the symbol for USC’s rabid school spirit to the tune of an 18.6% engagement rate by follower.

There’s never been a more confusing time to be on Twitter, but USC has cracked the code and actually improved their position from last year by grabbing the bronze. The Gamecocks earned 8x the engagement total and 2x the engagement rate of their average D1 competitor and are generally quite active on Twitter, treating it like the conversational social media channel it is. Not every college and university pours time into Twitter these days, but USC keeps up a steady stream of tweets throughout the week, and is especially dedicated to retweets to keep the conversation going.

This video tweet asking followers about their experience during the 2024 solar eclipse featured a USC Easter egg about the Gamecocks securing a spot in the Final Four had something for everybody and absolutely cleaned up on retweets. The success of this tweet reminds us that social media doesn’t have to be highly produced or even strategic to resonate with followers–sometimes, you just need a GIF with a topical event and your basketball team in it.

Did someone say “gold medal”? University of South Carolina does an awesome job balancing their sports content with more campus-focused content like this video, which helps explain how the Gamecocks finished first on TikTok this year. USC dominates here, with 3x the videos per week, 3x the engagement rate by view, 10x the views, and 27x the engagement total of their average D1 competitor. This video of Gamecocks saying farewell to their younger siblings earned an unbelievable 19.6% engagement rate by view and more than 84K views by tugging at heartstrings.

A strong hashtag game also helped the Gamecocks exponentially increase their engagement on TikTok, with the #OffToCollege and #SayingGoodbye hashtags used here helping the post earn an engagement rate lift of 1.26x.

Top D1 Higher Education Institutions on Instagram

Good news for Higher Ed social media managers everywhere: this industry’s most popular channel by a mile actually increased its median engagement rate this year to 2.92%. Schools are also posting just as frequently on Instagram as they were last year at around 4 posts per week, suggesting investment in this channel really hasn’t flagged.

Speaking of good news, University of North Texas is surely pumping their metaphorical fists after finally dethroning reigning Instagram champ James Madison University (who still landed safely in the Instagram top 10). Oral Roberts University and High Point University rounded out the winner’s podium, while University of Connecticut joined JMU as the only overall top 10 finishers in the Instagram top 10. Miami University, University of Iowa, Gonzaga University, Georgia Tech, and Arkansas State University all managed impressive finishes on Instagram but couldn’t quite eke out a spot in the overall top 10.

Featured school: University of Connecticut

University of Connecticut earned silver overall thanks to a big year on Instagram, coming in 8th. The Huskies’ only top 10 finish was on Instagram, proving that being well-rounded can still help you win big. UConn earned 1.49 million engagements, which is about 3x the competitor median, and an impressive engagement rate of 4.33% that was about 50% higher than the competitor median. The school had plenty of engaging strategies to catapult them towards Instagram greatness, but posting a little more frequently than their competitors at 5.5 posts per week definitely helped.

The Huskies’ top post of the year by engagement rate was a Reel all about winning–or more specifically, snagging a spot in the NCAA men’s basketball finals. To casual fans, this might look like another sea of Huskies cheering on their favorite team, but insiders would know UConn superfan Big Red anywhere, who helped inspire school spirit during his tenure in the 90s and is still buoying the team in the stands today. The Reel rocked a 31% engagement rate and more than 38K engagements, with fans jumping into the comments to both express their excitement about their team’s success and shower praise upon Big Red for his continued support of the team.

If Big Red is the Huskies’ biggest fans, new mascot Jonathan XV is the smallest (but cutest!). UConn revealed their latest mascot with this adorable Reel that earned an impressive 24% engagement rate. The school was all about the puppy content this year, with this top-performing Reel bringing fans to the comments to share their excitement and ask how they could snag a chance to meet the newest member of the pack. UConn’s content featured Jonathan XV consistently throughout the school year to hype him up, while of course honoring his predecessor’s retirement.

The takeaway? If you have a cute mascot, you probably can’t tell your fans about it enough.

While we’re on the topic of mini-campaigns, there’s clearly a Swiftie behind this school’s winning Instagram feed. Some of UConn’s most engaging posts had a little Taylor to them, including this one showing off what campus looked like in 1989 complete with Taylor-themed hashtags. The carousel snagged an 11.6% engagement rate and more than 228K impressions, with alums commenting all about their memories of being at UConn in the 80s. This refreshing take on #TBT content was a fun way to throw it back while managing to ride the oh-so-modern Taylor wave of 2024.

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Top D1 Higher Education Institutions on Facebook

Big news for colleges and universities on Facebook: engagement actually increased this year to 0.24%, up from 0.19% last year. Schools are posting just about as frequently as last year with 6.4 posts per week, or just under one post per day.

University of Iowa grabbed its preferred #1 spot on Facebook again this year, with Georgia Tech falling from first to third and James Madison University elbowing its way into 2nd. Overall top 10 finishers Colorado State Univeristy and University of South Carolina also earned a coveted spot in the Facebook top 10. Big ups to Alabama A&M University, South Carolina State University, Grambling State University, Mississippi Valley State University, Longwood University, and University of West Georgia all managed to break into the Facebook top 10 this year .

Featured school: University of Iowa

Readers familiar with past versions of this report won’t be surprised to see the University of Iowa dominating, but we can bet you will be shocked to see they’ve fallen out of the top 10 for the first time since we started writing this report seven years ago. Iowa is one of the states that banned TikTok for state-run agencies including universities, which has to be devastating for the Hawkeyes who came in first overall and 35th on TikTok last year.

Iowa still has plenty to be proud of on social, including coming in first overall on Facebook yet again. The Hawkeyes earned 10x the total engagement of their average competitor and 4.6x the engagement rate thanks to stellar content and more than a few mentions of beloved women’s basketball player Caitlin Clark. Iowa was all about sports content this year, which is no surprise for a record-breaking year of playing ball.

When 9 out of 10 of your top Facebook posts by engagement rate are about superstar Caitlin Clark, you know your social media team is onto something. Clark dominated both the court and Hawkeye social media this year, with celebrations and tributes to the star all season long, including this one about how she’s inspiring basketball fans young and old with her incredible talent. The tear-jerking video earned an eye-popping 19.1% engagement rate and nearly 4 million estimated impressions as fans engaged any way they could with their favorite player. Not every school has a phenom like Clark to feature, but telling the stories behind players to help fans connect off the field is a surefire strategy every time.

Are you even on Hawkeye social media if you don’t see the famous Wave featured at least once? This beloved campus tradition features fans and players taking a break from the big game to wave at kids and families receiving treatment at the renowned children’s hospital that overlooks the stadium and remains a staple of Hawkeye goodwill on and off the field. The post rocked a 3.18% engagement rate, which is about 13x the Higher Education Facebook median this year. Connecting off-campus fans to tried-and-true campus traditions helps keep school spirit alive (and results in epic engagement).

If you only looked at the top 20 most engaging Facebook posts by rate in the University of Iowa feed, you might think all of campus life takes place on the basketball court or the football field, but snowy photos like this one will help you remember you’re in Iowa. This beautiful snowy carousel of campus life in the winter earned a 4.7% engagement rate and three quarters of a million impressions, with tons of alumni talking about their snowiest campus walks ever in the comments (and, okay, more than a few were stoked to be residing in warmer climes).

Top D1 Higher Education Institutions on Twitter

George Mason University ran away with the win on Twitter this year, which is an impressive glow-up from 38th last year. University of Iowa grabbed the silver for the second year in a row, and first-place overall winner University of South Carolina snagged the bronze. James Madison University was the only other school to reprise its role in the Twitter top 10, with the U.S. Military Academy, Alabama A&M University, University of Nebraska (Lincoln), University of Nevada (Las Vegas), Jackson State University, and Morgan State University all upsetting last year’s Twitter top 10 in a big way.

Engagement rates on Twitter signify more good news for Higher Education social media marketers, with a 16% increase from last year to 0.07%. Schools kept their tweet frequency about the same at one tweet per day on average.

Featured school: James Madison University

James Madison University’s consistently stellar social presence has landed them in our top 10 for several years running. The Dukes finished in the top 10 on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, but we’re going to hone in on their 4th place Twitter finish that shows other schools how it’s done. JMU moved up from 10th to 4th on Twitter this year by cracking the code on balancing campus glamour shots, school traditions, and more than a little D1 rivalry. The Dukes can brag about earning three times the engagement total and engagement rate of their average D1 competitor despite similar follower counts and tweets per week, proving they’re working smarter not harder than their peers.

We’re just gonna say it: nobody does campus glamour shots like JMU. Many colleges and universities employ talented photographers who help keep their social media feeds feeling fresh, but JMU combines unique vantage points, stunning skies, and more than a few lens flares for the ultimate in eye-catching content. This photo tweet featuring 26,000 fans in the JMU quad earned a 3.9% engagement rate and more than 100K impressions, proving that JMU seamlessly translates their visual content to more text-heavy channels like Twitter.

JMU’s marching band the Marching Royal Dukes are a force to be reckoned with as seen in this video tweet that garnered an impressive 2.9% engagement rate, which is more than 40x the D1 competitor average. JMUMRD helped fans on and off campus get ready for the College Game Day broadcast, which translates to seriously high-profile coverage from ESPN for top college sports teams like the Dukes. A special vantage point above the event captured the excitement and enticed alumni and parents off campus to tune in and follow along on Twitter as well.

JMU always puts a ton of stock in campus traditions like the annual Quad Lighting on their social feeds, and this top-performing tweet celebrating the tradition’s 40th anniversary is no exception. The video tweet featuring JMU’s signature purple washing over the Quad earned an impressive 1.09% engagement rate and more than 20K impressions thanks to stunning visuals and more than a little campus coziness. Tweets about beloved campus traditions like this help bring far-flung alumni or JMU parents who weren’t able to attend right to the action.

Top D1 Higher Education Institutions on TikTok

It was a weird year for colleges and universities on TikTok, with several states around the country banning TikTok on state-funded campuses including state universities (with more than a few schools defying the ban). There’s a strong mix of colleges that have gone all in on TikTok and schools that don’t even have their TikTok handle reserved (note: we highly recommend reserving your school’s TikTok handle if you haven’t yet). As Higher Ed social media continues to target the next generation, going where they hang out is more important than ever, so TikTok remains a huge player in this industry.

Overall winner University of South Carolina, Columbia finished first on TikTok, narrowly beating out Temple University and Pennsylvania State University for the top spot. The Ohio State University was the only other overall top 10 school in the TikTok top 10. The rest of the TikTok top 10 was all-new from last year, with University of Alabama, University of Michigan, Northeastern University, Boston College, Auburn University, and Bryant University busting onto the scene (and FYP) with style.

The median TikTok engagement rate by view for Higher Education dropped just 6% this year to 4.75%, while schools posted about as often as last year at 1 video per week. These engagement rates still dramatically outpace other channels, so it’s a good bet that TikTok will remain hyper-relevant for colleges and universities into the next school year and beyond.

Featured school: The Ohio State University

The Buckeyes are at it again, moving up from 12th place overall last year to 9th this year thanks in part to a stellar TikTok record. The Ohio State University nailed the right mix of Buckeye pride, big sports wins, and touching behind-the-scenes campus happenings. How do we know they nailed it? More than 10x the total engagement of their average competitor and 3x the engagement rate by view. Combine that with an above-average number of videos per week and 20x (!) the followers gives other schools plenty to aspire to on TikTok.

The Buckeyes’ most engaging post by view earned an impressive 13.9% engagement rate by view, which is about 3x the competitor average. Non-Buckeyes might look at the plethora of emojis throughout Ohio State’s TikTok feed and wonder what’s going on, but any Buckeye will know the school would rather do just about anything than feature an M for archrival Michigan State anywhere on campus. OSU goes so far as to cover every M on a campus building with red tape every year for Beat Michigan Week, and the Buckeye social media team was sure to do the same throughout the year. The dedication to the emoji (seen in this post as The Gae instead of The Game) helped fan the flames of the rivalry for fans on and off campus.

While we’re on the topic of “obscure OSU campus traditions,” TBDBITL, or “The Best Damn Band in the Land,” also dominated OSU’s TikTok feed this year. Is there anything more fun than video compilation of a superb marching band trolling their rival? Fans ate up the video to the tune of more than 1.5 million views and an impressive 11.1% engagement rate. They also jumped into the comments to dunk on Michigan, wish OSU well, and even used TikTok a little like Twitter for conversations about big games in real time. Marching bands are a consistent content machine for colleges and universities, and OSU’s band is one of the best.

Slices of campus life can be a powerful way for schools to connect with alumni and parents hoping for a glimpse of the Buckeye spirit, and this video tribute to dads who helped with campus move-in grabbed a ton of attention in the OSU feed. The video earned a 6.52% engagement rate by view and oodles of comments from OSU alums and current parents bragging about how helpful their own dads were during their move-ins. Heartwarming content like this can help break up the sports-heavy TikTok feeds that are especially prevalent at D1 schools.

Top D2 Overall Higher Education Institutions on Social

The D2 rankings held more than a few shakeups this year, but fans of this report a few years running won’t be surprised to see the winner’s podium comprising Carson-Newman University, Michigan Technological University, and Southern Connecticut State University all reprising their top 10 finishes from last year. Angelo State University was bumped from 1st to 5th after falling victim to the Texas TikTok ban. The rest of the top 10 was all new, though: Harding University, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Morehouse College, Texas Woman’s University, Assumption University, and Virginia State University all climbed the ranks in a major way this year. Congrats to all the D2 schools for another strong school year in spite of TikTok bans, algorithm changes, and the constant need to stay one step ahead on TikTok trends.

Top D2 school: Carson-Newman University

It was a big year for Carson-Newman University, who managed to clinch the overall D2 gold after narrowly missing it by just one rank last year. C-N is a top performer consistently across all four channels, which is critical for grabbing the gold. Last year’s top D2 school also had tons of top 30 ranks to brag about without actually winning outright on any one channel. Consistently knowing your audience on every channel is a stronger overall strategy than being really great on one channel (at least for the purposes of this report), and nobody does it like the Eagles.

Famous alums can help grab attention from folks online who might not be familiar with your school in particular, and is there a more famous alum than Dolly Parton? The Instagram photo post earned a 15% engagement rate by follower and more than 22K estimated impressions, reaching far beyond C-N’s follower list. C-N posts less frequently on Instagram than the median D2 school with nearly 2x the engagement rates, suggesting they’re making the most of their efforts on what is arguably Higher Education social media’s most essential channel.

Winning and graduation photos always play well on social, and this Facebook link post combining both is no exception. With an awe-inspiring 4.22% engagement rate and more than 50K estimated impressions, the C-N community turned out to congratulate the school on being accorded a big honor from the Princeton Review. Many schools we studied made the most of awards like this on social, never missing a chance to brag about having the most beautiful campus or being the best in their region like Carson-Newman. Winning can look like all sorts of things for colleges and universities, but the best of ‘em on social never fail to include all the big campus wins in their social feeds.

Footage from C-N’s summer baptism of Eagle footballers topped the charts for engagement on all four channels, very much including this TikTok video with a 15.4% engagement rate by view and nearly 10K engagements. Fans flooded (no pun intended) the comments to offer their excitement, with the video reaching far beyond C-N’s modest follower count to officially achieve viral status. Carson-Newman’s social feeds saw consistent success with religious-themed posting like this, which is a great example of working within your niche. Religious content doesn’t work at all schools, but this joyful baptism clearly resonated with C-N’s followers.

C-N’s strongest channel in our rankings was Twitter, where the Eagles beat out hundreds of other D2 schools to grab 6th. Tweets about campus happenings like a new head football coach (not to mention football content in general) helped the Eagles soar on Twitter, grabbing a 4.76% engagement rate and more than 32K impressions. Updates like this one can take just a few minutes to put together but help connect those off campus with major events and updates.

Top D2 Higher Education Institutions on Instagram

Congrats to Cedarville University and Bemidji State University for tying for first on Instagram this year, narrowly beating out Valdosta State University for the top spot. University of New Haven and Southern Connecticut State University stayed in the top 10 from last year, but Lee University, University of North Georgia, Western Colorado University, University of Texas (Permian Basin), and Texas Woman’s University were all new to the Instagram top 10.

D2 schools rocked a 3.02% median engagement rate on Instagram this year, which is a very slight uptick from last year. Colleges and universities posted about 4 times per week, or about every other day. These numbers are quite similar to D2 numbers last year, suggesting engagement and posting frequency are keeping steady–always good news for Higher Education social media marketers.

Featured school: Texas Woman’s University

Texas Woman’s University had a huge year on social, going from 54th in our 2023 rankings to 8th this year. Instagram has always been their strongest channel, but the Pioneers still managed to jump from 21st to 8th on arguably the most relevant channel for Higher Ed social media. This co-ed university earned 2.5x the engagement total and 50% higher engagement rates than their average D2 competitor by making their Instagram feed feel up close and personal for followers both on and off campus.

TWU made strong use of carousels this year to show off campus happenings like funny and heartfelt graduation caps, and followers ate it up to the tune of a 16.5% engagement rate, which is nearly 6x the D2 median. Thanks to graduates’ cleverness and more than a few Taylor Swift references, followers hopped into the comments to congratulate students and ask for more. In an era where Reels reign supreme, this post is a good reminder that carousels can still resonate strongly with followers with the right content.

Did you even live through summer 2023 without at least one Barbie movie reference in your Instagram feed? TWU jumped on the bandwagon with the Barbie-fication of campus landmark Hubbarb Hall, and fans loved it. The photo post rocked a 14% engagement rate and more than 41K estimated impressions, with fans dropping their impressions of the Barbie movie or favorite memories from their time in Hubbard Hall in the comments. Creativity can go a long way toward social media success even without a huge production budget or scripted Reel, so don’t be afraid to match your own famous campus landmarks with the latest trend or movie.

The Pioneers also found oodles of success with day in the life Reels like this one featuring TWU junior Lizette. The Reel earned an impressive 11.5% engagement rate and more than a few encouraging comments from Lizette superfans. User-generated content (UGC) is relevant in any industry, but with Higher Education social media needing to constantly pivot as the latest generation rises to college age, having your target audience create your content is always a good idea. TWU had a number of high-flying videos like this in its Instagram feed this year, and we can bet their TikTok feed would’ve been filled with them as well if Texas hadn’t banned all state universities from TikTok .

Top D2 Higher Education Institutions on Facebook

D2 schools pulled off yet another engagement rate increase this year on Facebook, coming in hot at 0.4% over last year’s 0.29% finish. Schools are posting just as frequently as they were last year at about 5.4 posts per week, which is more than they post on any other channel.

Point Loma Nazarene University clinched the gold after finishing second last year. University of Nebraska at Kearney slipped into second and Virginia State University hung onto the bronze for the second year in a row. Albany State University (Georgia), Morehouse College, and Angelo State University all repeated their finishes squarely in the top 10, while Elizabeth City State University, Miles College, and Wayne State College (Nebraska) broke in as newbies.

Featured school: Angelo State University

The Angelo State Rams are a social media powerhouse year after year and consistently dominate on Facebook, moving up to 7th after last year’s 10th place finish. Angelo State posted about half as often as the median D2 school with more than 2x the engagement total and engagement rate by follower, indicating the Rams are prioritizing quality over quantity. Rams fans love a win, and Angelo State delivers that year after year, with a big football win propelling them to social media fame last year and an epic baseball win exciting Rams fans everywhere this year.

Winning is such a consistent theme in Higher Education social media, and the Rams’ victory in the baseball National Championship definitely won big with Angelo State’s Facebook followers. The photo post announcing the win earned an eye-popping 14.7% engagement rate, which is more than 35x the D2 Facebook median engagement rate. The photo post also earned nearly 300K estimated impressions and hundreds of comments from Rams fans wishing the team well. You don’t have to pull off a win on this scale to rustle up engagement like this (though it sure helps)–finding small wins around campus can be just as powerful for current students and alumni alike.

Angelo State has cracked a code that almost no one else manages to pull off: finding consistent engagement with link posts on Facebook. The post about being named one of the nation’s best colleges by the Princeton Review excited fans to the tune of a 9.32% engagement rate and more than 220K estimated impressions to reach way more than Angelo State’s 34K followers.

60% of Angelo State’s Facebook posts were links including this top performer, which is fairly surprising for a channel that traditionally hates when posters send their followers off-site. It’s worth noting that photo posts earned 2x the engagement rate as link posts for Angelo State, should they wish to widen their lead on Facebook even more next year.

Angelo State regularly vies for the prettiest campus glamour shots (we’re looking at you, James Madison University) like in this stunning vantage after a spring thunderstorm. The shot of Angelo State’s iconic belltower with a backdrop of thunderclouds dazzled fans to the tune of a 2.85% engagement rate and nearly 900 reactions. Knowing where and when your campus looks most enticing buoys many of the top D1 and D2 schools on social, and Angelo State definitely knows its angles. No budget for a staff photographer? Don’t be afraid to pull UGC or even run a contest to generate student-shot photos to inject new flavor into your school’s Facebook feed.

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Top D2 Higher Education Institutions on Twitter

Top marks to the University of Nebraska at Kearney for moving from third to first on Twitter this year, knocking back Virginia State University to second place. Johnson C. Smith University also moved from 6th to 3rd this year to round out the winner’s podium.

There were lots of other familiar faces in the Twitter top 10 from Morehouse College to Carson-Newman University to Bowie State University. Limestone University, Fort Valley State University, Colorado School of Mines, and Delta State University should all be proud of their top 10 finishes, which represent moving up the ranks in a big way.

D2 schools rocked an average engagement rate of 0.09% on Twitter this year and tweeted about three times per week, or every other day. Both of these represent a very small dip from last year, but engagement and tweeting frequency are basically flat in Higher Ed. It’s worth mentioning that schools are seeing engagement totals orders of magnitude lower on Twitter than on any other channel we studied, suggesting colleges and universities are putting less effort into content and engagement on Twitter. There are still plenty of impressive campaigns and strategies to profile on Twitter in spite of these smaller engagement numbers, though.

Featured school: University of Nebraska at Kearney

Between snagging the gold on Twitter and their second-place Facebook finish, an overall top 10 spot was a foregone conclusion for University of Nebraska at Kearney. UNK invests consistently in its Twitter content, and those efforts have definitely paid off. The Kearney Lopers had about the same number of followers as their average competitor, but tweeted about twice as often and earned 10x the engagement total and 4.5x the engagement rate–impressive stats to be sure.

UNK boasted the top tweet by engagement rate of any D2 school last year featuring Kearney alum and pro wrestler George “Tyrus” Murdoch’s big return to campus. We mentioned the success of this campaign in our top trends section up above, but it was so engaging across all of UNK’s channels that it’s worth dissecting further. The video earned more than 194K views and an incredible 87.5% engagement rate, suggesting strong virality that reached far beyond UNK’s followers. Everyone loves a heartwarming redemption arc, and Tyrus’ story about the impact Kearney had on him as a young man brought everyone in the room and UNK’s Twitter feed alike to tears. Not every school has a famous wrestler alum, but finding the unique and occasionally tearjerking stories about your school’s impact on its students is an important engagement strategy for any Higher Education social media marketer.

Speaking of epic brags, UNK set a new world record for the largest attendance at a women’s sporting event this year thanks to the Kearney community’s rabid support of all things volleyball. Setting the women’s sporting event attendance record was a HUGE deal, and UNK made sure to shout it from the rooftops. The video tweet showed off the full stadium’s reaction to setting the record in real-time and helped fans at home be a part of the excitement as well. With more than 6K views and an impressive 3.74% engagement rate, UNK’s social media team knows how to be in the right place at the right time and curate on-campus moments for their fans and followers. Video tweets earned about 4x the engagement of any other tweet type for UNK and were a strong focus for the Loper social media team this year, which definitely paid off.

