14 Jul Top 50 Branded Facebook Pages Ranked by Fan Actions Per Post

Posted at 20:36h in Facebook Marketing by

You know the old saying, “It’s not the size of your Facebook fan page, it’s how you use it?” There’s a lot of truth to that. For nearly 18 months, we’ve been tracking the Top 50 Branded Facebook Fan Pages purely by size.

Expion logoNow, thanks to a partnership between Ignite Social Media and Expion, a social media management software with some unusually strong analytical abilities, we’re now able to analyze these pages based on a wide variety of criteria and we’ll be doing that over the next few months.

For this post, we’re analyzing the level of engagement on these fan pages, including the average fan comments per post and the average fan likes per post. This is among the key metrics because fan actions increase newsfeed inclusions, thereby increasing the growth rate on the page.

And if you can engage fans, particularly early on, you can avoid the “decay of relevancy” (to use a phrase coined by my friends at Expion). By identifying the most engaging posts, you can keep interaction high, which will improve the performance of your sales driven posts as well.

The time period studied is June 1, 2011 to June 30, 2011. This data has never before been available for public analysis like this.

Top 50 Branded Facebook Pages Ranked by Fan Actions Per Post

And now, here is the ranking of the 50 largest branded fan pages, ranked by total fan actions per post.

Rank in Size +/- Brand Total Fans Total Fan Actions Avg Fan Comments Per Post Avg Fan Likes Per Post Avg Fan Actions Per Post
38 37 National Geographic 6,211,060 858,742 270.03 5,652.33 5,922.36
4 2 Disney 24,277,477 766,995 2,275.38 29,682.75 31,958.13
1 -2 Facebook 41,987,045 621,944 2,152.12 21,768.81 23,920.92
5 1 MTV 22,523,037 475,474 678.39 3,983.12 4,661.51
16 11 Victoria’s Secret 13,436,963 401,335 499.71 8,418.85 8,918.56
22 16 Disneyland 9,398,110 318,249 644.10 3,838.28 4,482.38
23 16 Dr. Pepper 9,226,921 314,414 1,150.06 3,687.08 4,837.14
21 13 Xbox 9,463,344 303,282 296.55 2,999.99 3,296.54
11 2 Skittles 17,005,052 301,299 743.83 9,299.47 10,043.30
40 30 Walmart 6,077,453 275,298 643.42 4,362.00 5,005.42
36 25 Walt Disney World 6,560,409 252,847 802.14 2,862.30 3,664.45
3 -9 Coca-Cola 28,059,243 252,786 2,155.07 14,697.33 16,852.40
6 -7 Starbucks 22,387,449 244,467 713.29 10,928.00 11,641.29
12 -2 Playstation 14,982,545 242,911 785.49 3,977.47 4,762.96
37 22 Burberry 6,364,789 215,322 377.52 9,875.90 10,253.43
48 32 Sony Ericsson 4,879,950 204,409 575.14 2,949.16 3,524.29
8 -9 Red Bull 19,410,093 196,030 638.04 6,363.04 7,001.07
34 16 Taco Bell 6,734,823 194,708 611.70 2,804.23 3,415.93
18 -1 Monster Energy 10,799,008 193,823 125.90 3,000.27 3,126.18
42 22 BMW 5,654,845 185,319 1,003.08 13,252.23 14,255.31
7 -14 Oreo 20,024,069 181,549 1,101.44 6,792.00 7,893.44
29 7 Nike Football 7,934,956 147,010 366.20 4,534.13 4,900.33
13 -10 iTunes 14,928,869 131,374 88.85 906.41 995.26
41 17 Lacoste 5,811,646 115,818 155.88 4,298.65 4,454.54
43 18 DC Shoes 5,279,728 110,072 100.76 1,471.70 1,572.46
Rank in Size +/- Brand Total Fans Total Fan Actions Avg Fan Comments Per Post Avg Fan Likes Per Post Avg Fan Actions Per Post
35 9 Starbucks Frappuccino 6,704,896 85,855 303.24 3,785.10 4,088.33
33 6 Blackberry 6,858,482 85,401 652.74 1,787.29 2,440.03
50 22 Buffalo Wild Wings 4,743,825 82,370 1,254.05 2,668.33 3,922.38
10 -19 Converse 17,467,267 82,204 251.29 3,173.88 3,425.17
27 -3 Disney Pixar 8,658,446 81,052 602.00 8,403.78 9,005.78
9 -22 Converse All Stars 18,525,593 76,779 210.42 2,988.71 3,199.13
2 -30 YouTube 35,055,640 66,001 349.77 2,650.27 3,000.05
24 -9 Victoria’s Secret Pink 9,210,697 65,456 250.85 4,784.23 5,035.08
32 -2 H&M 7,268,706 58,768 149.54 2,110.77 2,260.31
20 -15 adidas Originals 10,079,951 55,658 169.36 4,890.46 5,059.82
30 -6 Subway 7,463,526 43,495 686.32 1,290.73 1,977.05
45 8 Hollister 5,196,381 37,036 275.29 1,267.88 1,543.17
44 6 Mountain Dew 5,262,452 31,972 221.12 1,659.59 1,880.71
19 -20 Nutella 10,265,544 29,548 1,075.75 6,311.25 7,387.00
14 -26 Pringles 14,139,899 24,270 2,002.00 4,065.50 6,067.50
25 -16 Zara 9,151,805 21,946 174.60 4,214.60 4,389.20
26 -16 Starburst 8,798,681 18,267 118.15 795.20 913.35
46 3 Puma 5,167,124 16,406 29.53 517.33 546.87
28 -16 McDonalds 8,624,292 11,549 298.63 1,145.00 1,443.63
31 -14 Reese’s 7,299,120 11,209 165.56 1,079.89 1,245.44
15 -31 Windows Live Messenger 13,535,986 8,955 89.25 1,030.13 1,119.38
39 -8 Google Chrome 6,078,815 5,433 436.60 650.00 1,086.60
49 1 5 Gum 4,777,970 2,263 390.00 1,873.00 2,263.00
17 -32 Ferrero Rocher 11,224,484 NA See Notes
47 -3 Playboy 5,038,757 NA See Notes

