Facebook Post Comments More Valuable Than Likes

November 21, 2011

edgerankcheckerfacebookpostlinks.jpgA comment on a Facebook post containing a link results in almost 5 times the amount of clicks of that link than a like of a comparable post, according to November analysis from EdgeRank Checker. Data from the analysis indicates that for every like a post gets, its link receives on average 3.1 clicks. Meanwhile, for every comment a post gets, it receives on average 14.7 clicks. Overall clicks per impression were found to be 0.005.

Wednesday Best for Engagement

When sorting the average clicks and shares by day of the week, EdgeRank Checker found that Wednesdays had the best shares ratio (ratio of link shares to page fans), at 0.11%, while it also boasted the highest clicks ratio (ratio of link clicks to page fans), at 0.49%. Tuesday followed with a 0.1% share ratio and 0.47% click ratio. Saturday fared worst for shares ratio (0.8%), while Friday saw the smallest clicks ratio (0.35%).

Smaller Pages Have More Devoted Followers

edgerankchecker-fb-shares-clicks-size.jpgAccording to the analysis, there is a distinct correlation between Facebook page size and fan engagement. Pages with less than 1,000 fans had by far the highest shares and clicks ratios, at over 1.1% and 0.3% respectively. Following distantly were pages with 1-5,000 fans, with a shares ratio of less than 0.4% and a clicks ratio of less than 0.1%. By contrast, pages with more than 100,000 fans experienced the lowest shares and clicks ratios. According to EdgeRank insight, the data suggests that smaller pages are able to create more relevant content for their fans, which may be an indication that large brands should make multiple pages to narrow down their audience.

TBG: Social Context Ads Increase Conversions

Likes do have a place in driving conversions, though: ads that leverage the social interactions that users are comfortable seeing in their Facebook news feeds perform better than those that do not, according to November analysis from TBG Digital. The analysis – based on a single client, a popular entertainment brand that spent $60,000 across a 14-day period and accumulated 436 million impressions – indicates that the company saw a 32% improvement in purchasing intent when using social context ads as opposed to non-social context ads. According to the analysis, social context ads are built with a text and image box, standard to Facebook ads, with the addition of visible endorsements beneath the ad. The endorsements note the number of friends associated with a user who like the page, group, event, or application.

While cost-per-click remained constant between non-social context and social context ads, in the specific study, non-social context ads took 132 clicks to achieve a conversion, compared to only 99 clicks for social context ads. When factoring in the cost per click, the difference in cost per acquisition equated to $44 when using social context ads. TBG Digital notes that there are limitations to the social context ad campaigns that are primarily due to the URL structure in the Ads API.

About the Data: EdgeRank Checker examined a random sampling of more than 5,500 Facebook pages, analyzing more than 80,000 of their posts over the month of October 2011. The 80,000 posts were all of the “Link” type, to keep clicks more accurately represented in the data.

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