In another top-notch video tweet, UNK wasn’t afraid to get a little playful even outside of April Fool’s Day with a little help from AI to reimagine campus as one giant interconnected bounce house. The short clip reached far beyond Kearney’s Twitter follower count and earned a 1.11% engagement rate. Some of Kearney’s other super-successful tweets this year involved a secret sauce that not every college can replicate, but the success of this fun and funny tweet is within reach for anyone with a ChatGPT login.

Top D2 Higher Education Institutions on TikTok

Southwest Minnesota State University went from 64th last year to 1st this year on TikTok to snag our channel gold. Slippery Rock University moved from 13th to 2nd on TikTok while Elizabeth City State University maintained its bronze for the second year in a row. Southern Connecticut State University, University of Tampa, University of Minnesota Duluth all hung onto their TikTok top 10 spots from last year as well, while Valdosta State University, Cedarville University, Pittsburgh State University, and Shepherd University were all fresh on the top 10 scene this year.

TikTok engagement rates by view for D2 schools stayed basically flat at 3.69% compared to 3.86% in 2023. Schools are posting just as (in)frequently as they were last year at around two videos per month.

Featured school: Southern Connecticut State University

Southern Connecticut State University was a force to be reckoned with on TikTok this year, and their 4th place finish on this channel was no surprise. With twice the followers, 18x the videos, 23x the engagement total, and 14x the views as their average D2 competitor, it’s safe to say the Owls knocked it out of the park on nearly every metric we studied. With fresh takes on content and doubling their videos per week over the course of the school year, SCSU is one to watch for Higher Education TikTok inspo.

Sure, it’s cool to get a sitting U.S. President to speak at your commencement (we’re looking at you, Morehouse College), but sometimes a Gen Z icon can bring down the house just as hard. SCSU invited Disney channel alum Corbin Bleu to speak at graduation, and the actor dropped the mic with more than a few High School Musical references. Southern Connecticut’s TikTok feed is filled with clips from Bleu’s speech including this one, which earned an incredible 20.3% engagement rate by view and nearly a million views. Securing an awesome graduation speaker is only half the battle for colleges and universities, and SCSU was up to the challenge of making the most of the actor’s speech on social, especially TikTok.

Every school has graduation videos in their TikTok feed, but can you boast a graduation engagement? SCSU upped the ante this year with this heartwarming video of two undergraduates promising to tie the knot in their caps and gowns. The video rocked a 19.6% engagement rate by view, which is about 5x the D2 median. Fans and followers commented on the post with their congratulations and more than a few tears.

Finding unique ways to represent annual events on campus like move-in and graduation can be tough, but SCSU definitely cracked the code with this post.

From graduation proposals to 4th graders wishing SCSU students good luck during finals week, Southern Connecticut State University was all about the heartwarming (and occasionally tear-jerking) content on TikTok this year. New Haven nine-year-olds penned encouraging notes to stressed Owls and took the time to bundle up and hand them out on campus, bringing more than a little holiday cheer during finals week. The video touched the hearts and minds of Owls everywhere, resulting in a 14% engagement rate by view and more than 12K views. Community-focused content like this can bolster connection to fans on and off campus while bringing in mondo engagement and represents true Higher Education social media creativity.

Live Higher Education Social Media Benchmarks

Comparing your school’s social performance has never been easier. Browse our D1 and D2 live benchmarks for a real-time look at top Higher Education posts, engagement rates, high-performing hashtags, and tons more. You can even add these benchmarks directly into your Rival IQ account for always-on monitoring of these top schools.

Need even more competitive analytics? Go head-to-head with a free report on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to see how you stack up against your top competition. See what makes your competitors tick with key insights and actionable advice you can start using now to come out on top.

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Methodology

We surveyed all D1 and D2 colleges and universities on social media between June 1, 2023 and May 31, 2024 on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Using this data and a weighted formula, we generated an overall engagement ranking for each school. The top-ranked colleges and universities on social media have high engagement rates with average or better audience size and posting volumes.

We define engagement as measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. We used engagement rate by follower to measure engagement on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of followers. We used engagement rate by view to measure engagement on TikTok, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of views.

Please note: If you haven’t grabbed your school’s TikTok handle yet, consider doing so now even if you’re not ready to post there yet. There are a ton of imposters on TikTok snapping up handles, and we’d hate to see you struggle for a handle that matches your university’s brand by waiting too long.

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The case for benchmarking in Higher Education social media

Why benchmark instead of just measuring how your school’s individual performance changes over time? Because social success is relative. Benchmarking means figuring out what’s working (and what isn’t) in your industry and measuring your success against that.

It’s crucial to go beyond likes and favorites because audience size is hugely important: 100 likes is great engagement for a college or university with 1,000 followers but is a drop in the bucket to a school with 100,000 followers. Engagement rate helps us take audience size into account to see who’s really reaching the highest percentage of their fans and followers with their social posts, which are the schools you need to beat.

Wrapping it up

Congrats to all the D1 and D2 schools rocking it on Higher Education social media this year! We love seeing HESM trends change over time and secretly relish shake-ups in the rankings, and can’t wait to see what colleges and universities get up to next year.

Want to continue the #HESM conversation? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter!

The post 2024 Higher Education Social Media Engagement Report appeared first on Rival IQ.

Peep the most essential TikTok benchmarks like engagement rate by follower AND view, hashtags, follower count growth over time, mentions, and so much more. And don’t miss profiles from brands leading the pack to inspire your next viral video.

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Key TikTok Benchmarking Takeaways

TikTok is (still) out-engaging other channels.

Median brands are earning an average eng. rate per follower of 2.6% on TikTok, which is 4x Instagram and way, way more than Facebook and Twitter.

Follower counts are growing, with mid-sized accounts growing fastest.

Accounts with between 10-50k followers are seeing the most follower growth month over month, but brands of all sizes are consistently adding to their follower counts.

Higher Ed, Travel, and Sports Teams rock.

These industries earned top engagement across multiple metrics, which isn’t too surprising since they dominate on other channels too.

TikTok posting is on the rise.

Brands are averaging about 2 videos per week on TikTok, which is a little up from last year but still less than the average frequency on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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TikTok Videos per Week

It can be hard to know how often your brand should be posting on social media, but figuring out the posting frequency that works best for your followers really matters. Benchmarking your brand’s TikTok posting frequency against your competitors and brands of a similar size is the best way to figure out how many videos per week you should be aiming to post.

TikTok Videos per Week: Distribution

The average brand in this study publishes about 2 videos per week, or about 8 per month.

• The top 25% most active brands published videos at least 4 times per week on average.
• A full 30% of brands publish less than once a week.

Creating compelling videos for TikTok is definitely an investment for brands. The median posting frequency here is less than half of what we see for Instagram posts in our annual social media benchmark report.

TikTok Videos per Week: Account Size

The larger your account, the more likely you are to publish more frequently.

• The smallest bin we studied (0K-5K followers) averaged about 1 video per week.
• Accounts with 1M+ followers post 6 or more times per week.

Having more followers doesn’t necessarily make you post more, but it’s unsurprising that larger accounts invest more energy into their content.

TikTok Videos per Week: Industries

There’s a wide range of frequencies as we examine posting behavior by industry.

• Media brands top the charts with the average brand posting more than four times per week.
• The least active industries, Financial Services and Alcohol, publish about once a week.

Media and Health & Beauty consistently post the highest volume of content across every channel we study, so it’s no surprise that they’re frequent posters on TikTok too.

Most industries are posting less often on TikTok than on Instagram.

Engagement Rate by View

We think Engagement Rate by View on TikTok is one of the best measures of a video’s quality because it measures whether your content moved them to action. Counting the number of times a viewer liked, commented, or shared and dividing it by the overall number of views indicates just how compelling your content was. If your video wasn’t high-quality, viewers will be less likely to engage with it, and therefore you’ll earn a smaller engagement rate per view. If your video attracted attention, viewers will be more likely to take the extra step of engagement before swiping to the next video.

Engagement Rate by View: Distribution

The average brand in our study earns an engagement rate by view of 3.4%.

• Just 6% of brands earn double-digit percentages for engagement rate by view.
• Low engagement rates by view are an indication that boosting is a substantial part of the reach for a video. About 22% of brands average less than 2% across all their videos, suggesting they’re boosting an appreciable portion of their videos.

Engagement rate by view is a roughly comparable metric to engagement per impression that we see on other platforms like Instagram. In our most recent Instagram report, we noted that brands have been consistently earning a 5% engagement per impression.

Engagement Rate by View: Account Size

Mid-sized accounts see the smallest engagement rates by view.

• Brands with 1M+ followers have an average of 6% eng. rate per view, about 50% higher than brands in the 10K – 50K range.
• Accounts with fewer than 10K followers earned engagement rates by view closer to 3%, or half that of their big-follower brethren.

Given the strong role that the FYP algorithm plays in the world of TikTok, it isn’t surprising to see a positive correlation between account size and engagement rate by view.

Engagement Rate by View: Industries

Sports Teams, Nonprofits, and Influencers top the charts when it comes to highly engaging content.

• The Sports Teams in this report average an eye-popping 9% engagement rate by view, down from 11% last year.
• On the low end, Food & Beverage, Home Decor, and Financial Services brands are all below the report-wide average of 3.4%.

Sports Teams and Nonprofits consistently top the charts when it comes to engaging content, so it’s no surprise to see them rocking it on TikTok. While Influencers aren’t a hit on every channel, they’ve certainly cracked the TikTok code this year.

Engagement Rate by View Standout Performer: NYT Cooking and Food

Food and TikTok go hand-in-hand, with snappy recipe how-tos and food reviews topping the engagement charts. NYT Cooking and Food cooks up a delicious mix of food reporting, recipe videos, and repurposing content from their video-focused online presence. The lifestyle brand earned a 5.87% engagement rate per view, which is nearly double the median brand on TikTok this year.

Behind-the-scenes videos worked especially well for NYT this year, with videos about a supersized wonton shop or touring a cookie cutter factory earning killer engagement rates per view.

Views per Follower

TikTok’s For You Page changed the game by emphasizing content the algorithm thinks you’ll like over content from creators you follow. As a result, it’s important for brands to measure how both followers and non-followers are engaging with their content. Benchmarking your brand’s views against your followers is a useful engagement metric for understanding how your views stack up against your follower count.

The average brand in our study earns about 12.8 views per 100 followers on each video they post.

• Though most brands don’t achieve at such a high rate, the top 25% of brands earn more than 35 views per 100 followers per video on average.
• On the low end, more than 40% of brands earn fewer than 10 views per 100 followers, on average.

Even though the FYP drives tons of views on TikTok, we think it’s also useful to benchmark how many views an account will achieve, on average, as a function of followers.

Views per Follower: Account Size

The larger the number of followers, the lower the views per follower.

• Accounts with fewer than 5,000 followers average about 43 views per 100 followers on each video.
• That ratio decreases with accounts between 200,000 and 1 million followers averaging just 4 views per 100 followers on each video.

It isn’t surprising to see that views per follower decline, on average, as accounts grow in size. This dynamic is one that we also see on other platforms like Instagram. Smaller accounts tend to post less frequently, which also helps increase the views on each individual video.

Views per Follower: Industries

Higher Education, Travel, and Sports Teams top the list of industries earning views per follower.

• Home Decor, Retail, and Tech & Software brands land towards the middle of the pack.
• Media brands and Influencers lag behind the cross-industry median, earning about 6% on average.

Higher Education and Sports Teams perform well consistently across the channels we study, so it’s no surprise they stand out on TikTok as well.

Travel brands make the most of video-forward TikTok, helping potential travelers feel like they’re on vacation with their videos to rake in the views.

Views per Follower Standout Performer: Emporia State University

Emporia State University earned an impressive 96 views per follower last year, which is about 7x the median. The Kansas-based D2 school also performed well in our latest Higher Education Social Media Report thanks to a small but mighty following and high-quality videos that resonated with followers.

Emporia’s TikTok channel was all about fun videos showing a slice of campus life or big announcements like in-state tuition for all (yes, they borrowed Oprah for that one). Finding the right balance between playful and informational videos served the university well on TikTok.

Want to see what other top colleges and universities are up to on TikTok? Peep our Higher Education Social Media Engagement Report for the latest.

Engagement Rate by Follower

If you’ve ever read a Rival IQ benchmark report before, you won’t be surprised to see one of our favorite metrics, engagement rate by follower, on the scene. Engagement rate by follower helps users control for audience size when measuring engagements on social. It’s crucial to go beyond engagement total because audience size is hugely important: 200 likes is great engagement for a brand with 2,000 followers but is a drop in the bucket to a brand with 200,000 followers.

Engagement Rate by Follower: Distribution

On a per-video basis, the eng. rate by follower for the median brand comes in at 2.6%.

• About 20% of brands earn an engagement rate by follower of 8% or more.
• On the lower side, nearly half of the brands we studied averaged an engagement rate of less than 2%.

TikTok engagement rates by follower outpace the next most engaging channel, Instagram, but about 4x (and don’t get us started on Facebook and Twitter).

Engagement Rate by Follower: Account Size

Brands with larger accounts see lower engagement rates by follower on average.

• Accounts with fewer than 50K followers see their average engagement rates come in around 3%.
• Larger accounts with more than 1 million followers see their per-video average engagement per follower come in just under 2%.

As we saw in the previous section, larger accounts tend to earn fewer views per follower, and that lower reach will contribute to lower engagement rates by follower.

Engagement Rate by Follower: Industries

Higher Education and Sports Teams top the list for engagement rate by follower with performance well beyond the cross-industry average.

• Food & Beverage, with an average engagement rate of 4%, round out the top three industries.
• Health & Beauty and Fashion brands perform well below the cross-industry average.

Higher Education blows other industries out of the park when it comes to engagement rate by follower thanks to engaged fans and top-quality content throughout the school year.

Engagement Rate by Follower Standout Performer: Phoenix Mercury

WNBA darlings the Phoenix Mercury knocked it out of the park (wait, wrong sport) on TikTok this year, averaging a whopping 42.4% engagement rate by follower and more than 20 million views per video. The Arizona-based team cracked fans up with behind-the-scenes glimpses of their favorite players, and weren’t afraid to get more than a little silly with videos of court dances or checking how tall players *really* are.

The Mercury was especially active on TikTok in the summer months and saw an engagement rate jump to match, reminding us that when the content is good, more is always more.

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Average Monthly Follower Growth

TikTok’s growth has been up and down over the last few years, so it’s useful for brands to measure their own growth to see if they’re increasing their audience size or not.

Across all account sizes, brands on TikTok are growing their followers at least 2% on a monthly basis.

• Smaller accounts with fewer than 50K followers are averaging monthly growth of more than 3%.
• Technically, accounts larger than 1M are growing at 1.9%, but who’s counting? (We are.)

We love to see accounts of all sizes continuing to grow month after month, year after year. There’s no surer sign of TikTok’s ongoing relevance.

Hashtags per Video

Brands love a hashtag to help increase the chance of landing on the coveted #FYP by telling viewers and the algorithm alike what their video is about.

Brands include about four hashtags per video on average.

• Brands lean towards fewer hashtags, with only about 40% of brands including 5 or more hashtags in their videos.
• 16% of brands include one or fewer hashtags in their videos.

Hashtags are a powerful way to land content in the all-important #FYP. Be sure to note your brand’s individual hashtag engagement to pick the right number of hashtags for your videos.

Videos with Mentions

Mentioning another handle in a video is a powerful way to amplify TikTok reach, whether it’s replying to a fan or trying to catch the attention of a favorite creator.

The average brand doesn’t mention other accounts very often, only in about 11% of their videos.

• Just 7% of brands include a mention in more than half of their videos.
• About 12% of brands never mention another account.

Mentions help non-followers find new videos that are related to brands and accounts they already love. These numbers suggest that brands are favoring original content over replies or mentions.

Brands that include mentions consistently (but not too often) tend to see higher per view engagement rates.

• Brands that use mentions in 10% or fewer of their videos have the highest per-view engagement rates.
• Brands that include mentions in more than 30% of their videos have the lowest engagement rates per view.

Like just about everything in life, mentions work best in moderation for brands on TikTok.

Videos with Mentions Standout Performer: ESPN

If you’re posting 22x the videos of your average competitor on TikTok and still rocking an 9.7% engagement rate by view, you must be doing something right, and ESPN definitely is. The media brand is an absolute content machine and earns millions of views on their sports-themed videos, never missing a highlight or touchdown.
ESPN mentions at least one other handle in nearly half of of their videos, suggesting they’ve figured out how to keep the conversation going on TikTokt. A big chunk of their successful videos with mentions were UGC, which helps explain how they had so much content to post.

TikTok Benchmark Methodology

Rival IQ analyzed over 374K TikTok videos posted between January and December 2023 to bring you insights for your 2024 marketing strategy.

We included over 2,000 handles that were active with posts in 2023 and a minimum of 1,000 followers. Handles were included only if we had all of their data for the entire time period, regardless of how frequently or infrequently they published TikTok videos. These handles reached across 14 different industries, including beauty, media, influencers, sports, higher education, and more.

TikTok Terms Glossary

We know there are many different ways to measure engagement, so here’s a quick round-up of all the TikTok benchmarking metrics we studied in this report and their definitions.

Engagement Rate by Follower: The average number of engagements per follower on a per-video basis.

Engagement Rate per View: The average number of engagements per view.

Engagement Total: The total number of interactions (likes, comments, and shares) on videos.

Hashtags per Video: The average number of hashtags on a per-video basis.

Monthly Follower Growth Rate: The average monthly growth rate over the report period.

Videos with Mentions: The percentage of a brand’s videos that include at least one mention of another account.

Videos per Week: The average number of videos a brand publishes per week.

Views per Follower: The average number of views per follower on a per-video basis.

Wrapping Up Our TikTok Benchmarks

Congrats to all the brands we surveyed and everyone out there fighting the good fight to create frequent and eye-catching video content on one of the most challenging social media channels. We love seeing a little growth, and hope your bosses do too if your channel is on the rise.

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We studied more beauty brands than ever before to bring you the top rankings, campaigns, brands, and of course social media benchmarks for all of your favorite beauty brands. Check in on brands like Rare Beauty, Fenty Beauty, Sol de Janeiro and so many more to see which brands are standing out on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

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Overall Top 10 Beauty Brands on Social Media

Rare Beauty won the overall gold for the second year while edging out second place Fenty Beauty for the second year in a row. Sol de Janeiro moved up a few spots to grab the bronze. Congrats to Glow Recipe, e.l.f. Cosmetics, and Charlotte Tilbury who moved up the ranks in a major way to break into the overall top 10. Huda Beauty, LANEIGE, OPI, and Glossier juggled spots a bit, but still managed to remain beauty social media royalty this year.

What does it take to land in our beauty social media top 10? Strong finishes on at least three channels had Rare Beauty, Fenty Beauty, Sol de Janeiro, Glow Recipe, and Huda Beauty sitting pretty. Other beauty brands stood out on one or two channels in a big way, but couldn’t quite manage the sweep. This mix of all-around champs and channel specialists is a good reminder for beauty brands that making content that resonates with your audience on the channels that matter most to them is the smartest strategy, even if it means investing less in channels that aren’t as relevant to your followers.

Top overall beauty brand: Rare Beauty

Selena Gomez’s Rare Beauty had a dynamite year (again!), grabbing first overall and the gold on three out of four channels we studied. Who would’ve thought the brand could top their killer finishes in last year’s report, but they somehow made it happen by moving up to first on both Instagram and TikTok (while dropping a spot to second on Twitter). The Rare Beauty team is consistent, strategic, engaging, and makes serious hay with content featuring the brand’s celeb founder.

Rare Beauty increased their Instagram ranking this year to snag the gold on this uber-important channel for beauty brands thanks to photo posts like this one featuring the founder herself. Followers loved seeing their favorite beauty founder all dolled up for big events like the VMAs in head-to-toe Rare Beauty (of course). The photo post earned an impressive 32% engagement rate by follower and had more than 33 million estimated impressions thanks to a right place, right time behind-the-scenes snap from someone on her glam squad.

With social media continuing to change year over year, many brands including Rare Beauty are leaning more into cross-promotion. This top-performing TIkTok featuring a quick clip of Gomez speaking directly to the camera cross-promoted YouTube in the caption. The video grabbed a 15.7% engagement rate while simultaneously driving already-devoted fans over to Rare Beauty’s YouTube channel for double the engagement fun. Beauty brands are keeping their ears to the ground on all things social media, and long-form content on channels like YouTube is undeniably on the rise.

Speaking of cross-promotion, Rare Beauty’s third most engaging post by rate on Facebook encouraged fans to hop over to TikTok for exclusive content from the brand’s Rare Impact Fund Benefit. Social channels have traditionally discouraged cross-promotion like this, preferring instead to keep users to themselves, but offering content followers can’t find anywhere else successfully tempted fans to engage with the post and head over to the clock app.

Anybody who spent even a minute on beauty social media this year will be familiar with Rare Beauty’s big release of their Tinted Lip Oil. This teasing tweet earned an impressive 6.95% engagement rate and more than a million impressions with nothing more than a close-up and the promise of something good to come. Beauty brands are some of the best out there at stirring up excitement for a fun new release, and Rare Beauty knows just how to do it.

Top Beauty Trend: Holidays

Holidays are a tried-and-true trend across a wide variety of industries for a reason: giving people a relatable reason to think about your brand or product, especially around gifting holidays like Christmas or Mother’s Day, is always a safe bet for brands.

Our Post Tag Analysis shows beauty brands saw a 2.14x engagement rate lift over the per-post average with a mention or shout-out of holidays throughout the year.

K-Beauty brand LANEIGE earned 7th overall and 8th on TikTok thanks to smart holiday videos like this one all about Valentine’s Day. The video earned a 10.1% engagement rate by view and more than 200K views by reminding followers that their pink product line would be a perfect gift for V-Day. The video is simple and low-tech, featuring a POV shot of LANEIGE products being wrapped. LANEIGE upped the engagement on the video by diligently replying to tons of comments on the video, reminding us that community management can really pay off for beauty brands.

Tower28 Beauty celebrated Lunar New Year with an enticing giveaway that engaged fans to the tune of a 26.3% engagement rate lift on Instagram. The easy-to-enter giveaway earned the brand tons of comments and new followers, and cross-promoting with trendy sweatshirt brand The Mayfair Group further upped the giveaway’s juice for the brand. Tying in giveaways and even product releases has worked for beauty brands for years and remains just as relevant as ever in 2024.

Top Beauty Trend: Contest and giveaways

Giveaways are a fantastic way to build your beauty brand’s following, re-engage a lackluster fanbase, and push out new products (or outdated ones) to your community. Contests and giveaways engender an engagement rate lift on all four channels we studied in this report for beauty brands and aren’t going away anytime soon.

Sol de Janeiro earned 3rd place overall and 3rd on Instagram thanks in part to giveaway posts like this one where followers entered for a chance to win a set of the brand’s all-time favorite products. The Instagram post rocked a 17.1% engagement rate and nearly 70K entries–and don’t even get us started on the nearly 6M estimated impressions. Many of SDJ’s top-performing posts by engagement rate featured a giveaway, and with those numbers, we can see why the brand holds contests so regularly.

Kim Kardashian’s relaunched beauty brand SKKN BY KIM landed in the 18th spot overall this year and 4th on Facebook thanks in part to posts like this anniversary giveaway. The contest celebrated the brand’s first year with a signed swag pack of tons of their fan-fave products. With nearly 40K views and an engagement rate more than 150x the beauty brand median on Facebook, it’s safe to say SKKN BY KIM knows how to celebrate a birthday.

