Facebook Engagement plummets in 2017

Chart of the Day: Image and Link post contribute to a 20% decrease in engagement

Analysis of 880 million Facebook posts by brands in the last 12 months conducted by Buzzsumo has revealed that the average engagement was relatively steady in 2016. Come January, engagement started falling and didn't stop until June where we see a small increase. The post types that have seen the biggest decline are image and links post, whereas video has been able to remain consistent.

There could be many reasons why this decline has been so substantial:

1. The organic reach on Facebook has been falling for years with Facebook pushing brands down the route of paid promotions. The issue with this strategy is that you get lower engagement due to people seeing them as ads rather than interesting content for their favourite pages.
2. So much content. With an average of over 1,000 stories fighting to appear in any one person's news feed, it isn't surprising that some brands are going to lose out and not be seen - competition is increasing and not everything can be shown.

• Source: Buzzsumo Research
• Sample Size: Analysis of 880million posts 2016/17
• Recommended Resources: How to do Facebook Retargeting [Quick Win]