Facebook median engagement rates for brands

This data was originally featured in the March 3, 2021 newsletter found here: https://www.trustinsights.ai/blog/2021/03/in-the-headlights-march-3-2021-producing-content-at-scale-podcast-ads-seo-keywords/

In this week’s Rear View Mirror, we’re looking at Facebook median engagement rates for brands. In one of the many marketing communities we participate in, someone asked if brands had seen a recent decline in engagement.

The answer would be an unqualified yes. Median engagement rates for brands started out the year around 0.015% and have fallen just below 0.010% percent, a 33% decline.

To be clear, a 0.01% engagement rate is equivalent to 1 person out of every 10,000 engaging with your content.

If you’re noticing declining engagement on Facebook for your organic content, you have two choices: pay to play (advertise), or live with the lower levels of engagement. We’d argue that if other channels net you more engagement (Instagram organic content is almost 25x more impactful for brands), you might want to reallocate your resources elsewhere.

Methodology: Trust Insights used Facebook’s Crowdtangle software to extract 1,650,419 posts from 2,959 brands. The dates of extraction are January 1, 2021 – March 2, 2021. The date of study is March 3, 2021. Trust Insights is the sole sponsor of the study and neither gave nor received compensation for data used, beyond applicable service fees to software vendors, and declares no competing interests.

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