Top Beauty Trend: Famous brand ambassadors

With Rare Beauty, Fenty Beauty, and Huda Beauty fighting for the top spot year after year, it’s no surprise that celebrity founders can lead to huge engagement rate boosts for beauty brands. But if your beauty brand isn’t blessed with a famous founder, you have options. Many beauty brands engaged with recognizable brand ambassadors from celebs to influencers to micro-influencers and beyond this year to bring cachet to their brands.

Arguably the most recognizable beauty ambassador today is Selena Gomez, repping for Rare Beauty. As we saw above, Rare Beauty grabbed the overall top spot thanks to Selena’s talent and enthusiasm. This TikTok in honor of the celeb’s birthday is an ode to all things Selena, featuring a few memorable moments with the celeb over the year. The video earned a 16.1% engagement rate by view and more than a million views thanks to Selena’s approachability, silliness, and love for fun.

Many of LANEIGE’s top posts by engagement rate featured beloved actress Sydney Sweeney, who’s been a steady part of the brand’s marketing for the better part of two years. Sweeney went global this year after promoting LANEIGE’s US-based brand, suggesting there’s something for everyone in the ongoing partnership. This behind-the-scenes Reel featuring a photoshoot for the brand’s latest moisturizer got fans talking and earned a staggering 124% engagement rate by follower. Not every celeb is right for every beauty brand, but when you can find the right one for your brand and nurture the relationship over time, the dividends can be huge.

Top Beauty Brands on Social: Instagram

Rare Beauty, we see you grabbing the Instagram gold out of Huda Beauty’s hands after being narrowly defeated last year. Sol de Janeiro moved up four spots to snag the bronze. Stalwarts LANEIGE, Glossier, OPI, and Fenty Beauty remained in the top 10, while Glow Recipe, Drunk Elephant, and Etude House edged out last year’s winners.

Beauty brands averaged an Instagram engagement rate of 0.14%, which is down 26% from last year’s 0.19% average. Nobody likes a decline, but it’s interesting to note that brands are posting just as frequently on Instagram as last year at around once per day.

Featured beauty brand: Huda Beauty

Celeb founders are everywhere in the beauty industry, but Huda Beauty’s social handles seem extra representative of famous founder Huda Kattan. The brand consistently stands out from more product-focused competitors thanks to posting that blurs the line between beauty brand and the person behind the account, especially this year with Huda’s focus on speaking up for Palestine. The brand averaged 8x more total engagement and engagement rate by follower than the average beauty brand we studied this year, which is no surprise with so much posting about a divisive and important topic. It’s also worth noting that Huda Beauty has twice as many followers on Instagram as the average beauty brand, suggesting that there’s a huge audience for Huda’s particular brand of posting.

Many of Huda Beauty’s most engaging posts by both total and rate were in support of Gaza and Palestine, and occasionally made no mention of beauty or the brand’s products whatsoever such as this one. The post earned a 14.1% engagement rate, which is 100x the engagement rate of the average Instagram beauty post this year. Brands across all industries make the hard choice every day about whether or not to wade into politics, injustice, and activism around the world. While many choose neutrality or opting out, Huda went all in with her support for Palestine this year, and engendered a ton of conversation among her followers.

Huda found lots of different ways to be an activist for Palestine, including posts like these that tied in beauty with the events in Gaza. This Reel grabbed an impressive 6.87% engagement rate and also generated a ton of UGC thanks to the #WatermelonBlush hashtag and request from Huda herself to see similarly-inspired looks. The comments on this post were of course filled with discourse and disagreement, but Huda’s consistent follower growth means the brand is still reaching many more people than it’s losing.

Longtime Huda Beauty followers will recognize posts like this that focus on the celeb’s family and personal life. This post wishing Huda’s sister Alya a happy birthday features the joyful Kattan family and more balloons than we could count and rocked an engagement rate of 6.32%, which is more than 45x the beauty median. Fans and well-wishers jumped into the comments to wish Alya a happy birthday. Huda’s mix of personal and professional is unique to the brand and stands out from what many other beauty brands are up to on social in 2024.

Top Beauty Brands on Social: TikTok

Rare Beauty takes the gold on TikTok this year after a second-place finish last year. 2023 TikTok winner Kylie Cosmetics didn’t make the TikTok top 10 this year, but Fenty Beauty, Huda Beauty, Sol de Janeiro, and LANEIGE all managed to repeat their strong finishes again this year. Patrick Ta, Glow Recipe, Etude House, e.l.f. Cosmetics, and Tower28 Beauty dethroned a few of the greats and broke into the TikTok top 10 this year.

Beauty brands earned a median engagement rate by view of 2.05% this year, which is about 30% lower than last year’s engagement rate by view of 2.94%. TikTok is still the most engaging channel for beauty brands by rate, and brands are investing in it at almost twice the rate of last year with about 4.5 videos per week.

Featured beauty brand: Fenty Beauty

Fenty absolutely crushes it on TikTok, and this year is no exception. Rihanna’s beauty brand went from third on TikTok to second this year with eye-watering successes like 10x the followers of the average beauty brand, 2x the videos, 28x the total engagement, and 7x the views. Fenty also had the most engaging TikTok in the landscape and a whopping 7 of 20 of the top videos by engagement total, which all adds up to absolute domination on TikTok. Videos featuring Rihanna were of course engagement juggernauts, especially after her 2023 Super Bowl appearance. Fans also ate up posts about sales, giveaways, and more than a few makeup tutorials.

This TikTok couldn’t be simpler: just a stop motion zoom in and out on a locker filled with Fenty’s famous Gloss Bomb. The video earned an impressive 22.3% engagement rate by view and more than 611K views thanks to a few key strategies. Re-releasing limited edition shades stirred up some serious excitement, as did pairing the re-release with a giveaway. Fenty is a consistent powerhouse in the world of beauty social media, but simple videos like this are a good reminder that you don’t need high production values to release valuable and engaging content to your followers.

Not every beauty brand enjoys product placement at the Super Bowl halftime show, but Fenty Beauty took the ball and ran with it, posting videos about Rihanna’s performance (and Fenty re-application mid-show) all year long. This video featuring fun behind-the-scenes footage rocked a 19.9% engagement rate by view, which is nearly 10x the beauty industry median this year. Fans loved getting to peek behind the curtain and jumped into the comments to call out their favorite Fenty shade or to spot their favorite beauty influencer Mikayla Nogueira.

Are you even on beauty social media if you’re not featuring BTS footage of your celeb founder getting ready for a big event in full glam? This quick video of Rihanna spraying more than her fair share of Fenty Parfum walked the line between behind-the-scenes and going full meme. The video earned a 15.5% engagement rate by view and more than 25 million (!) views as thousands of fans commented about everything from their love for RiRi to how many spritzes of perfume they prefer. Celeb founder content isn’t in reach for every beauty brand on social media, but brands like Fenty definitely make the most of it with videos like this.

Top Beauty Brands on Social: Facebook

Another day, another Rare Beauty win, with Sol de Janeiro hot on Selena’s brand’s heels once again. Mary Kay came in third, with a far stronger finish on Facebook than any of the other channels we studied this year. SKKN BY KIM and Fenty Beauty repeated finishes in the top 10 again, while The Lip Bar, Estée Lauder, NYX Cosmetics, Honest Beauty, and Glow Recipe shook up the Facebook rankings in a big way.

Engagement rates were just 0.02% on Facebook this year, which is down from 0.03% last year. Brands also halved their posting on this channel by posting just twice per week. Posting has halved consistently the last two years running, indicating Facebook is less relevant to beauty brands than it used to be.

Featured beauty brand: Sol de Janeiro

Sol de Janeiro moved up from 10th to 2nd this year on Facebook thanks in huge part to their small but mighty following. Their rabid fanbase ate up SDJ’s posts on Facebook this year, helping the brand earn 5x the engagement rate of their peers despite posting just a third as often. The skincare and fragrance brand was all about the new releases and product teases this year, which helped SDJ fans find room in their lives for yet another new scent or product.

This photo post revealing their newest scent earned an impressive 1.25% engagement rate, which is 75x the beauty median for the year. Fans were excited to inquire about where and when they could get their hands on the new scent, and also weren’t afraid of an excited “I need this now!” comment. SDJ releases new products consistently and finds plenty of fun and simple ways to hype up fans around the latest product drop.

SDJ’s Facebook followers are well-accustomed to getting their fragrance news directly from their News Feeds, which helps photo posts like this win big to the tune of a 0.83% engagement rate. The release of three new fragrances sent fans over the moon with excitement, and the post’s mouthwatering descriptions of the new products helped hype up already-excited followers. SDJ’s posts are often bright, colorful, and more than a little tropical to help fans get ready for the beach no matter the season, which helped stir up extra enthusiasm on this post as well.

With such a regular schedule of new product releases, Sol de Janeiro regularly teases new stuff online to keep fans guessing and to engender excitement leading up to the launch. This photo post was light on details but heavy on engagement, earning a 0.65% engagement rate and a 1.73x engagement rate lift over SDJ’s other posts in the time period. Taking the time to create a little hype is a strong strategy for any B2C brand, and SDJ found success with this strategy consistently all year long.

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Top Beauty Brands on Social: Twitter

Hold onto your hats, marketers: the median engagement rate (0.0%) AND median tweets per week (0.01) for beauty brands were both basically…0? A big fat goose egg? Nada? Does that mean beauty brands didn’t use Twitter at all this year? In short, no. We use medians because they’re a little more representative of the group as a whole than averages, so this technically means that more than half the beauty brands we studied didn’t tweet and earned next to no engagement on Twitter this year. Beauty brands that did tweet earned a 0.04% engagement rate, so pick the median that correlates best to your Twitter investment this year to compare your beauty brand’s performance to the industry as a whole.

Twitter has never been a huge focus for beauty brands, and this decreased investment is part of a larger cross-industry trend, with Twitter usage down about 15% worldwide. Engagement rates were just 0.02% last year with brands tweeting less than once per day last year, which was still far below other channels.

Even though Twitter might feel anomalous, there’s still lots of strong beauty strategy happening on this channel. Let’s get into some of the best.

Etude House won the day on Twitter this year but didn’t actually manage a spot in the overall top 10. Rare Beauty and Huda Beauty continued to dominate, with other overall top 10 finishers Fenty Beauty and Glossier hot on their heels. Brands like Dove, ColourPop, Sulwhasoo, Topicals, and SKKN BY KIM finished strong on Twitter, but lagged a bit on other channels.

Featured beauty brand: Etude House

Etude House has been a regular Twitter player in the beauty space for years now, but finally managed to snag the gold this year thanks to consistent posting, strategic collabs, and a light, customer-centric touch. The K-Beauty brand earned 20x the engagement total and 12x the engagement rate of the median beauty brand, which is especially impressive considering they have just a quarter of the followers. Etude House offers a masterclass in unassuming, but customer-focused tweets that other beauty brands should definitely take note of.

This launch of Etude’s Replay Collection earned a 23.6% engagement rate by follower, which is giant by any count. Everyone loves a collab, and partnering with K-Pop faves SHINee on the collection and campaign definitely got fans talking in the replies. The tweet also rocked 4.6K retweets and 180 saves from followers who were excited enough to take serious action to make sure they didn’t miss the release of the limited edition collection.

When a fan tweeted about a very specific detail about Etude’s latest launch, the brand wrote right back to thank her for noticing even the smallest things about Etude’s products. Etude’s heartfelt thanks earned a 28.1% engagement rate by follower and nearly 1.5M estimated impressions, reminding everyone that a little gratitude goes a long way. About 20% of Etude’s tweets this year were replies, which can help brands connect to customers more personally than, say, a viral Instagram Reel ever could.

SHINee wasn’t Etude House’s only super-successful collab campaign this year, with this toner launch in partnership with ballerina Kazuha also earning top engagement rates by follower. The brand describes Kazuha as their latest muse, and was the face of a number of Etude’s product releases all year long. Fans weren’t shy about dropping heart emojis in the replies to show their love for Kazuha, which helped the photo tweet rock a 13.1% engagement rate.

Check out the latest Social Media Industry Benchmark Report for even more benchmarks.

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How is My Beauty Brand Performing on Social?

See what the best beauty brands are up to on social with our Live Social Media Benchmarks featuring top posts, engagement rates, high-performing hashtags, and tons more. Pro tip: you can even add these benchmarks directly into your Rival IQ account for always-on monitoring of these top brands.

Or, go head-to-head with a free report on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Twitter to see how you stack up against your top competition. Discover what makes your competitors tick with key insights and actionable advice you can start using now to come out on top.

If you’re hungry for even more stats, grab a free 14-day trial with Rival IQ.

Methodology

We surveyed 186 beauty brands between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023 on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. We included a selection of brands from Allure Magazine’s 2023 Best of Beauty Awards and others from our team. Using this data and a weighted formula, we generated an overall engagement ranking for each beauty brand. The top-ranked beauty brands have high engagement rates with average or better audience size and posting volumes. We reviewed a mix of boosted and organic posts.

We define engagement as measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. Engagement rate is defined as the total engagement divided by audience size, except on TikTok, where it’s defined as the total engagement divided by views.

Due to Instagram API limitations, we’re able to pull accurate Instagram engagement numbers only for verified and/or Instagram business accounts.

See how Rival IQ can help top beauty brands.

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The Case for Benchmarking

Why benchmark instead of just measuring how your brand’s individual performance changes over time? Because social success is relative. Benchmarking means figuring out what’s working (and what isn’t) for brands in your industry and measuring your success against that.

It’s really important to go beyond likes and favorites because audience size matters: 200 likes is great engagement for a beauty brand with 1,000 followers but is a drop in the bucket to a brand with 100,000 followers. Engagement rate helps us take audience size into account to see who’s really reaching the highest percentage of their fans and followers with their social posts, which are the beauty brands you need to beat.

Wrapping it up

Congrats to all of this year’s top beauty brands on social media! It was another year filled with inspiring campaigns, mouthwatering new releases, engaging contests, and so much more.

Want to share your thoughts on beauty social media? Drop us a note on Instagram!

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We’re featuring key social media benchmarks and metrics for 14 top industries: Alcohol, Fashion, Financial Services, Food & Beverage, Health & Beauty, Higher Education, Home Decor, Influencers, Media, Nonprofits, Retail, Sports Teams, Tech & Software, and Travel.

“How am I really doing on social?” can be a tricky question to answer without context from your competitors and industry. We looked at more than 5 million posts and 10 billion (yes, with a “b”) likes, comments, and favorites on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter from top brands in every major industry to bring you the freshest social media benchmark data for posting frequency, post types, hashtags, and more.

Now, let’s get benchmarking!

Social Media Benchmark Key Takeaways

	Brands saw (a little) less organic engagement this year TikTok engagement rates dropped by about 50% this year, but Facebook engagement rates actually increased a little, so it’s not all bad.
	Posting frequency varied Post frequency increased a little on Instagram and TikTok while decreasing on Facebook and Twitter.
	It’s all about the holiday hashtags Once, again, almost every industry earned top engagement rates from holiday-hashtagged posts.
	Reels overtook video on Instagram If you’re not posting Reels, you’re officially missing out on the most engaging post type by rate on the ‘gram.
	TikTok is (still) topping the charts With a median engagement rate of 2.63%, TikTok still performed better than any other channel by a mile this year.
	Higher Ed and Sports Teams are still the industries to beat These industries outperformed their competitors thanks to a smart combo of quality content and frequent posting.

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All-Industry Social Media Benchmarks

All-Industry: Facebook

Average Facebook engagement rate per post, all industries

Everyone loves an increase: the all-industry median rose, as did engagement rates for industries including Alcohol, Higher Ed, and Sports Teams.

Average Facebook posts per week, all industries

Brands posted just a little less often on Facebook this year overall, but Fashion, Financial Services, Food & Beverage, Home Decor, and Sports Teams actually increased their activity.

Facebook posts per week vs. engagement rate per posts, all industries

Influencers and Higher Ed hit the sweet spot of moderate posting frequency with epic engagement rates.

Average Instagram engagement rate per post, all industries

Instagram engagement rates stayed pretty flat this year with just an 8% decline.

Average Instagram posts per week, all industries

For the second year in a row, median posting frequency across all industries increased by a hair on Instagram.

Instagram posts per week vs. engagement rate per posts, all industries

Higher Ed was the clear engagement winner on Instagram despite below-median posting frequency, suggesting more isn’t always better on Instagram (though second-place Sports Teams might beg to differ).

Average Twitter engagement rate per tweet, all industries

Engagement rates declined about 20% on Twitter this year, which is no surprise in a time of big upheaval for the channel.

Average Twitter tweets per week, all industries

Tweet frequency decreased by about 15% this year across all industries as brands pulled back their efforts in response to the channel’s volatility.

Twitter tweets per week vs. engagement rate per posts, all industries

Frequent tweeters Higher Ed and Sports Teams came out ahead on Twitter this year, but last-place Media showed other industries that tweeting more doesn’t always result in high engagement.

Average TikTok engagement rate per video, all industries

The bad news: TikTok engagement rates dropped more than 50% on average this year. The good news: engagement rates on this channel stayed light years ahead of other social platforms.

Average TikTok videos per week, all industries

Brands posted more frequently on TikTok than they did last year across the board. Media brands seriously invested in this channel, posting nearly twice as often as they did in the previous period.

TikTok posts per week vs. engagement rate per posts, all industries

Higher Ed dramatically outstripped the competition with high engagement rates and modest posting activity on TikTok, with second place Sports Teams earning nearly half the engagement these colleges and universities snagged.

Engagement rate benchmarks vs time, all industries

Even though TikTok accounts earned about half the engagement rates they did last year, the video channel continues to outpace Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter by miles.

Posting frequency benchmarks vs time, all industries

Post frequency increased just a bit on Instagram and TikTok this year while slowing down on Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter posting took the sharpest dive at 15%, suggesting people aren’t as invested in X as they once were.

Alcohol Social Media Benchmarks

Alcohol brands earned above-median engagement rates everywhere but TikTok this year, where age restricted-content continued to keep them down. Fourth on Facebook and third on Twitter is still worth raising a glass, though.

A few ways Alcohol brands can keep up the pace:

• Try experimenting with posting frequency, since Alcohol brands consistently post less frequently than other industries.
• Alcohol brands’ best bets for hashtags are all about booze and holidays to help followers figure out what they’re drinking and when.

Overview of all benchmarks, Alcohol

Notable brands in this year’s report include Beatbox Beverages, Blue Chair Bay Rum, Dogfish Head Brewery, North Coast Brewing Company, One Hope Wine, and Presidente Brandy.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Alcohol

Alcohol brands have relied on photo posts year after year for their epic engagement oomph, and this year is no exception.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Alcohol

Carousels grabbed the highest engagement rates for Alcohol brands, who were much likelier to post photos on Instagram. Consider combining a few of those single-photo posts into high-performing carousels.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Alcohol

Status tweets were a surprise hit for Alcohol brands this year on Twitter, but photo tweets were also a tried and true source of engagement.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Alcohol

Alcohol brands were all about mixed drink hashtags on Instagram this year, with the #cocktail hashtag performing nearly twice as well as the next most engaging hashtag by rate.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Alcohol

Alcohol followers ate up posts with holiday-themed hashtags like #WorldEmojiDay and #ValentinesDay.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Alcohol

While cocktails were king on Instagram, Alcohol brands were all about the beer with their hashtags on TikTok this year.

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Fashion Social Media Benchmarks

Fashion brands earned less than half the median on every channel we studied this year, proving social media is a crowded and competitive space for these brands.

Some suggestions for Fashion brands:

• Invest more in TikTok, which is paying more engagement dividends than other channels right now.
• With the success of Reels on Instagram and videos on Twitter for fashion brands, video content is where it’s at in the year ahead.

Overview of all benchmarks, Fashion

Notable brands in this year’s report include Aritzia, Eleven Paris, Armani, K-Swiss, Shinesty, and Toast.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Fashion

Photos were twice as engaging as the next most engaging post type by rate on Facebook for Fashion brands.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Fashion

Reels beat out carousels for the first time this year for Fashion brands on Instagram. Streetwear brand CLOAK beat out Fashion competitors on Instagram this year thanks in part to strong Reels.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Fashion

Fashion brands earned similar engagement rates for video and photos tweets, but were 7x more likely to tweet a photo.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Fashion

No surprise here that Fashion brands used hashtags on Instagram like #BlackFriday and #CyberMonday to remind followers about opportunities to shop.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Fashion

Gift-focused holidays like #FathersDay and #ValentinesDay topped the engagement charts for Fashion brands on Twitter this year.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Fashion

Fashion brands really jumped on the #AlbumCover trend this year, which immortalized one epic photo in a TikTok video that had influencers and trendsetters putting forth their most aesthetic outfits.

Financial Services Social Media Benchmarks

Financial Services brands sat at or below the median on all four channels we studied this year, despite increasing post frequency across the board.

A few ideas for Financial Services brands:

• Photos are a top-performing post type across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, so don’t be afraid to get visual.
• Educational hashtags like #MoneyTok and #MoneyTips were top performers, proving FinServ followers are down to learn.

Overview of all benchmarks, Financial Services

Notable brands in this year’s report include BECU, Deutsche Bank, Empower, J.P. Morgan, Kiwi Bank, and Sallie Mae.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Financial Services

Photo posts beat out the next most engaging post type by a mile for Financial Services brands on Facebook. Bonus: these posts also earn twice the engagement rates they did last year.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Financial Services

Reels and photos vied for first for Financial Services brands on Instagram this year, with video posts lagging majorly.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Financial Services

Video and photo tweets outpaced status updates and links for Financial Services brands on Twitter this year.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Financial Services

Financial Services brands didn’t miss an opportunity to connect with followers on holidays like Christmas, International Women’s Day, and Mother’s Day.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Financial Services

Financial Services brands were all about holiday and finance hashtags this year on Twitter.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Financial Services

While holiday-themed hashtags dominated for FinServ brands on Instagram and Twitter, these brands focused on getting down to business more on TikTok with hashtags like #MoneyTips and #MoneyTok.

Food & Beverage Social Media Benchmarks

Food & Beverage brands saw the highest engagement rates on video-focused Instagram and TikTok while struggling a bit on other channels.

Some ideas for improvement:

• Holidays are always a good time to start conversations with followers about recipes and menu planning.
• The #EmbraceEquity hashtag was a runaway hit on Twitter, so don’t be afraid to go beyond the plate when creating content.

Overview of all benchmarks, Food & Beverage

Notable brands in this year’s report include French’s, Guayaki Yerba Mate, Halo Top, Jennie-O, RXBar, and Wonderful Pistachios.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Food & Beverage

Photo posts stood out for Food & Beverage brands on Facebook this year hoping to entice followers to connect IRL with mouthwatering snaps of their offerings.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Food & Beverage

Food & Beverage brands shifted their content creation energy from videos to Reels this year, which paid off with impressive engagement rates.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Food & Beverage

Photo tweets grabbed more engagement than any other type on Twitter this year for Food & Beverage brands.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Food & Beverage

Hashtags about food-focused holidays like #Thanksgiving and #Christmas won big for Food & Beverage brands on Instagram this year.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Food & Beverage

The #EmbraceEquity hashtag performed more than three times better than the next most engaging hashtag on Twitter for Food & Beverage brands, proving followers care about social issues just as much as recipes.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Food & Beverage

Channel-themed hashtags like #trend and #meme helped attract more FYP eyeballs to Food & Beverage content on TikTok this year.

Health & Beauty Social Media Benchmarks

Health & Beauty brands struggled to engage fans and followers compared to their fellow industries, earning engagement rates far below the all-industry median across all four channels thanks in part to a saturated market.

A few growth ideas:

• Continue favoring TikTok and Instagram while keeping efforts low on Twitter, which doesn’t have much engagement payoff in this industry.
• Keep engaging fans with product releases and the next big trend in beauty.

