Report: Facebook activity dwindles in 2016, influencer marketing is up

Influencer marketing platform Mavrck has published a many informative statistics for marketers who are using Facebook to speak to their audiences, particularly with how the algorithm has affected user engagement with branded content and general user posting behavior. Using Mavrck’s dataset, which culled data 25 million Facebook posts, they’ve been able to learn quite a lot of what we can expect in the future.

Engagement is down

In 2016, user engagement went down when compared to 2015. A 15.14 percent decrease in engagements per post compared to 2015 might make marketers worry. The decrease appears to be 11.41 percent year over year. This translates to a 7.87 percent decrease in Likes per post, a 37.47 percent decrease in comments per post, and a 27.8 percent decrease in post Shares.

Postings are down

The average Facebook user posted less original content in 2016 than the year prior — a 29.49 percent decrease from 2015 to 2016.

Users prevail; brands fail

User-generated content featuring a brand performed better than brand-generated content. In short, if you’re a brand, engage in your influencer audience. That’s because there appears to be a clear correlation between a user’s influence and the average engagement the user saw per post. Users in the 75 percent influencer percentile saw engagement rates of 3.5x higher.

While these statistics may seem unsettling, a potential result of a poor algorithm change that was reversed in March of 2016, all hope is not lost. Yes, 2016 was a poor year in comparison to the previous year, but by the end of 2016, there was an uptick in engagement (26.06 percent), which also includes general likes per post and comments per post. Perhaps 2017 is going to see better engagement after all.

The report can be downloaded directly from Mavrck.

About The Author

Tamar Weinberg

Tamar Weinberg is a professional hustler and author of The New Community Rules: Marketing on The Social Web. She blogs about all things tech, productivity, and social media customer success at Techipedia. She can be found on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, among other sites.