Snack foods are Australia’s most active brands on Facebook
Social media agency Online Circle has released a report that ranks brands according to how active they are on Facebook.
The study, called the Australian Facebook Performance Report, uses the rate of growth of Facebook fans and the rate of engagement to rank brands.
Data for the report was collected on January 10, 17, 24 and 31 2012.
Snack food brands are the most prolific on Facebook, amassing the most fans during the month of January. Energy and utility firms added the least fans.
Led by Pringles, the snack foods category was the most effective at growing an audience on Facebook. Pringles engaged fans by asking them questions, while Streets Cornetto added 21,759 fans with Enigma Bear, a character from its advertising campaign.
Qantas, no stranger to social media controversies in the last 12 months, is top of the table for airlines, closely followed by JetStar. 
Woolworths comes out on top of Coles in the battle of the grocery and alcohol retailers. Woolies overtook Coles during the survey period, adding 50,461 fans in January, thanks to a photo competition to win a year’s worth of groceries. New Catch of the Day brand GroceryRun.com.au also captured a strong fan base quickly.
CommBank, whose marketing is led by keen social media practitioner Andy Lark, emerged on top of the bank brands study. ANZ doesn’t even have a Facebook page, opting for a twitter and YouTube presence instead.
Of Australia’s car brands, Holden came out on top. Also busy on Facebook during January was Kia, leveraging its sponsorship of the Australian Open via the Tennis Ball Hunt and the chance to win a car. Hyundai’s Velostar launch promotion also gave Facebookers the chance to win a car. Lexus offered a weekend getaway.
Vodafone is the most prolific Facebooking brand in the telco sector – with double the number of fans as second placed Optus.
In the report, Online Circle offers brands ‘tips for champions’, which includes a plan for managing risk. The report’s authors ask:
- What would you do if a user mentions your competitor?
- What would you do if a user expresses an opinion contrary to your company’s views?
- What are your community guidelines, your standards and escalation processes if something goes wrong or if you don’t know the answer?
ummm…can we also see this data cut by which brands force consumers to ‘like’ them as a pre-condition to reviewing their page content or to accessing special offers etc?
apart from the generally dismal engagement ratings for a medium whose main selling point is engagement i’m not sure what the key findings really are..
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Streets Bubble O’ Bill missing from the count…
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the numbers are great but only tell half the story.
Everyone knows brands are active on social media.
What’s the point? Define ‘engagement’
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Have an issue with them using the engagement rate as interaction vs fans of the page.. does not take into account how many of those fans actually saw the posts.. Its like assuming that every person who lives in a suburb will see a outdoor ad because it is in their suburb..
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Plenty more than just Bubble O’Bill missing from the count
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@Brandon, the full report from http://www.theonlinecircle.com includes explanations and methodology behind each of the data points, including the engagement rate. Which we defined as the percentage of “People Talking About” compared to the number of fans.
@Nathan, there were a couple of reasons we didn’t compare interactions to reach. The main being it’s not currently possible to see reach/impression numbers for pages you don’t control. Secondly, engagement rate affects edgerank which intern affects reach
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Further to Rhy’s comment, why is bubble o bill not included in these? They have over a million fans, close to half of the whole category size according to this report…
http://www.facebook.com/StreetsBubbleOBill
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No TV shows or network conparisons? Shame. I think it probably interests people more than snack foods.
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If brand owners take the time to set themselves up on our free Social Business Index http://socialbusinessindex.com/ they can get close to real-time information on adoption, activity and performance across Facebook and YouTube, Twitter etc. I think you’ll see a different picture painted of overall brand performance on social media than snap shot reports like this.
While focused on the recent US Super Bowl, this short report on TV advertising measurement vs the Social Business Index is a good primer on the performance measures it can provide http://www.dachisgroup.com/201.....d-success/
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The main Virgin Australia page is missing from the airline list, with 106,000 fans.
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Hey Matt & Rhys,
Putting a report such as this together you do make some decision that not everyone will necessarily agree with. In respect to Bubble O’Bill we decided that since it is essentially a fan site, now controlled by Streets but still run and managed by the original independent creator we would leave it out of the category.
We have tried to be as complete as we could, knowing that some brands would be left out but confident that the community would respond with suggestions of brands and industries for future inclusion.
We will revisit out decision on Bubble O’Bills.
Cheers
Alan
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Continental Cup-a-Soup also missing
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I think it’s a great concept and will become even more useful as more Social Media info becomes accessible. Google+ will be useful to add in the future as Google Search plans to make these results more important that backlinks soon. (All this Bubble o’ Bill talk makes me want ice cream for lunch.)
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Just some feedback
Another brand that didn’t make your list is Continental Cup-a-Soup (http://www.facebook.com/ContinentalCupaSoup) It currently has 50K+ fans
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Bakers Delight would be a fair addition to the Grocery category too given their 76k+ fan count
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Whatever happened to the Kettle Chip (Australia) on Facebook?
They used to have a page but have since disappeared. The USA/UK Kettle dominates.
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CUA is missing from Banking and Finance – they have 87,000+ fans, so surprised they’re not on the list!
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Aunty Kaths Cookie Dough has over 100 000 Not sure how you got your list of snack foods.
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