Overview of all benchmarks, Health & Beauty

Notable brands in this year’s report include Derma E, Florence By Mills, Glow Recipe, ORLY, Stila, and Tom Ford Beauty.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Health & Beauty

Image-based post types performed twice as well for Health & Beauty brands as text-heavy links and status updates.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Health & Beauty

Health & Beauty brands doubled their rate of Reels per week this year, which paid off with strong engagement for that post type.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Health & Beauty

Health & Beauty brands tweeted less than ever this year, but were more likely to post a photo than any other tweet type.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Health & Beauty

Reminding followers to scoop up big deals with the #PrimeDay hashtag worked well for Health & Beauty brands on Instagram this year, as did tutorial and behind-the-scenes hashtags.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Health & Beauty

Hashtags didn’t do much for Health & Beauty brands on Twitter this year, but holiday mentions helped remind followers about shopping opportunities.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Health & Beauty

Health & Beauty brands ate up the chance to introduce the next big product release to followers with the #new hashtag, and also favored #HairTok and #SkinTok hashtags that helped users find tutorials and how-tos.

Higher Ed Social Media Benchmarks

Higher Ed is investing more in social than ever and reaping the benefits: colleges and universities were the most engaging industry on Instagram and TikTok, and the second most engaging on Facebook and Twitter.

For even higher Higher Ed engagement rates:

• Continue investing in video content like TikToks and Reels.
• Followers love posts hashtagged with campus activities like #OpeningWeek or #MoveInDay.

Overview of all benchmarks, Higher Ed

Notable brands in this year’s report include Drexel University, Morehouse College, Northern Arizona University, New York University, University of California at Santa Cruz, and University of Vermont.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Higher Ed

Photo posts dominated the engagement charts for Higher Ed this year, with links to content and campus news coming in a distant second.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Higher Ed

Carousel posts soared for schools on Instagram this year, but Reels weren’t far behind as Higher Ed continued to reinvest energy normally spent on videos.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Higher Ed

Video tweets topped the charts for Higher Ed on Twitter this year, but these colleges and universities were 3x more likely to tweet a photo.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Higher Ed

School-focused hashtags like #STEM, #research, and #StudyAbroad were big winners for Higher Ed on Instagram this year.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Higher Ed

Colleges and universities were all about holiday-themed hashtags on Twitter this year.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Higher Ed

The #WesAnderson video trend grabbed a ton of attention from Higher Ed fans on TikTok, as did more campus-themed hashtags like #WelcomeWeek and #MoveInDay.

Hungry for more benchmarking? We’ve got the definitive guide to all things Instagram Stories.

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Home Decor Social Media Benchmarks

Home Decor brands earned engagement rates towards the bottom of the pack on all channels, but they did manage to increase or stay flat compared to last year, which is no small feat in these changing times.

Some ideas for increasing engagement:

• Industry-themed hashtags helped followers find Home Decor content, so keep those up.
• Photos and Reels are the way to go on most channels.

Overview of all benchmarks, Home Decor

Notable brands in this year’s report include Arteriors, The Company Store, Farrow and Ball, Joybird, One Kings Lane, and Vitamix.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Home Decor

Home Decor brands were way likelier to post a photo on Facebook than any other post type, which is a smart move, since photos grabbed much higher engagement rates.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Home Decor

Home Decor brands left video behind in a big way this year in favor of Reels, which paid off with the highest engagement rates of any post type.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Home Decor

Photo tweets were where it’s at on Twitter this year for Home Decor brands measured by both engagement rate and frequency.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Home Decor

Home Decor brands kept it in the family with their top-performing hashtags on Instagram this year. From #furniture to #decor to #InteriorDesigner, followers could expect home-themed hashtags from their favorite brands.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Home Decor

Valentine’s Day tweets outpaced other Home Decor hashtags on Twitter by a mile for Home Decor brands this year.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Home Decor

Just like on Twitter, Home Decor brands stuck with industry-themed hashtags on TikTok like #home and #design to help users find their content.

Influencers Social Media Benchmarks

Influencers earned 3x the median engagement rate on Facebook and nearly 2x the median on Instagram this year. These creators also finished above the median on Twitter but a little behind the curve on TikTok.

Ideas to boost that engagement even more:

• Motivational hashtags like #NeverGiveUp and #MotivationMonday resonated with fans on Instagram.
• Try shaking up your posting frequency and content on TikTok to dominate on this channel as well.

Overview of all benchmarks, Influencers

Notable brands in this year’s report include Bill Nye, Cardi B, Dude Perfect, Jordan B. Peterson, Naughty Fork, and Nikkie de Jager.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Influencers

Photos perform about twice as well as the next most engaging post type for Influencers, so concentrating efforts here is a smart move.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Influencers

Reels, photos, and carousels were neck and neck for influencer engagement rates this year, while video predictably lagged.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Influencers

Photo tweets topped the Influencer Twitter charts this year, but status updates weren’t far behind.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Influencers

Influencers were all about the motivational hashtags on Instagram this year, with #NeverGiveUp, #MondayMotivation, and #GrowthMindset earning high engagement rates.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Influencers

#Love was in the air for Influencers on Twitter this year, with hashtags like #family and #ValentinesDay performing well.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Influencers

TikTok-themed hashtags like #ForYou, #fyp, and #viral helped Influencers hop onto the For You Page of fans and followers.

Media Social Media Benchmarks

Media posted much more frequently than the median industry across all four channels while managing to hold onto their engagement rates from last year (except on TikTok). No small feat in a year of major social media upheaval.

A few ideas to improve engagement rates:

• Hashtags about current events remain top engagement earners for Media brands.
• Visual posts like photos and Reels performed way better than Media’s favorite post type, links.

Overview of all benchmarks, Media

Notable brands in this year’s report include Better Homes and Gardens, Blumhouse, The Economist, ESPN FC, The New York Times, and Playbill.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Media

Photos rocked top engagement rates for Media brands on Facebook, though these brands were more than 7x as likely to post a link.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Media

Reels earned more than twice the engagement rates of video posts for Media brands on Instagram this year.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Media

Media brands were all about the link tweets, but might want to invest more energy in video tweets, which grabbed more than 4x the engagement rates.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Media

Media brands favored hashtags that helped followers get the news and updates they were looking for like #AI and #Palestine.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Media

Just like on Instagram, current events like #Wimbledon and #Oscars won the day for Media brands on Twitter.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Media

Hashtags about the latest celeb or breaking news story trended well for Media brands on TikTok this year like #MetGala and #MargotRobbie.

Nonprofits Social Media Benchmarks

Nonprofits saw above-median engagement rates across all social channels this year and earned the bronze on Twitter. These NGOs posted more often than the median industry on most channels with the exception of TikTok

Suggestions for Nonprofits:

• Event-themed hashtags helped followers find your content.
• Keep that Reel and video tweet success rolling by investing more in video content.

Overview of all benchmarks, Nonprofits

Notable brands in this year’s report include ACLU, Girls Who Code, National Geographic, Planned Parenthood, The Trevor Project, and the YMCA.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Nonprofits

Photos earned top engagement rates for Nonprofits this year, who shared this post type 4x more often than any other.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Nonprofits

Reels outdid other posts types for Nonprofits on Instagram this year, who might want to increase their investment in that post type to capture more of their audience’s attention.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Nonprofits

Videos earned top engagement rates for Nonprofits this year on Twitter, but the extra work that goes into producing a video meant photo and link tweets were more common for these organizations.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Nonprofits

Event-themed hashtags like #BlackHistoryMonth, #COP28, and #WorldRefugeeDay grabbed attention for Nonprofits on Instagram this year.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Nonprofits

The #education hashtag beat out other Nonprofit hashtags on Twitter by a mile this year, suggesting followers were eager to learn from their favorite orgs.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Nonprofits

TikTok-themed hashtags like #LearnOnTikTok, #music, and #trending helped Nonprofit followers find what they were looking for on the video channel this year.

Retail Social Media Benchmarks

Retail brands trailed behind other industries across all four channels this year, despite actually increasing engagement rates on Facebook and Instagram.

Some ideas for improving social performance this year:

• Stick with photo posts to help drive up engagement while also experimenting with video, especially Reels and TikToks.
• Don’t miss the chance to remind followers about the chance to shop and give gifts with holiday-themed hashtags like #ValentinesDay and #MothersDay.

Overview of all benchmarks, Retail

Notable brands in this year’s report include Draper James, Homegoods, Leon’s, Magnolia, Nike, and Uncommon Goods.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Retail

Photos earned 50% higher engagement rates than the next most engaging post type for Retail brands on Facebook, so this was a smart place to concentrate efforts.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Retail

Reels rocked for Retail brands on Instagram this year and helped Retail brand The Range grab Instagram engagement rate gold.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Retail

Retail brands saw engagement rates that were about half the all-industry median this year, so leaning into top-performing photo tweets is a strong strategy.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Retail

Retail brand hashtags were all about the holidays and other chances to shop like #MerryChristmas and #BlackFridaySale.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Retail

Can you say “shopping opportunity” five times fast? Retail never missed a holiday on Twitter this year, particularly holidays with gifts involved like #ValentinesDay and #MothersDay.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Retail

More than a few food hashtags like #foodie and #FoodTok broke through for Retail brands on TikTok this year, suggesting people like to fuel up while they shop.

Sports Teams Social Media Benchmarks

Once again, Sports Teams saw top engagement rates on Facebook and Twitter and were runners-up on Instagram and TikTok. More posting doesn’t always equal more engagements, but it certainly did for Sports Teams this year.

Some ways to improve engagement rates even more:

• Posting early and often is working, so keep it up.
• Followers love a throwback, so keep using hashtags like #OnThisDay and #TBT to remind fans of the GOATs of yore.

Overview of all benchmarks, Sports Teams

Notable brands in this year’s report include The Philadelphia Flyers, Louisville FC, Manchester City FC, The New York Mets, the Baltimore Ravens, and the Seattle Storm.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Sports Teams

Photo posts helped Sports Teams earn nearly 5x the median engagement rate on Facebook, putting these brands comfortably in first place.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Sports Teams

Reels, Carousels, and Photo posts were all neck and neck for the top post type for Sports Teams on Instagram this year, with Reels coming out just ahead.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Sports Teams

Videos were all the rage for Sports Teams on Twitter this year, unlike most other industries who did best with photo tweets.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Sports Teams

Sports Teams were all about the olden days on Instagram this year, with hashtags like #ThrowbackThursday and #OnThisDay reminding fans of the all-time greats.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Sports Teams

Just like on Twitter, Sports Teams loved a good throwback on Twitter this year with hashtags like #OnThisDay and #TBT.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Sports Teams

Anybody with a smartphone knows you couldn’t say “trend” without Taylor Swift on social this year, so it’s no surprise Taylor-themed hashtags were trending for Sports Teams.

Tech & Software Social Media Benchmarks

Tech & Software brands earned median engagement rates on Instagram and Twitter while struggling on Facebook and TikTok.

Here are two ideas for improving engagement rates:

• Experiment with post types to go beyond the photo posts.
• Holidays like #MayThe4thBeWithYou and #InternationalWomensDay were runaway faves with Tech & Software followers looking to nerd out and/or support women in the industry.

Overview of all benchmarks, Tech & Software

Notable brands in this year’s report include Doordash, JBL, Lucid Technologies, NordVPN, Xbox, and You Need A Budget.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Tech & Software

Photos grabbed great engagement rates on Facebook for Tech & Software brands like electronics company Sharp.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Tech & Software

Like many other industries in this study, Reels topped the charts for Tech & Software brands on Instagram this year.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Tech & Software

Photo tweets beat out every other type by both engagement rate and frequency for Tech & Software brands this year.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Tech & Software

Posting about #InternationalWomensDay was a slam dunk for Tech & Software brands on Instagram this year.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Tech & Software

Tech & Software brands never miss the chance to celebrate everyone’s favorite nerd holiday with the #MayThe4thBeWithYou hashtag.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Tech & Software

AI-themed hashtags like #ChatGPT and #AI topped the Tech & Software charts on TikTok this year.

Travel Social Media Benchmarks

Travel brands earned above-media engagement rates on Facebook and TikTok while running in the middle of the pack on Instagram and Twitter.

A few suggestions to grow engagement:

• Luxury and destination hashtags performed especially well for Travel brands this year.
• Posting frequency was below-median across the board, so experiment with an uptick here to see if you can increase your current engagement rates without sacrificing content quality.

Overview of all benchmarks, Travel

Notable brands in this year’s report include Extra Holidays, GoRVing, Hotels by Hilton, Hipcamp, La Quinta, and United Airlines.

Facebook posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Travel

Photos were about twice as engaging as the next best post type on Facebook for Travel brands.

Instagram posts per week and engagement rate by post type, Travel

For the second year in a row, Reels outperformed other post types for Travel brands.

Twitter posts per week and engagement rate by tweet type, Travel

No surprise that it’s all about the visuals for Travel brands on Twitter, with video and photo tweets performing about twice as well as link and status tweets.

Top Instagram hashtags by engagement rate, Travel

Travel fans ate up hashtags like #LuxuryTravel and #LuxuryLifeStyle that helped them dream away the doldrums of day-to-day living.

Top Twitter hashtags by engagement rate, Travel

Holiday-themed hashtags performed well for Travel brands on Twitter, especially all things #ValentinesDay.

Top TikTok hashtags by engagement rate, Travel

No surprise that Travel brands focused on the destination this year on TikTok with hashtags like #vacation, #traveling, and #resort.

Methodology

To spot trends and identify benchmarks, we used Rival IQ to analyze engagement rates, posting frequency, post types, and hashtags on the top three social channels for brands: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

We define engagement 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.

Within this report, we provide a representative sample of organic and paid posts from national and international companies in each industry by selecting 150 companies at random from each industry in our database of over 200,000 companies. Companies selected had active presences on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as of January 2023, and had Facebook fan counts between 25,000 and 1,000,000 and minimum Instagram and Twitter followers of 1,000 as of the same date.

We used median performance from the companies selected for each industry to compile the data for this report.

Why do we benchmark?

Social media success is about so much more than getting the most comments or likes: it’s about increasing engagement while also growing or maintaining the percentage of your audience that engages as you expand your audience.

To us, engagement rate per post is the metric because it controls for post volume and audience size and helps marketers understand how they’re doing in relation to their competitors.

Why can’t you gauge success on likes alone? Because audience size is hugely important: 1,000 likes makes a huge difference to a brand with 2,000 followers, but is a drop in the bucket to a brand with 100,000 followers.

Live Social Media Benchmarks

Ready to start benchmarking your social media performance? Check out our Live Benchmark landscapes, where we feature live social media metrics from a sample of companies from each industry represented in this study. These landscapes feature hashtag performance, top post types, and so much more on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter.

(Oh, and if you’re a Rival IQ customer or in a trial, you can add those stats directly into your Rival IQ account for even more comparisons.)

Or, run a free Head-to-Head report against your biggest rival to see how you measure up to both your competition and against industry benchmarks represented in this study.

Wrapping It Up

Everybody loves a little good news, so seeing Facebook engagement rates actually increase and watching brands invest even more in their Instagram and TikTok content left us feeling excited for what’s to come for social media in 2024.

What are your social media trend predictions for the year ahead? We’re listening on Twitter and Instagram!

Start analyzing with a free Rival IQ trial.

Get my free trial

The post 2024 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report appeared first on Rival IQ.

We’ve updated all your favorite metrics like retention rate, exit rate, replies, and so much more with more handles, Stories, and frames than ever. Looking to compare posts and Stories head to head for a complete look at how your brand is performing on Instagram? We’ve got you.

Download the free PDF and join us for some seriously good Instagram Stories news.

Download the full 2024 Instagram Stories Benchmark Report

Grab your PDF here

Key Instagram Stories Takeaways

Story frequency is up this year

Brands doubled down on Stories creation this year and actually published more Stories than ever before.

Reach rates are on the rise

Your Stories (and posts!) are reaching a larger percentage of your followers compared to last year, which is great news for hardworking content creators everywhere.

Retention rates are flat

Low tap-back and reply rates detracted from retention rates this year, but increases in reach balanced those successes to keep this critical metric flat for brands across the board.

Posts reach more than Stories

Instagram posts continue to see a much higher reach rate than Stories. Hook viewers with posts and deepen their engagement with Stories.

Days with an Instagram Story

Are more Stories really better? The best answer to this age-old question starts with benchmarking how often the average brand publishes a Story in a month.

A quick note on how to read these graphics: we’ve included median performance as well as metrics from the top and bottom 25% of brands so you can understand the full range of Instagram Stories metrics that matter.

Story frequency increased a little this year, with the average brand posting an Instagram Story 13 times per month.

• The top 25% most active brands publish Stories about 20 times a month.
• The least active 25% of brands publish just over 1 Story per week.

Story posting per month hasn’t changed much over the last few years, so it was nice to see a slight increase this year. Brands are still posting about once every other day on average.

Frames Per Day

Let’s talk Stories terminology: in our book, Stories represent a 24-hour period, while frames per day denote the number of individual photos or videos posted within a Story. Finding the “right” number of frames per day for your brand is just as important as figuring out how many Stories you should be posting in a given time period.

Shorter Stories are more common than long ones.

• About 35% of Story activity comprises days with only one frame.
• 1-3 frames account for about 60% of brand activity.
• About 10% of Stories have 7 or more frames, which is down from last year.

You don’t need to post Stories all day, every day to effectively engage with your followers. Finding your own brand’s average number of frames per day and factors that increase your retention rate can help fine-tune your frame frequency strategy.

Retention Rate

Retention rate by frame is one of the most important metrics for understanding how your Instagram Stories are landing with your audience. Why? Sticking around for your frames means you’ve grabbed attention and created a fan, instead of just a follower flitting through. This metric represents the percentage of viewers that have stuck around through any given frame of a Story.

We see the same trend year after year: the more frames you publish, the lower your retention rate.

• Average retention rate was pretty flat this year.
• As always, the biggest dip is from 1 to 2 frames a day as users swipe past the Story.
• After that big initial drop-off, the retention decline slows down and stays above 75% through 7 frames per day.

This metric is one of the truest ways to measure the strength and resonance of your content: retention isn’t influenced by Instagram’s algorithm or in competition with another brand. It’s just your content, your viewer, and whether or not you can keep them tapping forward instead of exiting and moving on to the next Story. Focus on a first frame that hooks viewers, and then don’t be afraid to say everything you need to say: retention drops but doesn’t crater with more frames.

Download the full 2024 Instagram Stories Benchmark Report

Snag yours now

Story Reach Rate

Story reach rate represents the percentage of your followers who are actually seeing your Stories. It’s hard to grab the attention of your full follower count every time you post a Story, so it’s important to measure just how many of them you’re reaching.

Story reach rates increased or stayed flat for creators in 2023.

• Smaller brands with under 10K followers saw a 35% increase in Story reach rate this year.
• Mid-size brands between 50K-200K followers were the only group to stay flat this year at 1.6%.

Brands are working harder than ever to create dynamic content that grabs attention and keeps it, so a slight uptick in reach rate feels especially heartening. With more creators making Stories and competition from channels like YouTube and TikTok, there’s more competition for every pair of eyeballs that comes across your Story. If you made one change to increase your reach rate, it’s focusing your efforts on creating eye-catching and engaging first frames.

Another tool in your reach toolkit? Story Highlights pin your favorite frames to your profile page and help viewers discover your content long after its 24-hour expiration date in Stories.

Interactive sticker elements like links, shoppable posts, questions, and quizzes can also increase reach.

Post Reach Rate

More good news: post reach rate, which is the percentage of your followers that saw one of your posts, mirrored Story reach rate in increasing just a bit or staying flat for creators this year.

Small handles with fewer than 10K handles saw a 17% increase in post reach rate, while mid-sized brands with between 50K-200K followers saw the only post reach rate decline of the year of 15%.

Post reach rate has been on the decline for a few years running now, so we love to see it on the rise (or heck, flat) for all the brands we studied this year.

Post Reach Rate by Media Type

This metric helps brands understand the reach of a post expressed as a percentage of followers by media type, AKA carousel, image, video, or Reel.

More good news here: brands saw their post reach rates increase for every media type in 2023.

• Images saw the biggest post reach rate increase of 27% over last year.
• Reels saw the smallest increases in reach this year but still showed improvement.

Is Instagram back on top? We won’t know for sure until our 2024 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report comes out, but post reach rate increases across all media types should give creators confidence in investing in the ‘gram in 2024.

Reach Rate: Instagram Stories vs. Posts

Anyone who manages an Instagram account will tell you Stories earn reach that’s dramatically different from posts, so let’s compare the two side by side.

Small brands with follower counts up to 10K can expect around 3x more of their followers to see their posts than their Stories, with brands with larger follower counts seeing a disparity between the two at 5x or larger.

Stories continue to have a lower reach rate than posts for brands, but does that mean your brand should stop creating Stories? The short answer is no: Story impressions can be a great tool for engaging with followers and developing relationships over time.

Posts and Stories engage your followers differently and should be treated as two different tools in a marketer’s toolbox. Posts are great for a quick scroll, but if you hook viewers, Stories can really draw your audience in and keep them engaged.

By the way, if you’re wondering if there’s a right time to post on Instagram or an ideal posting frequency, we’ve got you covered.

Post Engagement per Impression

This metric represents the number of likes, comments, and saves per impression on a post.

Selecting the right denominator in your social media metrics really matters: defining engagement rate as engagements divided by followers will give you a different number than engagements divided by impressions. Whatever your preference, we’ve got you covered with this metric.

It’s worth noting that Post Engagement per Impression is usually available only for brands whose handles you manage, meaning it’s hard to find this metric competitively (unless you’re a Rival IQ Engage Pro customer, because we’ve got estimated impressions right in our app).

Post engagements per impression increased for all follower counts this year.

• The smallest and largest brands fared the best, with handles in both groups seeing about a 20% increase.
• Small handles with between 10K-50K followers saw their post engagement per impression climb a little less at just 5%.

The rise of post engagements per impression signals a larger trend we’re seeing of Instagram holding onto its relevance in 2024 and beyond.

Post Engagement per Impression by Media Type

Post Engagement per Impression gets even more interesting when you break it down by Instagram post type. And bonus–post engagement per impression increased across every media type in 2023.

• Carousel posts saw the biggest jump in post engagement per impression of more than 25%.
• Video posts held the steadiest, increasing 12% from 2022 in engagement per impression.

Static post types like images and carousels are still outpacing videos and Reels despite Instagram’s big investments in video this year.

Tap-Forward Rate

Tap-Forward Rate measures the percentage of your Story impressions that have a tap forward. It’s an interesting Stories metric because it can indicate both positive and negative attention: either the viewer has had enough of your content, or can’t wait another second to hit the next frame.

Year after year, we find the more frames in your Story, the more likely it is that followers will tap forward.

• The median tap-forward rate at 5 frames per day is nearly 90%.
• Tap-forward rates stayed flat this year, suggesting attention spans haven’t decreased too much.
• If your Story contains more than 6 frames, more than 90% of your viewers are tapping forward to advance to the next frame.

Tapping forward isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does indicate that the viewer has either seen enough of the content or wasn’t interested in the first place. Keep your frames engaging and experiment with video to maintain your viewers throughout the entire Story.

Tap-Back Rate

Taps back indicate that a viewer wanted a closer look or to re-engage with a brand’s content, AKA every marketer’s dream. This rate represents the percentage of Story impressions with a tap back.

Tap-back rates declined this year (but only by a little). These declines are pretty minimal and not worth losing sleep over.

• The median tap-back rate is 4.6%, but the top 25% of brands see tap-back rates closer to 6.5%.
• Taps back are a great indication of content that your followers want to consume more of.

When reviewing your Instagram Story performance this year, take a look at the Stories or frames that received the most taps back. Were they videos? Did they have a lot of text in them? Be sure to replicate those strategies or other Instagram Story best practices in your content planning.

