Facebook Page Likes Growth Rebounds After The Record Low July

This is our Facebook page growth and engagement study for the month of August 2017.

In our monthly studies, we look at the performance of 5,000 pages to help you understand the standards on Facebook.

This helps you see how your own pages perform and analyse the results of your efforts.

Page likes growth rebounds after the record low July

•  Page likes growth in August was at 0.11% of the audience. This is a 37.5% increase compared to the 0.08% growth in the month of July which also was the record low.

•  Post reach was at 8.63% of the total audience. This is a 12.56% decrease compared to July.

•  Video posts reached 9.67% of the audience, photos 9.42%, links 6.27% and status updates 4.98%.

•  Post engagement rate was at 4.61% of the people reached, which is a 1.32% increase compared to July.

•  Videos engaged 5.42% of the people reached, status updates 4.31%, photos 4.27% and links 4.14%.

•  16.08% of all the pages used Facebook advertising paying for 39.12% of their total reach.

Limiting the reach of “fake” videos

Brands know that the video format rules on Facebook. It gets higher organic reach and engagement than all the other formats. Our studies show this trend monthly and July continued the trend with videos having top organic reach and engagement.

The problem with video is that it is not easy, fast, or cheap to create. It takes time, it takes expertise and a sizeable budget to be able to regularly come up with new video content that’s ready to be posted on your Facebook page.

So what do some pages do? They now post pictures or GIF’s turned into 30 seconds (or longer) static videos. Some also post static content link thumbnails with fake “play” button that resembles the button on videos. When users click to play they get sent to low quality pages full of ads or even pages with malicious ads.

Facebook has improved their algorithm in order to minimise this problem and has announced that: “Publishers that rely on these intentionally deceptive practices should expect the distribution of those clickbait stories to markedly decrease”.

Evolving the news feed

Several design updates to the news feed are being worked on and will be introduced in the upcoming weeks. This includes a more clear designation of external links which make it more prominent where a link will take you before you click on it. The team behind the redesign has published this blog post explaining the details and the thinking behind the evolution of the news feed design.

Slower sites to see a decrease in referral traffic from Facebook

Facebook is starting to take the estimated loading time of a website into account when deciding which content to show in the newsfeeds. Links to pages that are loading quickly are expected to rank higher in the newsfeeds. Here’s what Facebook had to say:

“As many as 40 percent of website visitors abandon a site after three seconds of delay. During the coming months we’re making an update to News Feed to show people more stories that will load quickly on mobile and fewer stories that might take longer to load, so they can spend more time reading the stories they find relevant. Webpages that are particularly slow could see decreases in referral traffic.”

Trending News section and the Watch tab

Facebook is testing several things and introducing more content into the app in order to see if that can contribute to more stickiness and more time spent in app. Trending Topics have been redesigned and Trending News have been introduced into the mobile apps.

There’s also a new home for video content that’s produced exclusively for Facebook. It’s the “Watch” tab. Partners that produce the video content earn 55% share of the revenue. The Watch is being tested to smaller groups of users in the US but is expected to be introduced to more people soon. International rollout is expected too. The section features personalised recommendations for videos to watch including categories such as “Most Talked About”, “What’s Making People Laugh” and “Shows Your Friends Are Watching.”

Original content that’s available on Watch includes:

Tastemade’s Kitchen Little – This cooking show sees kids watch a how-to recipe video, then instruct a pro chef how to make the dish with comedic results
Major League Baseball – The MLB will broadcast one game a week live on Facebook
Gabby Bernstein – Motivational speaker and author answers fans’ life questions in live and recorded segments
All Def Digital’s “Inside the Office” – A look inside the office life at Russel Simmons’ hip-hop media empire
Billboard’s “How it Went Down” – A documentary series of musicians sharing crazy stories