If your social media engagement is down, you’re not alone, says study
Multisport Research has once again studied the trends in social media engagement among 700 leading international sports brands, concluding that most have dropped sharply.
The latest data snippet covering Q4 2021 tracked performance across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, finding that on average brands saw engagement plummet by as much as two-thirds on Instagram from 1.43% to 0.46%. Facebook was not much better, averaging a decline from 0.19% to 0.08%, a figure that many will be bemused by.
It may well be acknowledgment of this trend that has seen a sharp decline in the number of brands becoming dormant over time on social media platforms. Multisport discovered that Facebook has gone from 7% to 20% of endurance sport profiles not posting, and Instagram has gone from 6% to 13%.
For those sticking with social media even growth rates are dipping fast. The average weekly Facebook growth for active brands fell from 0.15% to a meagre 0.02% when tracked over time between Q4 2018 and Q4 2021. For Instagram the decline was again marked, down from +0.62 to an average of 0.16%.
“We see that, over time, it is becoming much harder to maintain engagement rates at previous levels,” said MultiSport Research founder, Gary Roethenbaugh. “This is particularly where a social platform’s algorithm may change what a follower sees in their feed.”
MultiSport Research’s North America Director Kate Morefield, added that “For endurance sport brands, the main challenge is to build impact on social media platforms that clearly cater for a range of diverse user interests.
“Brands need to constantly evaluate the effectiveness of their social campaigns or risk further erosion of their brand profile and impact. Here, one approach is to monitor the features in those posts that resonate strongly with endurance sport audiences.”
The dataset is available to purchase for keen social media users and has been designed to assist brands in understanding their performance against competition, with specific market sectors.
The report is available in full here, at a discounted price of US$249, for those keen to discover what, if any, opportunities remain.
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