Replies per 1K Impressions

Replies aren’t the easiest engagement to earn in Instagram Stories, but they indicate serious engagement from a fan or follower. Replies per 1K impressions expresses the number of replies for every 1,000 impressions as a percentage.

We hate to see it, but replies per 1K impressions fell a lot this year.

• Median reply rates were about half of what they were last year, suggesting people have less to say to the brands they’re following on Instagram.
• These reply rates are tiny because users mostly don’t reply—particularly in the bottom 25%, which has a teeny average reply rate close to 0%.

The best way to score an elusive reply is to ask for one by asking a question. Unfortunately, Instagram’s API continues to limit data from in-frame engagement stickers like polls and quizzes, so it’s tough to measure the impacts of these interactive elements on your engagement and reply rates.

Exit Rate

Exit rates measure the percentage of impressions that nope out of your Story before it ends.

Brands saw exit rates increase just slightly this year, which means viewers were about as likely to bail on a Story as they were last year.

• Exit rates start at about 14% for Stories with a single frame.
• The rate begins to really tail off at 5 frames per day and flattens out in the 5% range.

Exit rates increased a little across all frame per day counts this year, which indicates viewers were slightly quicker to bail on Story content this year. These exit rate numbers are pretty small, so don’t get discouraged.

Wrapping It Up

We hope you enjoyed this deep dive into all things Instagram Stories (and posts, and carousels, and Reels, and videos…) just in time for your 2024 social strategy planning. Social media can feel like a wild ride, which is why we’re so elated to report increases in so many of these stats.

What’s on your Instagram Stories agenda for 2024? Let us know on Instagram!

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How to Find your Instagram Stories Data

Follow these simple(-ish) steps to find up to 90 days of Stories data natively in Instagram. Remember that these stats are available only for business profiles, creator accounts, or verified handles.

If you’re looking for more than 90 days of Story stats and the ability to view all your Story metrics in one place, you could always start a free trial of Rival IQ or access Instagram Insights in your existing account. Once you connect an Instagram business profile to Rival IQ, you’ll start capturing all your new Instagram Story data (alongside Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok stats, of course).

Methodology

Rival IQ analyzed over 125K Instagram Stories (and 539K+ frames!) posted between June and November 2023 to bring you insights for your 2024 marketing strategy.

We included 1470 Instagram handles that had at least one Story published during each month of the time frame, and we only included handles with a reach of at least 100 views for each frame and a 1K total follower minimum. Handles were included only if we had all of their data for the entire time period, regardless of how frequently or infrequently they published Stories. These handles reached across multiple industries, including beauty, media, influencers, outdoor/adventure, marketing, and more.

Instagram Stories Metrics: Glossary

Instagram Story terms don’t have to be confusing, so here’s a glossary of all the important Story metrics used in this report and their definitions.

Engagement: Measurable interaction on Instagram Stories and posts, including likes, comments, replies, and shares.

Exit Rate: The percentage of your impressions that exit your Stories by swiping right, swiping down, or closing Stories.

Frame: A single photo or video posted to your Instagram Story.

Impressions: The total number of views of a frame in your Story.

Post Engagement per Impression: The number of likes, comments, and saves per impression on a post.

Post Reach Rate: The reach of a post expressed as a percentage of your followers.

Reach: The total number of unique people that saw a frame in your Story or your post.

Reply Rate: The percentage of your Story Viewers that replied to your Story on any given day.

Replies per 1K Impressions: The number of replies per 1,000 story impressions.

Retention Rate: The percentage of your Story Viewers on any given day that see all your frames.

Stories Reach Rate: Your Story Viewers on any given day divided by your follower count, expressed as a percentage.

Story: The set of frames posted to your Story within a single 24-hour day.

Story Viewers: The number of people who saw your Story on a given day.

Tap-Back Rate: The percentage of your impressions that have a tap backward to see the previous photo or video again.

Tap-Forward Rate: The percentage of your impressions that have a tap forward to see the next photo or video.

The post 2024 Instagram Stories Benchmark Report appeared first on Rival IQ.

We wish we could say we’d written this whole thing between snowboard runs, but instead we stayed inside to bring you the latest and greatest from top outdoor gear and apparel brands on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.

Look for tons of case studies from the outdoor brands raking in the engagement on social, plus oodles of trends to help your brand plan for the year ahead.

Download the full outdoor brands rankings now

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Top Overall Outdoor Brands on Social Media

We have a winner! Burton Snowboards grabbed the gold out of all the outdoor brands we studied this year thanks to lots and lots (and lots) of dynamic content shot in the mountains. Winter gear rival Atomic and outdoor apparel brand Filson definitely gave Burton a run for its money, landing squarely on the winner’s podium.

Other outdoor brands like Simms Fishing Products, YETI, Patagonia, Specialized Bicycles, Hydro Flask, Arc’teryx, and Oakley stood out across multiple channels as well to finish out the year in our overall top 10.

Since we’re all about competitive benchmarking here at Rival IQ, we can tell you that outdoor brands and the retail industry in general lagged a little behind other industries in our annual Social Media Industry Benchmark Report. The outdoor brands in this study still have plenty to be proud of this year, so let’s get into spotlighting the strategic moves Burton used to come out on top and a few industry-wide top trends.

Top Brand: Burton Snowboards

Burton excelled across nearly every channel this year with especially strong performances on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok (and ranking 22nd on Facebook is nothing to be ashamed of). It’s no surprise that many of Burton’s most engaging posts by rate focused on one thing: bringing fans to the mountain year-round. It can feel tempting for retail brands to focus the majority of their content on directly selling their products, but Burton’s success with showcasing what it feels like to be in the mountains reminds us that outdoor brands are lifestyle brands as much as anything else. Fans left comments in every season wishing for time on the slopes, which helped drive up Burton’s engagement even when there wasn’t snow on the ground.

The snowboard brand also had a lot of success with video, with Reels standing out on Instagram and videos dominating on Twitter and TikTok. Professionally-shot and user-generated content (UGC) also went a long way towards helping followers visualize themselves boarding down the slopes from their couches, and is definitely part of the larger trend we’re seeing of video’s popularity remaining on the rise.

Burton earned the silver on Instagram this year thanks in part to dynamite videos like this one featuring a snowboarder hitting a rail at top speed with a surprising amount of flex from his board. The Reel rocked a 7.57% engagement rate, which is more than 22x the outdoor brands median on Instagram this year. The post also earned more than 111K engagements and almost 2 million estimated impressions by showing off just how tough Burton gear is in the wild without being overly salesy.

Sourcing content from influencers and followers is a tried and true way to expand your content team’s footprint, and this top-performing post is a great example of how powerful UGC can be for outdoor brands.

The snowboarding brand wasn’t afraid to get a little cheeky on social this year, like in this throwback Facebook post featuring a news article that talked some serious smack about snowboarding. The photo post performed 8x better than the competitive median for outdoor brands on Facebook by turning bad press into good press and eliciting many a giggle from followers.

Burton could’ve posted a link directly to their blog post, but chose instead to screenshot the image directly. Since photo posts often outperform link posts on social, this move is a smart one.

Many outdoor brands stopped posting on Twitter this year, but Burton stayed strong and wound up grabbing the silver on this channel too. Video continues to stand out for the snowboarding brand, like this one which rocked a 1.32% engagement rate by follower and more than 75K estimated impressions. The video is a simple one: just a 10-second video of a snowboarder sliding peacefully down the mountain into the sunset–no production studio required. Repurposing content from other channels can help breathe a second life into videos your brand has worked so hard to create.

TikTok definitely requires a different type of content to catch people scrolling through their For You Page (FYP), and Burton wasn’t afraid to raise the stakes with their content for this channel. This video combines the magic of a brave boarder and a GoPro to show off an absolutely epic jump off the side of the mountain that definitely got people talking. The video earned more than 500K views and an engagement rate by view of 18.9%, which is more than 5x the median for outdoor brands on TikTok. Are we saying you have to jump off a cliff to get views on TikTok? Not necessarily, but it is the perfect channel for shaking up your content strategy and trying new things.

Top Trend 1: User-generated content

UGC makes sense in any industry, but is an especially smart move for outdoor brands who might not be able to spend every minute shooting content in the mountains or among the trees. We used our post-tagging feature to automatically tag every UGC post in the time period, and we found that user-generated content led to an engagement rate lift on every channel except for Twitter for outdoor brands.

Pivot Cycles finished 17th overall and 8th on Facebook thanks in part to strong UGC posts like this one focused on one of their core products, the Switchblade. The glamour shot of this stunning bike in the mountains earned a 3.09% engagement rate by follower on Facebook, which is 103x (!) times higher than the median Facebook engagement rate for outdoor brands this year. Likely putting some dollars behind the post and partnering up with a professional photographer also helped the post fly on Facebook.

This mesmerizing Reel from Jones Snowboards helped the brand rank 13th overall this year with nothing more than a killer vantage point and a boatload of fresh powder. The Reel earned a 16.7% engagement rate and more than 56K engagements as fans jumped into the comments to express their jealousy and tag their friends to plan their next snowboarding adventure. So many great outdoor posts like this one depend on one thing over all others: being in the right place at the right time. Relying on followers and friends of the brand to catch your products in action is an important tool in the toolbox of any outdoor brand’s social media marketing team.

Top Trend 2: Video

Unless you’ve been living under a social media rock, it’ll come as no surprise that video was the name of the post type game for outdoor brands this year. Reels were the top-performing content type for outdoor brands on Instagram, and TikTok’s exponentially larger engagement rates speak for themselves. As we saw in the previous trend, video content doesn’t have to be professionally shot or edited to go a long way on social.

This Reel from Atomic helped the brand earn second place overall and fourth place on Instagram with an eye-catching POV on an epic ski run. The Reel earned a 17.5% engagement rate and more than 71K engagements thanks to excited fans hopping into the comments to express their jealousy or inquire about gear. With nearly every outdoor brand upping their video game this year, unique perspectives like this one are a reminder that it’s important to shake up your content creation every once in a while.

Fishing retailer Shimano really puts the “bait” in clickbait with Facebook videos like this one featuring a POV of an amazing reef fishing catch. The video earned nearly three million views and an impressive 14.1% engagement rate by encouraging viewers to watch to the end of the video to see an epic catch. Video lends so much to storytelling, especially for industries like outdoor which rely so much on action and stunning views to help potential customers visualize using their gear and apparel.

Top Trend 3: Contests–especially on Instagram

Contests and giveaways have been a top-performing social media strategy for years, since it’s hard to turn down the allure of free stuff. The giveaway trend is alive and well for outdoor brands this year, but there’s a little nuance to the story: many of the most engaging posts of the year by rate for outdoor brands on Instagram featured giveaways, while there was no major lift for these types of posts on Facebook or Twitter. Contest posts contributed to a 1.7x engagement rate lift on Instagram and a 2x lift on TikTok, reminding outdoor brands that varying your content strategy by channel is just as important as ever.

Hydro Flask finished 8th overall and 3rd on TikTok thanks in part to the success of giveaway posts like this one offering followers the chance to win on the Boise State University campus. Hydro Flask didn’t need to get specific about their offerings to win big engagement to the tune of a 9.85% engagement rate by view and more than 55K views. A silly intro to the video also helped get people talking in the comments about where the brand’s Spring College Tour should head next, which further drove up engagement.

Giveaways like this one helped 31st place finisher Wild Country earn 14th on Instagram, one of its strongest channels. The climbing gear brand employed a few other smart strategies to catch attention for its giveaway: requiring low effort from followers to enter and posting a carousel instead of a static photo image helped the giveaway reach extra far on Instagram (no coincidence, since across all industries, carousel posts have higher engagement rates by follower than any other post type). Encouraging entrants to share their favorite motivational soundbite in the comments also helped spark conversation and drive engagement way, way up to the tune of a 12.6% engagement rate.

Dive into the top outdoor brands of the year

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Top Outdoor Brands on Instagram

Outdoor brands had a field day on Instagram this year with a median engagement rate of 0.33%, which is way higher than these brands earned on Facebook and Twitter (but way lower than on TikTok). Outdoor brands posted about 3.5 times per week on Instagram, or about every other day.

Simms Fishing Products took the gold on Instagram this year, with Burton Snowboards and Trek Bicycle rounding out the medalists. Overall top 10 finishers Atomic, Specialized Bicycles, and Oakley also stood out on Instagram, while Jones, Santa Cruz Bicycles, Petzl, and Pivot Cycles stood out on Instagram but didn’t do well enough on other channels to make it into the top 10.

Featured brand: Simms Fishing Products

Fishing brand Simms managed a big win on Instagram this year thanks to inspiring posts and more than its fair share of humor. The brand also finished in the top 10 in our overall rankings and on Facebook, but was further behind its competitors on Twitter and TikTok.

Simms managed to outdo its competition on both Instagram engagement rate and total: the brand earned a median engagement rate of 2.66% and more than 4.3M total engagements. Good content helped, but so did consistent posting at about twice the rate of other outdoor brands. Growing its follower count by 25% this year could’ve also played a role in the brand’s standout Instagram success.

UGC+humor=a match made in heaven for Simms and lots of other outdoor brands. This post featuring a fishing mishap in New Zealand entertained fans to the tune of a 16.8% engagement rate, which is more than 50x the outdoor brands median on Instagram. Fans ate up the video, and Simms benefitted a ton from being able to borrow content rather than having to create it all from scratch. As much as the social media managers for outdoor brands would probably love to be on adventures constantly to showcase gear, it’s not always logistically possible to be everywhere at once. Featuring content from other creators is a great way for brands to expand their footprint and build trust with followers about how their gear really holds up when put to the test.

Simms earned an even stronger 17.7% engagement rate with a quick looped Reel of fly fishing from an aerial view set to a Ferris Bueller soundbite. The video stood out thanks to a unique vantage point, a beloved movie reference, and some seriously amazing fish action to the tune of more than 115K engagements and nearly two million estimated impressions. UGC and a strong hashtag game also helped Simms boost its reach on this post.

This heartfelt Reel featuring a father-son duo fishing and talking about the finer points of life resonated with followers in a big way, earning an impressive 81.1% engagement rate and nearly half a million total engagements. Reminding viewers that buying (their) fishing gear can lead to precious moments like this is always a good way to show off what your brand can do for buyers. It’s also strong social media storytelling any way you slice it.

Top Outdoor Brands on TikTok

Congrats to Rossignol on the TikTok gold this year, and to overall top 10 finishers Arc’teryx and Hydro Flask for joining the ski and apparel brand on the winner’s podium. Burton Snowboards, our overall winner, also had a top-notch performance on TikTok, as did outdoor apparel brands Patagonia, Billabong, Quiksilver, and Chaco Footwear. REI was the standout retailer on the list, while Specialized Bicycles was the top-performing bike brand on TikTok.

Anyone who’s been paying attention to TikTok benchmarks knows engagement rates are much higher on this channel than on any of the others. Superfans of our TikTok benchmarking content will also remember that we measure engagement rate by view instead of by follower, because counting the number of times a viewer liked, commented, or shared and dividing it by the overall number of views measures just how compelling your content was.

Outdoor brands earned a whopping 3.46% engagement rate by view on TikTok this year and posted less than once a week at just 0.7 videos per week.

Featured brand: Hydro Flask

Hydro Flask has always been a serious contender in the race for outdoor brands social media gold, but the insulated water bottle brand set itself apart even more this year by standing out on TikTok. How did Hydro Flask land the bronze on this tricky, high-intensity channel? Doubling its follower count and publishing videos at nearly 3x the rate of the median outdoor brand definitely helped. The brand rocked a median engagement rate by view of 7.35%, which is more than 2x the outdoor brands median, and also earned four times as many views as its average competitor. Let’s dive into the content that helped Hydro Flask soar on TikTok.

Replies are an important piece of the TikTok puzzle because they help fans who engaged on one video find their way to your next piece of content. This video replying to a comment from a Hydro Flask fan earned an impressive 11.3% engagement rate by view and nearly 6 million views with nothing more than a close-up product shot and a Little Mermaid audio clip. Combining the oomph of a reply with a product announcement tease certainly didn’t hurt either.

Speaking of product announcements, Hydro Flask was all about the video equivalent of glamour shots on TikTok this year to tease new releases. The video featured some behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot plus the gorgeous main event in the thumbnail above to tease fans about the newest color in the Hydro Flask family. Hydro Flask has built a business on the “if I like it, I’ll buy it in another color” mindset, so finding a way to get existing Hydro Flask owners excited about their new drops is key. This video earned a 17.4% engagement rate by view and more than 1.3M views from people excited to add grapefruit to their collection.

Many of Hydro Flask’s most engaging videos on TikTok were under or around 10 seconds and focused on the product rather than the people behind it or customers. This video, which rocked a 10.9% engagement rate by view is no exception. Outdoor brands can show off their value to customers by showcasing their products in the wild, like in this video featuring a quick and easy infused water recipe using the Hydro Flask travel tumbler. Varying straight-up product marketing videos with ones where you give something like a recipe away for free can help fans stay engaged with your page and ultimately develop a relationship with your brand.

Top Outdoor Brands on Facebook

Outdoor brands earned a median engagement rate of 0.03% this year, which is about half what the average brand in our 2023 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report earned this year. Outdoor brands were also less active on Facebook than the average brand in that study, posting just 2.4 times per week. There were still tons of engaging posts from the slopes and the mountains for outdoor brands on Facebook this year, so let’s get into what worked well for these brands.

Way to go, Atomic! This ski brand grabbed the gold on Facebook and just missed out on the overall gold thanks to the valiant efforts of Burton Snowboards. Shimano and Petzl also rocked hard on Facebook this year, as did overall top 10 finishers YETI and Simms Fishing Products. The Orvis Company, Yeti Cycles (not to be confused with YETI coolers), Pivot Cycles, Fjallraven, and Exped rounded out the top 10 outdoor brands on Facebook this year.

Featured brand: Atomic

Atomic was all about athlete influencers on social this year, which helped the winter apparel and equipment brand secure gold on Facebook and rank second overall for outdoor brands on social media. They were no slouches on TikTok either, grabbing 11th, but didn’t tweet a single time this year, proving you don’t need the bird to soar on outdoor social media.

With a smaller follower count on Facebook than the average outdoor brand, you’d think Atomic would struggle for engagement, but it was quite the opposite: Atomic rocked the second highest engagement total and rate of all the outdoor brands we studied on Facebook this year thanks to rabid fans who couldn’t get enough of their content.

If you’re a fan of skiing superstar Mikaela Shiffrin, you probably own a pair of Atomic skis. The brand went all in on Mikaela this year with an ironclad partnership that had the skier popping up in many of Atomic’s most engaging posts on Facebook. This photo featuring Mikaela posing with a pair of Atomic skis sported an 11.6% engagement rate by follower and more than 26K engagements, with fans racing to the comments to congratulate their favorite skier on another epic season.

Speaking of influencer partnership and epic wins, Atomic wasn’t afraid to show off other top athletes affiliated with its brand, like this post about Aleksander Kilde’s big win in the Super 6 at the World Cup. The post excited fans to the tune of a 1.78% engagement rate, which is nearly 60x the outdoor brands median Facebook engagement rate. Like many brands who pay to play in 2023, Atomic took advantage of Facebook’s continuing relevance by boosting many of its top posts on Facebook, and this one is very likely no exception.

International audience? No problem. Atomic is actually based in Austria, and having a multilingual Facebook feed didn’t slow them down. This post featuring Swiss alpine skier Anuk Braendli written totally in German had an engagement rate on par with the English language post above this one. It can be tempting for brands to cater to English or Western audiences, but part of Atomic’s strength on Facebook comes from knowing where its customers are and the type of content that’ll work best for them, even if it might not work for every follower.

Top Outdoor Brands on Twitter

Shimano Fishing North America reeled in the Twitter gold this year, with Burton Snowboards and 5.11 Tactical hot on its heels. Patagonia and Burton were the only two overall top 10 finishers to also snag top 10 glory on Twitter this year, reminding us that individualized channel strategy really does matter. Columbia, HOKA, Brooks Running, Danner, Zpacks, and Trek Bikes rounded out the Twitter top 10 with standout performances.

Outdoor brands earned their lowest engagement rates of the year on Twitter at just 0.01%. Not too surprising, since they were tweeting on average just 0.02 times per week (and no, that’s not a typo). Twitter’s adoption rate is definitely on the decline for outdoor brands this year.

Featured brand: Patagonia

Patagonia used its way above average platform to do more than sell outdoor apparel on Twitter this year. The brand was all about activism, and its more than 600K Twitter followers ate it up to help Patagonia earn the second highest engagement total in the landscape. Frequency also helped Patagonia cut through the noise on Twitter: the brand tweeted a little more than once per day, which far outpaced other outdoor brands on this channel.

Patagonia wasn’t afraid to encourage followers to take action against projects and laws that it believed would harm the environment, like in this tweet about oil drilling initiative the Willow Project. The tweet combined urgency with a compelling video to earn an impressive 0.78% engagement rate by follower and more than 223K estimated impressions. The work of Patagonia and many other climate activists hasn’t managed to stop the project yet, but kudos to the brand for using its platform to take a stand.

The apparel brand leavened tweets about serious issues like the Willow Project with fun tweets like this one encouraging followers to reply with their guesses about the name of this mountain. Fans hopped into the reply stream with a mix of goofy and serious guesses alongside lots of love for their favorite California mountain to the tune of a 0.28% engagement rate and nearly 300K estimated impressions.

Stunning nature photography also helped Patagonia stand out on Twitter this year, like this tweet featuring a tree stump and likely the saw that felled it. Beautiful snaps like this prompted conservation dialogue and retweets among followers, which helped the tweet snag a 0.22% engagement rate.

It’s worth noting that there wasn’t a jacket or shoe in sight in Patagonia’s most engaging tweets by rate, reminding us that embodying your outdoor brand’s values can be just as impactful to your business as highlighting your latest product release.

See how your outdoor brand stacks up.

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How is my Outdoor Brand Performing on Social Media?

Comparing your outdoor brand’s social media performance has never been easier.

Browse our Live Outdoor Brand Social Media Benchmarks for a real-time look at top posts, engagement rates, high-performing hashtags, and tons more. You can even add these benchmarks directly into your Rival IQ account for always-on monitoring of these top brands.

Need even more competitive analytics? Go head-to-head with a free report on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to see how you stack up against your top competition. See what makes your competitors tick with key insights and actionable advice you can start using now to come out on top.

If you’re hungry for even more stats, start a free 14-day trial with Rival IQ.

Methodology

We surveyed 120 outdoor brands on social media between January 1, 2023 and October 31, 2023 on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Using this data and a weighted formula, we generated an overall engagement ranking for each brand. The top-ranked outdoor brands on social media have high engagement rates with average or better audience size and posting volumes.

We define engagement as measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. We used engagement rate by follower to measure engagement on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of followers. We used engagement rate by view to measure engagement on TikTok, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of views.

The case for benchmarking

Why benchmark instead of just measuring how your outdoor brand’s social media individual performance changes over time? Because social success is relative. Benchmarking means figuring out what’s working (and what isn’t) in your industry and measuring your success against that.

It’s crucial to go beyond likes and favorites because audience size is hugely important: 100 likes is great engagement for a brand with 1,000 followers but is a drop in the bucket to a brand with 100,000 followers. Engagement rate helps us take audience size into account to see who’s really reaching the highest percentage of their fans and followers with their social posts, which are the outdoor brands you need to beat.

Wrapping it up

We hope you had as much fun as we did digging into what made outdoor brands stand out on social media (and were at least a little inspired to plan your next hike or trip to the slopes).

Did we miss an outdoor brand on social media you love? Want to share another industry we should rank on social? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter.

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The post Top Outdoor Brands on Social Media appeared first on Rival IQ.