Most Fan Actions

When we look at total fan actions (meaning comments, likes and wall posts), National Geographic comes out on top. In fact, the top 5 are:

  • National Geographic: 858,742
  • Disney: 766,995
  • Facebook: 621,944
  • MTV: 475,474
  • Victoria’s Secret: 401,335

This is a little deceptive, since National Geographic was also the most frequent poster. (More on that in another post.)

Average Fan Comments Per Post

When you analyze the average fan comments per post, we get a somewhat different result:

  • Disney: 2,275.38
  • Coca-Cola: 2,155.07
  • Facebook: 2,152.12
  • Pringles: 2,002.00
  • Buffalo Wild Wings: 1,254.05

This is key, as Facebook’s EdgeRank values comments more than Likes in terms of determining what content gets shown in News Feeds, so brands that do a good job generating comments are really helping themselves.

Average Fan Likes Per Post

Two new brands get themselves into the mix when we analyze the average likes per post that the largest branded fan pages get from their fans:

  • Disney: 29,682.75
  • Facebook: 21,768.81
  • Coca-Cola: 14,697.33
  • BMW: 13,252.23
  • Starbucks: 10,928.00

Likes/Comments Ratio

Given this, we’re seeing an average likes to comments ratio of 8.43 likes for every comment given. (On these 48 pages, in one month, we’ve tracked over 7.6m likes and over 901,000 comments.) If fan page growth is a goal, a brand would want to keep the total fan actions number high while lowering the ratio of likes to comments. This would help increase newsfeed inclusions, thereby increasing fan growth rate.

The Best +/-

The +/- column compares the pages rank in terms of total fan actions versus it’s rank in terms of total fan size. So a positive number means you have a better ranking when we rank by fan actions and a negative number means you have a worse ranking when we rank by fan size. Looking at that metric, the top 5 pages in terms of improving over their size are:

  • National Geographic
  • Sony Ericsson
  • Walmart
  • Walt Disney World
  • Burberry

Some Notes on Methodology:

  1. Per Facebook Rules, Expion cannot pull pages from “private” pages, including those with an age restriction. Thus, the Playboy page that is in the Top 50 is not included in this analysis.
  2. The Ferrero Rocher page is not included since the made no posts since May 7, a questionable strategy for a page with 11.7m fans.
  3. Fan Actions include all comments, wall posts and likes.
  4. Geo-tagged posts, hidden posts/comments and moderated posts/comments are also not collected.