Facebook timeline may boost brand engagement —study

It may not be too popular among individual users, but social networking site Facebook's Timeline feature may have a positive impact on brands, a tech site reported Thursday.

 

Mashable cited research indicating brands got an average of 46 percent more engagement with Timeline, a feature that records a "life story" through photos and milestones.

 

"A deeper dive into the data reveals that responses to status updates actually fell with Timeline, but engagement with videos and photos were up a composite 65 percent.," Mashable said, citing the data from researcher "Simply Measured."

 

Simply Measured drew its results from a relatively small sample of 15 Facebook brand pages.

 

Mashable said the results showed two such beneficiaries - Livestrong and Toyota - saw their engagement rates jump 161 and 156 percent respectively.

 

The researcher's CEO Adam Schoenfeld said the average is weighted so that the engagement per post is taken into account.

 

“These are just preliminary results,” he was quoted as saying.

 

Mashable said Simply Measured looked at early adopters and compared their Pages’ engagement from Jan. 1 to Feb. 29 and then from Feb. 29 until March 26.

 

Feb. 29 was the day Facebook allowed Timeline Brand Pages. If the brand launched its Timeline Page after Feb. 29, then Simply Measured started from that date.

 

"Schoenfeld’s theory is that the larger images on Timeline are leading to more engagement with visual material. That will prompt marketers to post more videos and photos," Mashable said.

 

He added they are looking into whether this trend is because of Pinterest.

 

Mashable cited Facebook as claiming that a week after introducing Timeline, some eight million brands or one-fourth of the brands on Facebook upgraded to the new design.

 

Those that didn’t will be ported over to Timeline on March 30. — TJD, GMA News