We studied thousands of LinkedIn posts and millions of engagements to bring you key stats on how often brands are posting on LinkedIn, what engagement rates are looking like, how video is impacting engagement, and tons more info to help you reach followers more effectively.

Be sure to download the report for free, and let’s get on with the show!

Key LinkedIn Benchmarking Takeaways

LinkedIn engagement rates are on par with other channels.

Median brands are earning an average engagement rate per follower of 0.41% on LinkedIn, which is a little worse than Facebook and Instagram, a little better than Twitter, and way behind TikTok.

Video matters.

Brands saw monster engagement and view rates with video posts that were tougher to achieve with other post types like articles and status updates.

Brands were twice as active on LinkedIn as they were on TikTok.

The median brand posted about 3.3 times per week on LinkedIn, which is more than double the posting frequency we saw in our TikTok benchmark report this year.

Bigger isn’t always better.

Accounts with small, engaged followings outperformed their larger counterparts in almost all areas on LinkedIn this year, including impressions per follower and engagement rate by follower.

Grab the full report with even more LinkedIn #inspo.

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LinkedIn Posts per Week

We’re often asked, “How often should my brand be posting on social media?” Benchmarking your brand’s LinkedIn posting frequency against brands of a similar size is the best way to figure out how many posts per week you should be aiming for.

LinkedIn Posts per Week: Distribution

The average brand in this study publishes about 3.3 posts per week, or about 13 per month.

• Brands weren’t afraid to stay active on LinkedIn, with just 6% of brands posting less than once per week.
• Nearly 10% of brands publish more than 10 posts per week.

Brands are about twice as active on LinkedIn as they were in this year’s TikTok Benchmark Report, which isn’t too surprising given the production hurdles for producing quality video content.

LinkedIn Posts per Week: Account Size

The larger your account, the more likely you are to publish more frequently.

• The smallest bin we studied 
(2K-5K followers) averaged about 2 posts per week.
• Accounts with 100K+ followers post twice as often at about 5 times per week.

We often see a correlation between follower count and posting frequency on social. Having more followers doesn’t make you post more, but accounts that consistently post a higher volume of quality content are going to grow their accounts. As they grow, we see the investment in posting grow along with it.

Engagement Rate by Impression

Engagement Rate by impression on LinkedIn is a great way to measure a post’s quality. Why? Counting the number of times a viewer liked, commented, or shared and dividing it by the overall number of impressions measures just how compelling your content was. If your post wasn’t high-quality or attention-grabbing, viewers will be less likely to engage with it, and therefore you’ll earn a smaller engagement rate per impression. If your post attracted attention, viewers will be more likely to take the extra step of engagement before swiping to the next video.

Engagement Rate by Impression: Distribution

The average brand in our study earns an engagement rate by impression of 4.73%.

• Just 5% of brands managed to double the median engagement rate by impression on LinkedIn, so don’t feel bad if you’re not in the double digits.
• This engagement rate by impression is about on par with what brands are seeing on channels like Instagram and TikTok.

In our most recent Instagram report, we noted that brands have been consistently earning a 4.3% engagement per impression, while in our most recent TikTok report, brands rocked a 4.15% engagement rate by view.

Engagement Rate by Impression: Account Size

The bigger your following, the smaller your engagement rate on LinkedIn.

• Brands with more than 100K followers have an average engagement rate by impression of 3%, which is about half of what smaller brands are seeing.
• Small accounts with fewer than 5k followers are reaching an engagement per view of nearly 6%.

It’s common across social media channels that smaller followings equal bigger engagement rates, since a close-knit group of followers is often likelier to have a strong connection to your content.

Posting Volume by Post Type

Photos are the most frequent post type on LinkedIn by a mile.

• Photo posts were responsible for nearly half the engagements on LinkedIn this year.
• Video posts, at 17% of overall content, came in 3rd for total volume.
• Brands were much less likely to post collages and documents than any other post type.

Photos and articles dominated the engagement charts on LinkedIn this year, but it’ll be interesting to see if the video piece of the pie chart grows over time as Reels and TikTok continue to rise in popularity.

Engagement Rate by Impression: Post Type

Experimenting with off-the-beaten path post types could net high engagement on LinkedIn.

• Document and collage posts blew other post types out of the water by engagement rate.
• Photo posts also earned above-median engagement rates for brands on LinkedIn.

It can be tempting to toss a quick article or photo up on your brand’s LinkedIn page, but taking the time to play with new or less-used post types like documents or collages can really pay off.

LinkedIn Impressions per Follower

No matter how spectacular your LinkedIn content is, you’re almost definitely not reaching 100% of your followers with it. Measuring the percentage of followers that are putting their eyeballs on your content is an important method for measuring the quality and effectiveness of your content.

The average brand in our study averages about 8.63 impressions per 100 followers on each post.

• One in five brands reach only 4% of their followers on a per-post basis, so don’t feel bad if you’re not measuring up here.
• The top fifth of brands are reaching 20% of their followers, on average, with each post they publish.

Aiming high here is always a good idea for brands looking to get the most bang for their content buck, but the numbers here show that most brands are rocking an average impressions per follower rate of less than 10%.

Impressions per Follower: Account Size

Small and mid-size accounts earn way more impressions per follower than larger ones.

• Accounts with fewer than 5,000 followers average about 16 views per 100 followers on each video.
• Larger accounts with more than 100K followers earn a fraction of their smaller counterparts with just 3 impressions per follower.

This dynamic of impressions declining as accounts grow is one that we also see on other platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Smaller accounts tend to post less frequently, which also helps increase the views on each individual video.

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LinkedIn Video Views by Impression

With video continuing its meteoric rise on LinkedIn and other channels, it’s important to zoom into this specific post type to see how your videos are performing. Getting the most out of your brand’s LinkedIn videos means reaching and engaging more followers.

Video Views per Impression

The average brand in our study earns about 42 video views per 100 impressions on each video they post.

• LinkedIn defines a view as an impression with a 3-second watch time.
• Nearly 20% of brands earn more than a whopping 90% views per impression rate on their videos. That’s scroll-stopping content!

Video posts really set themselves apart on LinkedIn, reminding us that video continues to reign supreme in this era of TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube.

Video Views per Impression by Account Size

In general, we find that the larger the number of followers, the lower the video views per impression.

• Accounts with fewer than 5,000 followers average about 49 views per 100 impressions on each video.
• That ratio decreases with accounts with more than 100K followers averaging around 35 views per 100 impressions on each video.

Even the largest accounts are still earning killer video views per impression on LinkedIn, reminding brands that continuing to invest in video is the right call.

LinkedIn Engagement Rate by Follower

If you’ve ever read a Rival IQ benchmark report before, you won’t be surprised to see our most-used engagement metric making an appearance on LinkedIn too. Engagement rate by follower helps users control for audience size when measuring engagements on social. It’s crucial to go beyond engagement total because audience size is hugely important: 200 likes is great engagement for a brand with 2,000 followers but is a drop in the bucket to a brand with 200,000 followers.

Engagement Rate by Follower: Distribution

On a per-post basis, the engagement rate by follower for the median brand comes in at 0.41%.

• About 40% of brands earn an engagement rate by follower of less than 0.4%.
• About a fifth of brands are earning engagement rates above 1%, or about double the median.

We share this engagement rate to help brands understand their LinkedIn performance relative to other social media channels. Engagement rates per follower that brands are earning right now on LinkedIn are a little lower than Facebook and Instagram, just above Twitter, and miles below TikTok.

Engagement Rate by Follower: Account Size

On average, brands with larger accounts see lower engagement rates by follower on average.

• Accounts with fewer than 5K followers see their average engagement rates come in above the median brand at 0.87%, or about 2x the LinkedIn median.
• The largest accounts with more than 100K followers earned much smaller engagement rates of just 0.11%.

There are multiple factors that drive engagement rate, including average reach and content quality. As we saw in the previous section, larger accounts tend to earn fewer engagements per follower on average.

Average Monthly Follower Growth

With so many brands looking to steadily increase their follower counts over time, it’s important to look at your month-over-month LinkedIn follower growth for sharp spikes or declines that might correlate to killer content, viral posts, or other follower growth factors.

Across all account sizes, brands on LinkedIn are growing their followers at least 1% on a monthly basis.

• Smaller accounts, those with less than 5K followers, are averaging monthly growth of more than 1.5%.
• The larger accounts in this study over 100K followers are growing a little less month over month at just 1.2%.

The difference in monthly growth for small accounts and large ones isn’t huge, reminding us that success on LinkedIn is much more about quality content than anything else.

LinkedIn Case Studies

We reviewed the LinkedIn performance of top-performing brands from our most recent benchmarking reports across a variety of industries. Take a deep-dive into the content and strategies that helped these top brand stand out on LinkedIn.

From not-so-humble brags about the brand’s success to heartfelt posts about how Selena Gomez’s brand is giving back to its community, Rare Beauty stood out among beauty brands on LinkedIn this year.

Many of Rare Beauty’s top LinkedIn posts featured their famous founder just like on their other channels, but the brand wasn’t afraid to get personal with posts about their commitments to causes like mental health and Black History Month.

Read more about top beauty brands on social media in our latest Top 100 Beauty Brands on Social Media report.

Texas Christian University was busy on LinkedIn this year, with more than 4x the posts per week of the average company in this study. From campus events to alumni achievements, TCU was all about keeping followers engaged and informed about what was going on in their Texas-based community.

Posting a mix of informational and playful posts paid off for TCU with killer engagement rates many times higher than the median brand in this study.

See what top D1 and D2 colleges and universities are up to on social in our most recent Higher Education Social Media Engagement Report.

Like many of its nonprofit peers, Amnesty International stood out on LinkedIn by staying true to its mission of raising funds and awareness for the biggest humanitarian issues the world is facing today. The nonprofit used compelling video and photos alongside compelling storytelling to call for action from followers and offer ideas for getting involved.

More than a few of the brand’s considerable total engagement count came from dissenters, which is no surprise when dealing with divisive issues.

Find inspiration from top nonprofits on social media in our latest industry report.

Healthy soda brand OLIPOP saw a meteoric rise in follower count on LinkedIn this year compared to their healthy food peers, averaging about 4500 new followers every month. This growth helped the brand more than double its followers since the beginning of the year.

Colorful and creative posts and videos helped the brand attract a new following this year, from flavor announcement commercials to podcasts to offering followers a chance to work with their favorite soda brand.

Grab a snack and cozy up with our latest Top 100 Healthy Food Brands on Social Media report.

Methodology

Rival IQ analyzed over 58K LinkedIn posts published between January and September 2023. We included hundreds of handles that were active with posts in 2023 and a minimum of 2,000 followers.

Handles were included only if we had all of their data for the entire time period, regardless of how frequently or infrequently they published LinkedIn posts. These handles reached across 14 different industries, including beauty, media, influencers, sports, higher education, and more.

LinkedIn Terms Glossary

We know there are many different ways to measure engagement, so here’s a quick round-up of all the LinkedIn engagement metrics we studied in this report and their definitions.

Engagement Rate by Follower: The average number of engagements per follower on a per-post basis.

Engagement Rate by Impression:
The average number of engagements per impression.

Engagement Total:
The total number of interactions (likes, comments, shares, and clicks) on posts.

Impressions per Follower:
The average number of impressions per follower on a per-post basis.

Monthly Follower Growth Rate:
The average monthly growth rate over the report period.

Posts per Week:
The average number of posts a brand publishes per week.

Video Views per Impression:
The average number of video views per impression on a per-video basis.

Wrapping It Up

We had a blast adding LinkedIn to our family of social media benchmarks, and hope you picked up some content inspo and more than a few metrics to compare your brand’s performance against. Congrats to all the brands we surveyed for standing out in the crowded field that is LinkedIn. We can’t wait to see what you do next year!

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The post 2024 LinkedIn Benchmark Report appeared first on Rival IQ.

We ranked our faves alongside tons of case studies and trends from the healthy food brands that earned the highest engagement rates and totals across all four major channels this year. Grab your favorite healthy snacks and tuck in for a report bursting with info on what the top healthy food brands are up to on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter.

Let’s get eating–er, reading!

Spoilers! See the full Healthy Food brand rankings.

Grab your report here

Top Overall Healthy Food Brands on Social Media

No surprises here with Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams taking the gold again! Fans of our previous reports will also recognize brands like OLIPOP, Spindrift, Beyond Meat, Siete Family Foods, and Kodiak Cakes in our overall top 10. We’re excited to welcome newcomers GT’s Living Foods, Vital Farms, Unreal, Quest Nutrition, and good culture this year to our top 10 as well.

2023 marks our second year of measuring healthy food brands based on their performance on all four major channels: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. Of course, as brands invest more time in their TikTok videos, many more are pulling back on their Twitter game. Time will tell in terms of long-term efforts for healthy food brands on social, but for now we celebrate those who are killing it across all four channels we studied.

Top healthy food brand: Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams

Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams dominated again on social this year, earning top ten finishes on all four channels for the overall gold. Fans ate up collabs and new products this year like Jeni’s Lonely Ghost or Ted Lasso limited edition flavors and the launch of the Bombastix Sundae Cone. Followers also loved posts that took them behind the scenes for an inside look at their favorite ice cream brand.

Many of Jeni’s top-ranking posts were all about their epic collab with Apple TV just in time for the third season of popular soccer-themed show Ted Lasso. This Facebook post about the release rocked a 0.79% engagement rate, which is a whopping 39.5x increase over the healthy food brand median of 0.02%. The brand went all in on the collab, with posts teasing the flavor flooding their channels for weeks ahead of the launch.

It’s hard to succeed on social media if you’re not paying attention to content trends, and the success of this TikTok video shot in the style of twee director Wes Anderson really drives that point home. The video rocked an 9.5% engagement rate by view by being silly, irreverent, stylized, and more than a little of the moment. Planning content around what your brand is up to is an important part of using social media to increase brand awareness, but being reactive to trends like this is an equally vital part of staying relevant on social in 2023.

Fans ate up Jeni’s colorful and creative collabs, like this tweet announcing the brand’s partnership with cult favorite Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts. The tweet earned a 0.49% engagement rate by follower and more than 74K estimated impressions thanks to a promise of deliciousness to come alongside a heavy dose of nostalgia. Brokering relevant partnerships that amplify your brand’s reach can help your healthy food brand soar on social by introducing your offerings to a totally new audience of like-minded shoppers.

Speaking of collabs, Jeni’s wasn’t afraid to partner with non-food brands and influencers, like this limited-edition flavor with lifestyle brand Lonely Ghost. Jeni’s took the collab way beyond the scoop shop, with merch and in-person events to add even more to the hype. The photo post earned an 8.91% engagement rate by follower on Instagram, which is more than 37x the engagement rate for the median healthy food brand on Instagram. Fans jumped into the comments to express their excitement and to ask for more deets, which is always a strong sign of engagement for any healthy food brand.

Top Trend 1: Collabs

Everybody loves when two of their favorite brands or flavors come together, which is why creative collabs continued to trend for healthy food brands on social media this year. From influencers to limited-edition product releases, healthy food brand fans ate up fun partnerships and smashed like buttons everywhere in support of their faves coming together.

RIND Snacks ranked 12th overall thanks in part to successfully teaming up with brands like Sweet Nothings. This Reel announcing their partnership on a limited-edition flavor of their popular Nut Butter Bites earned a 2.28% engagement rate on Instagram and 42.5K estimated impressions. Combining the collab with one of our other healthy food trend callouts, contests and giveaways, helped make this Reel extra sweet for RIND Snacks fans.

Collabs didn’t always have to be food-themed to earn strong engagement rates for healthy food brands on social. Kombucha brand Health-Ade ranked 3rd on Facebook thanks to the success of posts like this one featuring their collab with lifestyle brand Madhappy focused on mental health instead of the next big kombucha flavor. The post rocked a 21% engagement rate and hundreds of thousands of estimated impressions by offering big value to followers as a result of the collab, from chances to connect with other followers to talks about mental health and beyond.

Top Trend 2: Recipe posts

Speaking of offering value to followers, many food brands were all about the recipe freebies this year on social. Sharing ideas with followers to help them solve the age-old question “What should I make for dinner/snack/breakfast/etc.?” resulted in tons of engagements, and hey, if it also helps move product off the shelves and into bellies by suggesting specific healthy food brands to use, who’s gonna complain about that?

This Instagram Reel from yogurt brand Chobani helped the brand rank 7th on Instagram with its delicious ideas for edible cookie dough made with its yogurt as a base. The Reel earned a 30.4% engagement rate and nearly 60K (!) engagements by offering a new spin on a popular fave for free to followers. Fans jumped into the comments to thank Chobani for the brilliant idea or to offer substitutions for various ingredients in the recipe, which helped further boost engagement by keeping the conversation going.

We’re not saying easy dessert ideas are the *only* recipes healthy food brands should be offering to their followers on social media, but we’re also not *not* saying that. This Facebook post from 6th place overall winner Siete Family Foods with a quick and tasty recipe for a confetti dip that pairs perfectly with their crunchy Mexican Shortbread cookies excited followers to the tune of a 0.46% engagement rate, which is more than 23x the median Facebook engagement rate for healthy food brands. It’s not just sugar that helps recipe ideas stand out: followers also ate up easy recipes that didn’t require an oven or stovetop, which isn’t too surprising in our instant gratification world.

Top Trend 3: Contests and giveaways

From epic swag packages to sneak peeks at new products, healthy food brand fans were eager to drop a like or follow in exchange for a chance to win big. This tried-and-true trend seems to never go out of style for brands across a wide variety of industries, and healthy food brands were able to make the most of contests and giveaways with an added bonus of deliciousness.

Any brand can offer a giveaway, but not every brand takes the time to have its founder sit down for a Facebook video announcing the winner. Kombucha brand GT’s Living Foods ranked 5th overall and performed well on Facebook thanks in part to giveaway posts like this one. In a world of famous founders increasingly serving as the face for the brands, GT Dave’s regular presence on GT’s social channels goes a long way towards personalizing the brand. And if he has the excuse of giving away a prize package while he does it, all the better for GT’s social engagement.

This contest tweet from Caulipower reminds us that giveaways don’t always have to have enormous prize packages attached to find purchase. Caulipower ranked 6th on Twitter thanks in part to the success of tweets like this one, which rocked a 26.9% engagement rate by follower and earned oodles of engagements from followers who entered the contest. People love free stuff, so pulling together whatever you can around your brand’s offices can help your brand earn killer engagement rates, even if it’s just an oven mitt and a few coupons.

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Top Healthy Food Brands on Instagram

Healthy food brands earned a 0.24% engagement rate on Instagram this year, which is about 33% lower than last year’s Instagram engagement rate for this industry. Brands are posting less on Instagram this year at just 2.6 posts per week, down from 3.4 posts per week last year.

Congrats to Birch Benders for grabbing the Instagram gold this year, and to Van Leeuwen and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams for earning the silver and bronze respectively. Overall top ten finishers OLIPOP, Spindrift, and GT’s Living Foods also performed well on Instagram, while brands like Brightland, Chobani, Erewhon, and Banza excelled on Instagram but struggled a bit on other channels for lower overall rankings.

Featured healthy food brand: Spindrift

Spindrift Sparkling Water earned a third-place overall finish for the second year in a row thanks to fun and sparkly social posts, but the healthy food brand earns an extra high-five in our book for moving up from 8th to 5th on Instagram this year.

Spindrift rocked a 0.87% engagement rate by follower on Instagram, which is about 3.6x higher than the median healthy food brand on Instagram. Spindrift posted 3.92 posts per week on Instagram, which is about every other day. The brand also earned about 3x the engagement total of the median healthy food brand on Instagram thanks to a strong mix of giveaways, memorable April Fool’s Day joke, and posts about new flavor releases and the return of old faves.

Spindrift wasn’t afraid to get in touch with its crunchier side during Earth month with posts like this giveaway. Any healthy food brand can give away product, but the chance to win a one-of-a-kind art piece made from recycled Spindrift cans encouraged fans to jump into the comments of a seriously successful Spindrift Reel. The post rocked a 43.4% engagement rate by follower, reminding us that giveaways are always a good idea, and brands shouldn’t shy away from getting creative about what they can offer fans in exchange for social engagement. Of course, investing in video content (and especially Reels) is always a strong bet for healthy food brands too.

One of Spindrift’s most engaging posts by rate across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter this year featured the brand’s adorable April Fool’s Day campaign about teeny tiny cans of seltzer. Fans ate up the fun post to the tune of a 5.27% engagement rate, which is a 21x increase over the healthy foods brand Instagram median of 0.24%. Joke-y posts like this can sometimes flop, but Spindrift’s success is a good reminder for healthy food brands that a little behind-the-scenes coordination and humor can go a long way on social.

Releasing new products is always a strong bet for healthy food brands, but the success of posts like this one from Spindrift about the return of Cranberry Raspberry and Spiced Apple Cider sparkling water is a major point in favor of bringing back old faves. Fans were stoked about these limited releases to the tune of a 3.08% engagement rate, which is a 12x increase from the industry median. With more than 5K engagements and 102K estimated impressions, it’s easy to see that this post got the word out about Spindrift’s commitment to fall.

Top Healthy Food Brands on TikTok

THC-based beverage company Nowadays earned top marks on TikTok this year, with protein bar brand Grenade and Unreal Snacks hot on their heels in the TikTok winner’s podium. Overall top 10 winners Spindrift, OLIPOP, and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams also earned epic engagement on TikTok. Kidfresh, Erewhon, Supergut, Banza, and gimMe performed well on TikTok but didn’t manage to break into the overall top 10.

Brands earned a median engagement rate by view of 3.09% on TikTok this year and posted about 1.4 videos per week. These numbers aren’t too different from what healthy food brands were up to on TikTok in 2022, suggesting ongoing commitment to the newest of the big four social channels.

Featured healthy food brand: Unreal Snacks

Unreal Snacks are famous for their chocolate-covered treats made with vegan and Fair Trade ingredients, and managed to really stand out on TikTok this year on a few different fronts. The brand rocked a 17.2% engagement rate by view on TikTok, which is more than 5x the healthy food brand TikTok median. Unreal Snacks earned 87K engagements on TikTok during the time period, which is about 2x the median for their competitors. This number is remarkable because they posted 1.18 videos per week, which is actually a little lower than the industry median, meaning Unreal was pulling in nearly twice the engagement total per video of their peers.

Unreal Snacks put a heavy emphasis in the captions and content of many of their TikTok videos on clean ingredients, and fans ate it up. This video featuring their chocolate-coated candy piece offering bragged about the product’s ingredients and earned a 19.3% engagement rate by view as fans jumped into the comments to let the company know how much they love their offerings and commitment to clean ingredients.

If you were on TikTok this year, you saw your fair share of videos featuring Stranger Things actor Finn Wolfhard snapping his fingers to make the world a little brighter. Many brands and creators jumped on the trend for a chance to show off their products in a humorous way, and Unreal Snacks managed a 6.29% engagement rate thanks to a little help from the meme. Staying on top of trending sounds and memes is critical for any brand hoping to stay in the FYP mix on TikTok, so don’t be afraid to tap the expertise of Gen Z staffers (or just spend a lot of time on TikTok).

This quick carousel of Unreal’s products next to celebs dressed in outfits that look an awful lot like the brand’s packaging cracked fans up to the tune of a 7.55% engagement rate by view. We like to remind brands that a balance of proactive and reactive content can really go a long way on social, and this simple post that was clearly an 11th-hour brainchild of an Unreal social media manager with a sense of humor backs up the point that planning is great, but so is jumping into the zeitgeist with two feet.

Top Healthy Food Brands on Facebook

An epic high-five to Beyond Meat for snagging the Facebook gold this year up from third in our 2022 report. Real Good Foods snagged the silver for the second year in a row, while Health-Ade broke into the Facebook top 10 with a kombucha-flavored splash. Overall top 10 winners Siete Family Foods and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams also put on a strong show on Facebook, while Veggies Made Great, Nuttzo, Munk Pack, Impossible Foods, and Oats Overnight earned their strongest ranks on Facebook of any channel we studied.

The median healthy food brand earned an engagement rate of 0.02% on Facebook and posted just once per week, both of which are about half of what these brands got up to on Facebook last year.

Featured healthy food brand: Beyond Meat

Plant-based meat alternative brand Beyond Meat dominated on Facebook this year with a 0.45% engagement rate and more engagements than every other brand we studied except one (we’re looking at you, Real Good Foods). Beyond posted even less frequently on Facebook than their healthy food compatriots with just one post per week. The brand often focused on new releases and partnerships, and weren’t above a brag here and there about their nutritional content or positive environmental impact.

Beyond received a number of awards this year and weren’t afraid to take to their social feeds to share the big news with followers. This post about being the first plant-based meat product to earn some love from Good Housekeeping earned a 0.82% engagement rate and more than 3,700 engagements from excited followers. 213 of those engagements were shares, which mean followers were inspired enough by the post content to share the big news with their own followings, which is one of biggest engagement compliments a fan can pay a brand.

Plant-based ground beef is so yesterday–offerings like Popcorn Chicken and Beyond Steak are increasingly all the rage as Beyond pushes, well, beyond their flagship product. This post touting the rest of Beyond’s Product line gave followers a helpful hint on where to find them in their home stores, earning a 1.31% engagement rate and nearly 6K engagements. Offering value to customers with your posts never goes out of style, it seems.

With millions turning to plant-based meat for health reasons, Beyond offered a visual comparison for shoppers who might be on the fence about their offerings. This quick at-a-glance case for plant-based meat earned a killer 3.66% engagement rate, which is more than 183x the healthy foods median this year. With more than 16K engagements and 10K reactions, it’s safe to say this comparison post was affirming and exciting for shoppers leaning into plant-based meat choices at their local grocery store.

See how your healthy food brand stacks up.

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Top Healthy Food Brands on Twitter

OLIPOP dominated on Twitter again after a second-place finish last year, with Hain and Beyond Meat hot on the soda brand’s heels. Athletic Greens, Brightland, Caulipower, RIND Snacks, and Impossible Foods had strong scores on Twitter but didn’t top the charts on other channels, while all-around champs Kodiak Cakes and Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams continued their engagement streaks on Twitter.

Healthy food brands weren’t as active on Twitter as they were on other channels this year, but those that were managed to pull off a noteworthy engagement rate of 0.09%. It’s worth noting that we pulled this engagement rate from only engaged brands, and that the overall median for the group of healthy food brands we studied was actually 0.0%. The same active group of brands tweeted about once per week, while more than half the brands in this study didn’t tweet at all.

Why are we reporting on both numbers? Painting a picture that healthy food brands weren’t active on Twitter at all just isn’t fair to the hardworking brands that did manage to keep going amidst all the changes on that platform this year, so we’ve opted to offer two numbers you can benchmark your healthy food brand’s engagement with depending on how much effort you put into Twitter this year.

Featured healthy food brand: OLIPOP

OLIPOP performed well on Twitter thanks to a secret weapon that no one else in the industry was able to get their hands on: a partnership with singer/songwriter Camila Cabello. Almost all the healthy soda brand’s top tweets mentioned or referenced Cabello, and fans couldn’t get enough. OLIPOP rocked a 2.61% engagement rate and more than 36K engagements. The brand tweeted 9x per week and replied another nine times, which surely contributed to their epic engagement on Twitter.

OLIPOP earned top marks for photo tweets this year including this one featuring a TBT/BTS combo which earned a 37.9% engagement rate, which is more than 421x (!) the median for an engaged healthy food brand on Twitter. Throwback and behind-the-scenes content perform well consistently for healthy food brands across all channels, and of course adding in that Camila magic didn’t hurt OLIPOP’s engagement either.

If it works, work it: this retweet of a fan sharing with OLIPOP that the reason they started drinking their stuff was because of their partnership with Camila earned a 17.3% engagement rate by follower. OLIPOP’s loving relationship with Cabello is no secret, so why not shout it from the rooftops? Tagging Cabello and her bestie Shawn Mendes helped supercharge the tweet, which already sparked a bunch of conversation and retweets from fans.

Speaking of conversations with fans, OLIPOP was all about the replies on Twitter this year. The brand was just as likely to tweet as they were to reply, demonstrating a serious commitment to their community and keeping up the convos they started. This tweet asking fans to guess their latest favor earned an 8.3% engagement rate and more than 400 engagements. Over a quarter of those engagements were replies, many of which earned additional attention thanks to replies from the brand itself. Social media can be fast-paced and overwhelming, so kudos to brands like OLIPOP that are committed to cutting through the noise in service of connecting with fans online.

See how your health food brand stacks up.

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How is my Healthy Food Brand Performing on Social Media?

Comparing your healthy food brand’s social media performance has never been easier.

Browse our Live Healthy Food Social Media Benchmarks for a real-time look at top posts, engagement rates, high-performing hashtags, and tons more. You can even add these benchmarks directly into your Rival IQ account for always-on monitoring of these top brands.

Need even more competitive analytics? Go head-to-head with a free report on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to see how you stack up against your top competition. See what makes your competitors tick with key insights and actionable advice you can start using now to come out on top.

If you’re hungry for even more stats, start a free 14-day trial with Rival IQ.

Methodology

We surveyed 100 healthy food brands on social media between January 1, 2023 and August 31, 2023 on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Using this data and a weighted formula, we generated an overall engagement ranking for each brand. The top-ranked healthy food brands on social media have high engagement rates with average or better audience size and posting volumes.

We define engagement as measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. We used engagement rate by follower to measure engagement on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of followers. We used engagement rate by view to measure engagement on TikTok, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of views.

The case for benchmarking

Why benchmark instead of just measuring how your healthy food brand’s social media individual performance changes over time? Because social success is relative. Benchmarking means figuring out what’s working (and what isn’t) in your industry and measuring your success against that.

It’s crucial to go beyond likes and favorites because audience size is hugely important: 100 likes is great engagement for a brand with 1,000 followers but is a drop in the bucket to a brand with 100,000 followers. Engagement rate helps us take audience size into account to see who’s really reaching the highest percentage of their fans and followers with their social posts, which are the healthy food brands you need to beat.

Wrapping it up

We’re raising a glass and a tortilla chip to all the healthy food brands on social media posting mouthwatering product shots and delicious menu ideas this year. Congrats to all the winners on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter this year.

Did we miss a healthy food brand on social media you love? Want to share another industry we should rank on social? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter.

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The post Top 100 Healthy Food Brands on Social Media appeared first on Rival IQ.

Instagram Reels can feel tricky, and marketers definitely want to get the most bang for their buck when it comes to these usually time-intensive videos by posting at the perfect time to catch followers. Figuring out the best time to post Reels on Instagram can help your brand increase your reach and engage more of your followers, and can be easily achieved in just a few steps.

We put together the definitive guide for the best time to post Reels on Instagram using data from thousands of top brands across all 14 industries we study in our Social Media Industry Benchmark Report. We broke it down by industry, time of day, and day of the week so you can fully optimize your Reels posting.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram

Before we jump into the rankings, let’s talk about how to read the embedded data below. We computed the average engagement rate over the course of the day for a big set of brands, and then correlated whether engagement rates in that time period were better or worse than their average content and by what percentage. Use the temperature indicator to see how engagement rates vary from the average (red is bad, blue is good). For example, a 1.3 ratio in dark blue indicates a 30% increase for brands over their average engagement rate. This setup makes brands relative to themselves for extra data accuracy.

The size of each dot is the relative volume of posting in each time slot to help give you a sense of how popular a time slot is. It’s important to look at both the engagement rate ratio and the volume of posting in each time slot for a true sense of how to apply these findings to your brand. Just because the engagement rate ratio is high in the overnight slot doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the key to social media success for your particular brand or industry.

Cross-Industry Data for Instagram Reels

As we noted above, the best time to post Reels on Instagram is unique to your brand and deserves some study and experimentation. That said, here are a few key Instagram Reels takeaways from our Cross-Industry data:

• Try posting before or after work on weekdays: Posting during the workday hardly did any favors for brands on Instagram Reels this year. Try moving away from the lunch hour and into dinner and bedtime for an engagement boost.
• Experiment with weekend posting: Many brands are focusing their Reels posting on the work week as evidenced by the bigger grey dots. These brands might want to try posting in weekend time slots which have smaller circles (less competition) and higher engagement rates, especially after dinner and overnight on Saturdays and Sundays.

Let’s jump into the best time to post on Instagram Reels broken down by industry.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Alcohol

The graph below displays the median engagement rate lift for Alcohol brands, disaggregated by day of week and time of day. The area of each bubble is in proportion to the number of Reels published by Alcohol brands during this time.

Midday on weekdays and first thing in the morning on the weekends are popular times for Alcohol brands to post Instagram Reels to get people planning their happy hours. But to no one’s surprise, bar times are the true winners for these brands, including late on Mondays and between 10pm and closing time on Fridays and Sundays.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Fashion

The graph that follows displays the median engagement rate lift for Fashion brands, broken down by day of week and time of day. The size of each bubble is relative to the quantity of Reels published by Fashion brands during this time.

Weekends and overnight weekday posting smoke other time slots for Fashion brands on Instagram Reels, so these brands should forget about workday posting and focus on targeting customers after hours.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Financial Services

The chart below illustrates the median lift in engagement rate for Financial Services companies, broken down by day of week and time of day. The area of each bubble is in proportion to the number of Reels published by Financial Services companies during this time.

Financial Services brands were most likely to catch their followers with Instagram Reels after dinner on weeknights or bright and early on the weekends. These brands posted Reels most frequently during the workday, but might want to look for after-hours slots to maximize their impact.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Food & Beverage

The visualization that follows illustrates the median engagement rate lift for Food & Beverage brands, broken down by day of week and time of day. The area of each bubble is in proportion to the quantity of Reels published by Food & Beverage brands during this time.

To no surprise, Food & Beverage brands earned the highest engagement rates on Instagram Reels with posts that hit when followers were wining and dining in the afternoons and evenings. These brands can help their fans plan their next meals with overnight weekday posting or daytime posting on Saturdays.

Best time to post on Reels on Instagram: Health & Beauty

The visualization below illustrates the median engagement rate lift for Health & Beauty brands, broken down by day of week and time of day. The area of each bubble is in proportion to the number of Reels published by Health & Beauty brands during this time.

Health & Beauty brands saw way more Instagram Reels traction with weekend posting than with posting during the work week. Posting overnight on Thursday and Friday was especially challenging for these brands, but they shouldn’t sleep on bright and early posting on Tuesdays.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Higher Education

The chart below illustrates the median lift in engagement rate for Higher Education institutions, grouped by day of week and time of day. The size of each bubble is relative to the amount of Reels published by Higher Education institutions during this time.

The best time for colleges and universities to reach their audience with Instagram Reels is before work or after dinner on weekdays, which checks out since many of these posts are geared towards keeping parents and alumni in the loop from afar. Saturday is a great day to post for these schools as well, though focusing on the early morning or the overnight slots lead to extra engagement oomph.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Home Decor

The following chart illustrates the median lift in engagement rate for Home Decor brands, disaggregated by day of week and time of day. The area of each bubble is relative to the quantity of Reels published by Home Decor brands during this time.

Followers of Home Decor brands ate up Instagram Reels posted first thing in the morning Monday-Thursday and Saturday. With the exception of afternoons, Reels posted on Sundays earned below-average engagement rate for these brands, and other weekday posting was a little all over the place.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Influencers

The following chart displays the median engagement rate lift for Influencers, disaggregated by day of week and time of day. The area of each bubble is in proportion to the volume of Reels published by Influencers during this time.

Big red bubbles in so many weekday slots mean Influencers are all vying for the same users at the wrong time. Influencers would do better to increase posting on weekends and in super late time slots.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Media

The graph below illustrates the median engagement rate lift for Media brands, broken down by day of week and time of day. The size of each bubble is relative to the number of Reels published by Media brands during this time.

Media brands earned killer engagement rates with Reels posted early in the morning or late at night on any day of the week. Other weekday posting lagged, but weekends saw lots of high-engagement slots for these brands.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Nonprofits

The visualization that follows displays the median lift in engagement rate for Nonprofits, disaggregated by day of week and time of day. The area of each bubble is relative to the quantity of Reels published by Nonprofits during this time.

Small blue circles with big engagement rate numbers attached to them mean Nonprofit organizations have some untapped gold mines for Reels success, especially late in the day and overnight Thursday-Sunday. These organizations are posting much more frequently during the workday but aren’t optimizing the engagement rates they could earn by focusing on non-workday time slots.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Retail

The chart below illustrates the median engagement rate lift for Retail brands, broken down by day of week and time of day. The size of each bubble is in proportion to the volume of Reels published by Retail brands during this time.

Post-dinner and weekend time slots helped Retail brands maximize their Instagram Reels success this year, though these brands were much more likely to post during the workday despite lower engagement rate returns there. Catching people as they’re thinking more about shopping and less about work is a strong engagement strategy for these brands.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Sports Teams

The chart below shows the median lift in engagement rate for Sports Teams, broken down by day of week and time of day. The size of each bubble is in proportion to the quantity of Reels published by Sports Teams during this time.

Sports Teams were all about afternoons and evenings when it came to Reels this year, suggesting followers were much more likely to be thinking about their favorite team outside of work hours. Weekends were also a strong choice for Sports Teams.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Tech & Software

The chart below illustrates the median lift in engagement rate for Tech & Software companies, broken down by day of week and time of day. The area of each bubble is relative to the volume of Reels published by Tech & Software companies during this time.

With the exception of a few time slots like Monday afternoon and Friday morning, Tech & Software brands didn’t have much to show for workday posting. Better for these brands to stick to weekend posting or the occasional after-dinner time slot on weeknights.

Best time to post Reels on Instagram: Travel

The graph below illustrates the median lift in engagement rate for Travel, broken down by day of week and time of day. The area of each bubble is in proportion to the quantity of Reels published by Travel during this time.

Travel brands were a little all over the place with Instagram Reels engagement this year. Saturdays were a safe bet for these brands, and Wednesday afternoons and evenings were also winners.

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How to Find Your Best Time to Post Reels on Instagram

Instagram makes it tough to find the perfect time to post a Reel, but third-party social media analytics tools like Rival IQ can get you this info in the blink of an eye. Here’s how to find your brand’s (or your competitor’s!) best time to post Reels on Instagram.

Hop into Social Posts in Rival IQ and change your post type to “Reel” to have the whole page instantly repopulate to be about Reel performance for you and anyone in your competitive landscape.

Scroll down to the bottom of the page to the Post Times table for the ultimate way to visualize your Instagram Reels publishing activity and how it relates to your followers’ engagement with your Reels. As you can see in the example below, our followers use Instagram pretty consistently throughout the week, but midday is definitely the right time to catch them with a post or video.

For even more information about the best time to post Reels on Instagram, Rival IQ can help you make sense of how your posting activity correlates to engagement rate by day and time. Don’t miss the dotted grey line that compares your average activity and engagement rates by day and hour to that of your main competition. This competitive view comes in especially handy when trying to gain an edge over your competitors by helping you schedule your Reels at times when your followers are active and engaged.

Don’t forget you can also visualize your follower online times in Rival IQ for easy access to deeper insights into when your followers are most likely to interact with your Reels.

Methodology

We analyzed Reels from more than 2,100 brands between July 1, 2022-December 31, 2022 on Instagram Reels to find the best time to post. We studied the same group of brands from 14 diverse industries that we use in our Social Media Industry Benchmark Report.

Wrapping it up

We hope these heat maps give you a better understanding of the best time to post Reels on Instagram for your industry and brand. Of course, the best thing any brand can do is test and measure their own results over time, so don’t be afraid to roll up your sleeves and start experimenting with Instagram Reels.

Ready to find your best time to post Reels on Instagram? Sign up for a free 14-day trial in Rival IQ.

Happy posting!

The post Best Time to Post Reels on Instagram appeared first on Rival IQ.

We combined our annual Division 1 and Division 2 into one super report to bring you all the latest trends and stats for colleges and universities around the country. We ranked every D1 and D2 school (separately) based on engagement rates, engagement totals, and posting frequency across Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter for the ultimate guide to higher education social media.

Read on for the definitive guide to what’s happening for D1 and D2 colleges and universities on social, and don’t forget to download the full report so you can see exactly where your school stacks up.

Spoilers! See the full Higher Education rankings.

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Higher Education Social Media Trends

All 700+ colleges and universities in this report offer a unique take on representing their school to the wider community on social, but a few key trends rise to the top whether a school is rural or urban, large or small, or D1 or D2.

Top Trend 1: Campus glamour shots

Year after year, we see stunning shots of college campuses all over the country performing well on social, especially on photo-focused Instagram. These posts resonate deeply with members of the community on and off campus by combining unmistakable beauty with a touch of nostalgia to drive up those likes and comments.

D1 school The Ohio State University rocked a 12th place overall finish this year thanks in part to beautiful snaps like this one. The Instagram Reel features many stunning vantages of Ohio State’s lovely campus stitched together into a fast-paced video that fans adored to the tune of a 202% engagement rate by follower and more than 676K engagements. Stitching together photos and video your team has shot for longer posts can be a great way to repurpose content, especially if it’s as eye-catching as the campus vantages are in this Reel.

This Reel from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona helped the school earn ninth place on Instagram in our D2 rankings this year thanks in part to its 27% engagement rate by follower, which is nearly 10x the D2 Instagram median engagement rate. The Reel features a time lapse of the beloved campus building being taken down followed by some of its most iconic looks on campus over the years. Celebrating a unique building on campus helps maximize nostalgia for followers and alumni, who jumped into the comments to bid the CLA building adieu.

Top Trend 2: Celebrating student and alumni wins

Wins win, every time. From clinching big sports titles to epic achievements in the classroom, D1 and D2 colleges and universities earned big engagement rates and totals this year when they focused on celebrating the successes of current students and alumni on and off campus.

HBCU Fayetteville State University ranked 4th overall and 7th on Instagram for D2 schools thanks in part to the success of Instagram Reels like this one featuring 2023 graduates grooving while accepting their diplomas. The simple Reel earned a 1400% (!) engagement rate by follower, which is just way, way higher than the D2 Instagram median engagement rate. Fans and followers left oodles of comments wishing the new Bronco grads well and cheering on their favorite HBCU for encouraging grads to put their own spin on the traditional formal walk to receive their diplomas, which helped further drive up the Reel’s engagement rates. Every college we profiled can count on a graduation celebration at the end of the year, so don’t be afraid to get your content creators on the ground to find fun stories or unique vantage points from the exciting event.

This video post from HBCU North Carolina Central University profiling a young law school graduate from the school earned an amazing 86% engagement rate on Facebook this year and more than 618K views, which helps explain how the Eagles snagged the Facebook bronze for D1 schools this year. Thousands of followers poured into the comments to wish this young grad well, and more than 4,000 people were so inspired by Brittany’s story that they actually took the extra time to share the video. Big campus-wide wins like football championships can be fun on social, but don’t be afraid to focus on the successes of individual students or athletes for that extra-personal touch.

Top Trend 3: Content shake-ups on TikTok

Top content can look pretty similar across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for many D1 and D2 schools, but the same can’t be true for TikTok. With trending sounds and content spreading like wildfire and then burning out, colleges and universities often find themselves jumping into brand-new content ideas without years of data to back up their gamble. Thankfully, it often pays off (especially when you hand the content creation over to Gen-Z students).

University of Minnesota, Duluth ranked 5th on TikTok this year for D2 schools thanks in part to “person on the street”-style videos like this one, which had a student challenging her classmates to identify whether a phrase came from Taylor Swift or the Bard himself. The video earned more than a million views and a 13.5% engagement rate by view, which is more than 2.6x the average D2 school on TikTok this year. This video is a good reminder that content doesn’t have to be carefully scripted or shot in a studio to resonate with fans, and that sometimes a silly video that puts students front and center can win big.

D1 school East Carolina University earned 10th on TikTok this year thanks to a huge lift from this video featuring students magically donning their caps and gowns set to music from the Harry Potter films. The video earned a 10.1% engagement rate by view and a cool five million views by grounding itself in the pop culture home run that is the Potterverse, combined with one of our other favorite trends above of celebrating big campus wins. The quick video had fans rushing to the comments to wish the grads well and let ECU know that they were moved to tears by the heartfelt message of women lifting each other to win big. TikTok doesn’t always need to be hi-fi to work well, but every once in a while a little video editing magic can really pay off.

Top D1 Overall Higher Education Institutions on Social

It was another big year for D1 schools on social media, with epic fan support and killer content leading to engagement rates to be proud of. Higher education social media consistently ranks at or near the top of our industry-by-industry look at social media performance in our 2023 Social Media Industry Benchmark Report thanks to smart strategy (and more than a few behind-the-scenes Gen-Zers).

Big ups to perennial winner University of Iowa, who clinched the overall gold for the *fifth* year running. University of South Carolina (Columbia) and Texas Christian University climbed the ranks for silver and bronze respectively, but just couldn’t catch the Hawkeyes. Other year-over-year favorites like James Madison University, Utah State University, Tarleton State University, and the University of Georgia ranked in the top 10 again. And a big welcome to the D1 top 10 newcomers: University of Mississippi, Bowling Green State University, and University of Tennessee (Knoxville).

Top D1 School: University of Iowa

The Hawkeyes are, as ever, a force to be reckoned with and dominate year after year on higher education social media. How do they do it? A seriously engaged audience helps a ton, as do big national sports wins and creative content. Let’s get into what makes the University of Iowa stand out amongst D1 schools again and again.

University of Iowa grabbed the gold on Facebook this year yet again thanks to celebratory and win-focused posts like this one about the Hawkeye women’s basketball team heading to the national championships. Fans were stoked to see this team in action and engaged with the post to the tune of a 15.3% engagement rate, which is 80x (!) the average D1 Facebook engagement rate. Not every college or university can brag about a win this monumental, but it’s good to celebrate what’s going on around campus no matter what the event is.

This Instagram post featuring sorority members dancing on campus earned an epic 31.3% engagement rate by follower this year and was the University of Iowa’s most engaging Instagram post by a mile when measuring engagement rate. The comment section was a mix of enthusiastic alums and skeptics, but when your post earns an engagement rate that’s 11x the median D1 Instagram engagement rate, do you even care about the haters? Showing off fun and unique events and milestones around campus is a tried-and-true higher education social media strategy year after year.

University of Iowa finished second on Twitter this year, moving up seven places from last year. The Hawkeyes were all about that big women’s basketball win on Twitter this year, with many of the university’s top tweets showcasing the road to the national championship. This photo tweet featuring two Hawkeye basketball players embracing at the end of the season rocked a 3.08% engagement rate and more than 4K engagements, with tons of fans sending congratulatory replies to cheer on the Hawkeyes. Twitter is a great place to mix play-by-play content from live events with more evergreen content about life on campus, and the Hawkeyes manage this mix better than almost anyone.

Are you even on Hawkeye social media if you don’t experience The Wave? This lovely campus tradition started back in 2017 features fans and players in the stadium giving an epic Hawkeye wave to children and their families receiving treatment at the children’s hospital that overlooks the stadium, and always garners oodles of engagement. This TikTok video earned 186K views and rocked a 12.7% engagement rate by view, which is more than 2.5x the median D1 TikTok benchmark. Alumni and parents eat up school traditions like this one when they can’t be on campus to experience it for themselves, making content like this a surefire higher education social media strategy.

Top D1 Higher Education Institutions on Instagram

D1 colleges and universities rocked a 2.71% engagement rate on Instagram this year and posted just over 4 times per week. This engagement rate is definitely lower than last year’s D1 Instagram engagement rate of 3.37%, but didn’t deter schools from posting at about the same frequency as last year.

James Madison University topped the D1 Instagram charts *again*, followed closely by Georgia Institute of Technology and Northern Arizona University on the winner’s podium. Texas Christian University was the only other overall top 10 finisher who managed to place on Instagram this year, while schools like Texas A&M University, Michigan State University, University of Virginia, University of Houston, University of Connecticut, and North Carolina State University performed well on Instagram but struggled more on other channels.

Featured D1 school: James Madison University

If you read last year’s report, you’ll be familiar with James Madison University’s success on Instagram. JMU dominated on Instagram last year and managed a repeat this year, with an average engagement rate of 7.26%, which is more than 2.5x the D1 Instagram median this year.

The Dukes posted about 3.2 times per week on Instagram, which is a little less frequently than the average D1 school this year. How to explain a school that posted less frequently earning higher than average engagement rates? Quality over quantity. JMU averaged 5.92 engagements per post this year, which is about 4x the D1 average, by focusing on high-quality content that truly resonated with students, parents, and alumni.

James Madison University’s most engaging posts on Instagram by rate were all focused on showing support for fellow D1 school University of Virginia in the aftermath of a tragic shooting of three UVA football players. JMU was quick to post following the tragedy using the #DukesSupportHoos hashtag, and followers flooded the posts with likes and comments featuring UVA’s colors, blue and orange. This carousel post earned a 25.7% engagement rate by follower by focusing on actions from JMU students to grieve for and honor the UVA football players who lost their lives. Sometimes, simply reflecting what feels meaningful on campus, even if it’s not upbeat, can go a long way to connect with followers.

In happier news, JMU’s feed was also chock full of the school’s signature commitment to stunning glamour shots that show off the university’s gorgeous campus and epic sunsets. This post rocked a 17.6% engagement rate and more than 13K engagements thanks to an impressive vantage point and an even more impressive sky. Many D1 schools feature stunning photography like this on their Instagram feeds to wow followers and entice prospective students, but no one does it better than the Dukes.

See how your school stacks up.

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Top D1 Higher Education Institutions on Facebook

University of Iowa dominated on Facebook again this year, but Georgia Institute of Technology gave the Hawkeyes a run for their money by tying for gold. North Carolina Central University grabbed the bronze on Facebook but struggled a bit on other channels.

The rest of the Facebook top 10 was littered with overall top 10 winners like Texas Christian University, University of South Carolina (Columbia), James Madison University, and Tarleton State University. Tennessee State University, Michigan State University, and Marquette University rounded out the Facebook top 10 with strong finishes on this channel but not quite enough oomph to break into the overall top 10.

D1 colleges and universities averaged a 0.19% engagement rate on Facebook this year, which is just barely lower than last year’s 0.22% average. These schools also put about the same amount of energy into Facebook this year, posting about once per day just like in the previous school year.

Featured D1 school: Texas Christian University

Texas Christian University, we see your epic investments in social media this year: the Frogs managed to rise at least 15 places on every channel and ended the year with a 3rd-place overall ranking after finishing 42nd last year. This success includes a huge jump on Facebook to grab the bronze there thanks to tons of attention from fans and smart, consistent posting.

TCU posted about twice as frequently as the average D1 school on Facebook this year, and those efforts paid off big to the tune of four times the average total engagement of their rival colleges and universities. TCU rocked an average Facebook engagement rate of 0.63%, which is about 3x the D1 average this year.

Every higher education social media marketer knows big NCAA sports wins are engagement gold, and TCU’s journey to the Fiesta Bowl was no exception. The Frogs had lots to celebrate as the first Texas team to make it this far in the college football playoffs. Fans ate up their posts about the Fiesta Bowl, like this one featuring two TCU football players in a sea of purple confetti. The post earned a 7.02% engagement rate and hundreds of comments from Frog fans and well-wishers excited about the Fiesta Bowl. Not every D1 school can count on big football wins, but it’s almost always a good idea for colleges and universities to take to social with flexes about exciting accomplishments from students and alumni.

Speaking of wins, TCU followers were stoked for a chance to celebrate quarterback Max Duggan’s long list of campus accomplishments this year thanks to this video post about his graduation. The video grabbed a 13.8% engagement rate and more than 337K views thanks to an excited and supportive fanbase. It’s worth noting that this video is anything but hi-fi: just a simple video likely shot on a phone of the star quarterback walking across the stage to accept his diploma. The success of this post is a good reminder to D1 schools that you don’t always need a script or epic production values to create content that resonates with fans.

Top D1 Higher Education Institutions on Twitter

D1 schools averaged a 0.06% engagement rate on Twitter this year, which is the lowest of any channel we studied and a drop from last year’s 0.096%. Colleges and universities posted on this channel about once a day, proving D1 schools are still leaning into producing content for Twitter.

Michigan State University moved up 27 spots to clinch the gold on Twitter this year, with the University of Iowa and Tennessee State University rounding out the podium. Overall top 10 finishers like Utah State University, University of South Carolina (Columbia), and James Madison University also dominated on Twitter, while schools like Xavier University, Marquette University, Oregon State University, and the U.S. Air Force Academy earned top marks on Twitter with less impressive results on other channels.

Featured D1 school: University of South Carolina, Columbia

University of South Carolina excelled on social this year, ranking second place overall and landing squarely in the Twitter top 10. The Gamecocks rocked a 0.13% engagement rate on Twitter, which is more than twice the average D1 school. They also had nearly 5x the total engagement of the average D1 school and about 3x the followers on Twitter, which definitely helps explain their top marks. South Carolina tweeted just a little less frequently than their competitors with 6.6 tweets per week.

Looking at South Carolina’s tweets per month side-by-side with their Twitter engagement rate over time makes it clear that a key engagement spike in November led to the school’s success on Twitter rather than big increases in, say, tweet frequency. The Gamecocks tweeted less frequently than their peers consistently throughout the school year but almost always outpaced them when measuring engagement rate, reminding us more isn’t always more.

Gamecocks across the country can tell you exactly what led to that big engagement spike in November: a huge football win against the school’s arch-rival, the Clemson Tigers. South Carolina took to Twitter to offer play-by-plays to parents and alumni who couldn’t be at the big game, and victory content went a long way towards the university’s epic Twitter engagement total this year. This video tweet featuring football players getting off the bus and celebrating with fans earned a 2.39% engagement rate and more than 61K views as Gamecocks everywhere celebrated. Wins are a common theme for successful higher education social media, and this one is definitely no exception.

South Carolina was more likely to tweet a video than any other tweet type this year, and for good reason: these tweets earned killer engagement for the university, including this one about graduating Gamecock mascot. Fans loved watching this student earn her diploma wearing the feet from her mascot costume to the tune of a 1.57% engagement rate and more than 61K views. Social media fans love behind-the-scenes content with a side of celebration, and this tweet is no exception. Showing fans what it takes to make magic happen on campus is always a strong higher education social media strategy.

Top D1 Higher Education Institutions on TikTok

Congrats to Middle Tennessee State University and Florida International University for tying for the gold on TikTok this year! The Ohio State University was hot on their heels to grab the bronze. Amazingly, there wasn’t one overall top 10 finisher in the TikTok top 10 this year, proving it’s sometimes hard to be good at everything. University of San Francisco, University of Wyoming, Louisiana State University, Seton Hall University, Colorado State University, University of Hawaii (Manoa), East Carolina University, and Harvard University rounded out the TikTok top 10.

D1 colleges and universities earned a median engagement rate by view of 5.06% this year and posted just 0.86 videos per week. With engagement rates like that, we can bet there’s going to be even stronger investment in TikTok in the year to come. From trending sounds and dances to memes to using short-form video to show off campus life, D1 schools earned killer engagement rates on this channel this year.

Featured D1 school: The Ohio State University

The Ohio State University doubled down on TikTok this year, rising from 37th to 3rd in 2023 thanks to big investments in this channel and an adoring audience. Ohio State rocked an average engagement rate by view of 12.5%, which is more than twice the rate of the median D1 college and university on TikTok this year.

How’d they do it? An enormous follower count certainly didn’t hurt: Ohio State has about 15x the follower count of the average D1 school on TikTok, and you can bet that a ton of work goes into cultivating that audience and keeping them engaged. Another ace up their sleeve is frequent posting: Ohio State posts about four times as often as the average D1 school on TikTok, giving them more chances to rack up high engagement totals.

Anyone scrolling through their FYP has seen the POV-style of video that offers a first-person perspective on an event or experience, like this winning video from Ohio State. The video features a roaring stadium full of Buckeyes to give the viewer a chance to feel the energy and excitement of an Ohio State home game, and rocked an 18.9% engagement rate by view, which is more than 3x the D1 TikTok median. Videos in this style are inexpensive to produce but require having someone in the right place at the right time, and Ohio State definitely isn’t afraid to make that investment to capture engaging content like this.

When we spoke with The Ohio State University’s social media team, we weren’t surprised to hear them specifically call out the full roster of folks contributing to their social media success, including student interns. We bet they had something to do with this super-engaging video featuring a popular GIF of Stranger Things actor Finn Wolfhard snapping his fingers to transform Ohio State’s usual mix of comments to ones only about “only in Ohio.” The video earned a 17.7% engagement rate by view and more than 400K views, with fans rushing to the comments to keep the “only in Ohio” comment train going. Paying attention to trends on TikTok is critical for staying current on this always-changing channel, and having some Gen-Zers on your staff gives you a serious leg up in this department.

Top D2 Overall Higher Education Institutions on Social

HESM marketers might remember our 2022 Higher Education Social Media Engagement Report: Division 2, which was the very first deep dive of its kind into D2 social media rankings and best practices. We’re back again with supercharged rankings and profiles of top D2 schools that stand out from the rest of the pack.

Angelo State University snagged the overall D2 gold this year thanks to some serious inroads on TikTok. Carson-Newman University and Michigan Technological University are newcomers to the D2 top 10 and should be extra proud of their respective second- and third-place rankings. Speaking of new to the top 10, Fayetteville State University, Assumption University, Lubbock Christian University, Washburn University, and Southern Connecticut State University rose in the ranks this year to land in the D2 top 10 for the first time, while Colorado School of Mines and Northern Michigan University managed to secure a top 10 rank for the second year in a row.

Top D2 School: Angelo State University

Angelo State University had a great year on social, landing in the top 30 on all channels and scoring 10th on Facebook. You might be wondering how a school without a first-place finish on any given channel could snag the overall gold. Simply put, knowing how to tailor content and reach your target audience on *all* channels is more important than standing out on one channel in particular when it comes to our rankings, and Angelo State did just that. Let’s break down what made the Rams stand out channel by channel.

The Rams rocked a 17th place finish on Instagram this year thanks to upbeat and celebratory posts like this one about the 2022 homecoming king and queen. Fans at this post up to the tune of a 12.1% engagement rate by follower, which is more than a 4x increase from the D2 Instagram median. The success of this post is a good reminder to D2 schools that sometimes, a simple post can really hit with fans and followers, especially if it features a strong win or some fun campus energy like this post.

The Rams earned their highest finish of all four channels on Facebook this year thanks in part to an epic football win in the Lone Star Conference Championship. (We’re betting an undefeated record this year also helped.) The post linking to a blog post on Angelo State’s website earned a 6.14% engagement rate by follower, and is proof positive that you don’t always need a flashy photo post or highly produced video content to earn killer engagement rates on Facebook.

Angelo State ranked 18th on Twitter this year thanks to a steady feed of Rams wins and the occasional campus glamour shots like this one. Followers liked and retweeted the beautiful photo to the tune of a 1.04% engagement rate by follower, or about a 3.7x lift from the D2 median Twitter engagement rate. We’ve seen time and time again that followers on and off campus eat up beautiful shots of campus like this one, so don’t be afraid to rouse that campus photographer at sunset (or even the crack of dawn) for stunning snaps like this one.

Angelo State put extra oomph into TikTok this year and rose in the ranks from 93rd last year to 27th this year for some serious gains. The most impressive thing about the Ram’s high rank on TikTok? They were active on TikTok only through December 2022 due to Governor Greg Abbott’s TikTok ban for public universities in Texas issued around the same time. Imagine how they might’ve ranked if they’d been allowed to post in the latter half of the school year!

ASU’s TikTok feed was a fun mix of 1:1 interviews with students and faculty, profiles of campus events, and wackier videos like this one featuring the infamous campus gum tree, where students leave a piece of gum for good luck with sports or finals. The TikTok earned an 11% engagement rate by view by focusing on a fun campus tradition that students and alumni could easily relate to from their time at ASU.

Top D2 Higher Education Institutions on Instagram

D2 schools rocked an average engagement rate of 2.91% on Instagram this year and posted just under four times per week, or about every other day. For those keeping score at home, that means D2 schools did a little better on Instagram than their D1 counterparts and posted about the same number of times per week.

Lubbock Christian University grabbed the gold on Instagram, while Fayetteville State University rocked the silver and Anderson University (South Carolina) snagged the bronze. Southern Connecticut State University was the only other overall top 10 D2 school to break into the top 10 on Instagram as well. University of New Haven, Saint Anselm College, California State University (Dominguez Hills), Cedarville University, Cal Poly Pomona, and California State University (San Marcos) rounded out the list of Instagram champs.

Featured D2 school: Southern Connecticut State University

Southern Connecticut State University slid into the overall top 10 thanks in large part to a fifth-place finish on Instagram, though that seventh-place slot on TikTok also definitely helped the Owls win the day.

SCSU earned a 5.71% engagement rate on Instagram, which is nearly 2x the D2 median. The Owls also posted much more frequently than the median D2 school with 8.2 posts per week, which helps explain how they earned 3x the total engagement of their competitors.

Part of SCSU’s Instagram success is its commitment to diversifying its post type frequency. The Owls were pretty evenly split between photos, carousels, and Reels, which is a smart way to feed Instagram’s hungry algorithm. To fully dial in this strategy, SCSU might want to combine a few more of those photo posts into high-performing carousels.

Studying for finals can feel like boring social media content, but the Owls enlisted a popular John Cena meme to put a fun twist on a staid idea. The quick Reel rocked a whopping 41.5% engagement rate with almost no production value, which is quite a return on investment. The Reel stands out in a sea of more professionally-shot content, and reminds us that shaking up your strategy every once in a while can really pay off.

The carousel post announcing that the university’s beloved president was stepping down at the end of the school year landed well with followers to the tune of a 17.5% engagement rate. Fans jumped into the comments to thank President Bertolino for his time at the school and wish him well. The president himself even jumped into the comments to thank supporters, proving that SCSU’s community management strategy is on point. Celebrating campus successes can look like anything from sports wins to career transitions like this one, and often give the school community a chance to express enthusiasm with likes and comments.

Top D2 Higher Education Institutions on Facebook

Congrats to Savannah State University for grabbing the Facebook gold this year. Point Loma Nazarene University and Virginia State University snagged the silver and bronze respectively. Overall top 10 finishers Fayetteville State University and Angelo State University also landed in the Facebook top 10. Fort Valley State University, Albany State University, Morehouse College, Winston-Salem State University, and University of Montevallo rounded out the Facebook top 10 with Facebook as their top-performing channel by a mile.

D2 schools averaged a 0.29% engagement rate on Facebook this year, which is a definite decline from last year’s 0.36% average. Speaking of declines, D2 schools posted just a little less frequently on Facebook this year than last at 5.49 posts per week, which is still more often than they posted on any other channel.

Featured D2 school: Fayetteville State University

Fayetteville State University finished seventh on Facebook and fourth overall this year, which marks a major increase from last year’s rankings where the Broncos finished 85th overall and 14th on Facebook. The HBCU rocked a 0.94% average engagement rate, which is more than 3x the D2 average on Facebook. Part of the Broncos’ success was posting about 2.5x as frequently as their competitors on Facebook, which gave them more chances for engagements throughout the year and helped FSU earn about 3x the engagement total of the average D2 school.

Alumni on the national stage are practically guaranteed to garner strong social media engagement, like this Facebook post about FSU alum Joshua Williams celebrating his Super Bowl victory as a part of the Kansas City Chiefs. Fans ate up the post to the tune of a 93.9% engagement rate by follower and more than 13K reactions wishing Williams and the Chiefs well. Not every college or university can boast such a famous alum, but following graduates into their adult lives and celebrating their successes can be inspirational and engaging to current and prospective students and the larger community.

Speaking of inspirational celebrations, this Facebook video featuring a sea of 2023 graduates earned a 17.9% engagement rate and more than 34K views. The video was likely shot on a phone and is much more about celebrating the graduates than high production values, reminding D2 schools that sometimes being in the right place at the right time can result in serious social media engagement. Video is an increasingly popular strategy across all industries, and shaking up photo and status posts with even lo-fi video like this can engage and excite followers by giving them a glimpse of what life on campus feels like.

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Top D2 Higher Education Institutions on Twitter

D2 colleges and universities earned a median engagement rate of 0.10% on Twitter this year, which is just a little bit lower than their median last year of 0.15%. Speaking of things that are just a little bit lower than last year, D2 schools tweeted about 4.17 times per week this year.

Virginia State University snagged the gold on Twitter this year, but Limestone University and University of Nebraska at Kearney definitely gave the VSU Trojans a run for their money. Carson-Newman University and Assumption University used top 10 finishes on Twitter to also land in the overall top 10, while Mercyhurst University, Johnson C. Smith University, Bowie State University, Ouachita Baptist University, and Morehouse College earned top scores on Twitter but didn’t dazzle as hard on other channels.

Featured D2 school: Carson-Newman University

Tennessee-based Carson-Newman University had an impressive year on social, earning second place overall and particularly standing out on Twitter where the Eagles finished fourth. C-N (as the university abbreviates itself) moved up 17 places from our overall D2 rankings last year and an impressive 25 places on Twitter, indicating investment in social that paid off in a big way.

The Eagles earned a 0.56% engagement rate on Twitter this year, which is more than 5x the D2 median. C-N tweeted about 5 times per week, which is just a little more frequent than their competitors. C-N made the most of each tweet, earning nearly twice the total engagement as the average D2 school this year.

Famous alums win the day more often than not on higher education social media, and this C-N tweet about former Eagle Dolly Parton stood out in a big way for the school on Twitter. The photo tweet earned an 8.29% engagement rate by follower and more than 22.2K estimated impressions, which are great numbers (though we’d expect nothing less for a tweet about one of the queens of country music). Featuring alumni who have gone on to do great things is a tried-and-true strategy for D1 and D2 schools alike, even if we can’t all boast Dolly Parton as one of our graduates.

Speaking of accomplished alumni, this photo tweet reminding C-N fans that the NFL draft was coming up and how successful Eagles football players have been in snagging a coveted spot on an NFL team was a big hit for the university on Twitter. The tweet rocked a 1.84% engagement rate, which is an 18x engagement rate lift from the D2 Twitter median. Reminding your community about how your school sets students and graduates up for success, especially on the national stage, can be inspiring in a way that leads to big engagement rate jumps.

It’s also worth noting that many of C-N’s top-performing hashtags on Twitter were about the NFL draft. Hashtags like #NFLDraft2023, #NFLDraft, #ColtsNation, and #football helped lift engagement rates on these tweets from anywhere between 1.44x and 3.34x, which means posting more about the NFL is a no-brainer for C-N. This hashtag strategy wasn’t necessarily a home run for competing D2 schools, suggesting C-N has hit upon a niche that works well for their audience.

Top D2 Higher Education Institutions on TikTok

Cedarville University took home the D2 gold on TikTok this year, with Northern Michigan University and Elizabeth City State University hot on their heels. Southern Connecticut State University was the only overall top 10 school besides NMU to rank in the top 10 on TikTok this year, suggesting what works on TikTok doesn’t necessarily work on other channels (and vice versa). Clark Atlanta University, University of Tampa, University of Minnesota (Duluth), Flagler College, Wheeling University, Hawaii Pacific University, and Missouri Western State University rounded out the TikTok top 10 this year.

D2 schools averaged a 3.86% engagement rate by view on TikTok this year and posted pretty infrequently with just two videos per month. Lots of room to bulk up posting on this high-engagement channel in the year ahead for these schools.

Featured D2 school: Northern Michigan University

Northern Michigan University rocked on TikTok this year with a second-place finish, which is significantly higher than the Wildcats ranked on any other channel. TikTok can be a tricky channel for schools who aren’t familiar with producing vertical video regularly or who aren’t keeping their ears to the ground to stay on top of trends, but NMU has this channel dialed in.

The Wildcats averaged a 13.7% engagement rate by view, which is 3.5x better than the average D2 school on TikTok this year. They also posted way more frequently than their competitors with 2.2 videos per week, and earned a whopping 4.83M views compared to the D2 median of 336K.

Relatable and down-to-earth videos were a huge page of NMU’s success on TikTok this year, like this one asking new students to pronounce classic Michigan words like “Ontonagon” and “Mackinac.” The video earned a 7.53% engagement rate by view by poking some gentle fun at the NMU community. With 716K views, it’s clear that this video appealed to a much broader audience than just NMU students and alumni, which is always good to strive for when creating social media content.

Another of NMU’s top-performing TikTok videos jumped on the “mukbang” trend, where content creators share a meal with their followers and offer comments and reactions. The video features current students chowing down in an NMU dining hall and having a wide variety of reactions to the spice level of the corn dish they’re eating. The video is comical and a little silly, but seriously resonated with fans to the tune of a 16.7% engagement rate and more than 3.3 million views. Successful TikTok videos don’t all have to be highly-produced or scripted content: sometimes a slice of life from campus will land well with your school’s online following.

Live Higher Education Social Media Benchmarks

Comparing your school’s social performance has never been easier. Browse our D1 and D2 live benchmarks for a real-time look at top Higher Education posts, engagement rates, high-performing hashtags, and tons more. You can even add these benchmarks directly into your Rival IQ account for always-on monitoring of these top brands.

Need even more competitive analytics? Go head-to-head with a free report on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter to see how you stack up against your top competition. See what makes your competitors tick with key insights and actionable advice you can start using now to come out on top.

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Methodology

We surveyed all D1 and D2 colleges and universities on social media between June 1, 2022 and May 31, 2023 on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Using this data and a weighted formula, we generated an overall engagement ranking for each school. The top-ranked colleges and universities on social media have high engagement rates with average or better audience size and posting volumes.

We define engagement as measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares, and reactions. We used engagement rate by follower to measure engagement on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of followers. We used engagement rate by view to measure engagement on TikTok, which is defined as the total engagement divided by the number of views.

Please note: If you haven’t grabbed your school’s TikTok handle yet, consider doing so now even if you’re not ready to post there yet. There are a ton of imposters on TikTok snapping up handles, and we’d hate to see you struggle for a handle that matches your university’s brand by waiting too long.

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The case for benchmarking in Higher Education social media

Why benchmark instead of just measuring how your school’s individual performance changes over time? Because social success is relative. Benchmarking means figuring out what’s working (and what isn’t) in your industry and measuring your success against that.

It’s crucial to go beyond likes and favorites because audience size is hugely important: 100 likes is great engagement for a college or university with 1,000 followers but is a drop in the bucket to a school with 100,000 followers. Engagement rate helps us take audience size into account to see who’s really reaching the highest percentage of their fans and followers with their social posts, which are the schools you need to beat.

Wrapping it up

Congrats to all the D1 and D2 schools in this report for working harder than ever to cut through the noise on Higher Education social media to show off their campuses, students, and alumni. We loved seeing schools break into the top 10 or hold onto their dominating lead, and can’t wait to see what happens in the school year ahead.

Want to continue the #HESM conversation? Don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Twitter!

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