Simply Measured, a digital marketing research firm, has released a report comparing engagement before and after implementation of FaceBook’s Timeline layout. The sample size is small. We do need more time to pass for a better statistical analysis, but for now the report offers some useful guidance for the social media agency.
The overall boost to engagement after migration to Timeline is 46%. Engagement is measured as a comment or a like. There is a drop off of engagement with status updates, but pictures and videos are showing a remarkable amount of increased activity. The boost is not too large for fans. Fans are only showing an aggregated 14% more engagement with brands, but the bump is significantly higher when measuring all (fans and non=fans) engagement, 46%.
One problem with the measure is isolating it to FaceBook. The increased video and picture engagement may be because of Timeline’s layout, but the increase is also being seen in other social networks as Pinterest continues to grow and shape the expectations and desires of social network users.
There are also some brands that have shown a decrease in engagement since moving to the Timeline format. The lack of helping everyone actually gives credence to the theory that Timeline favors engagement of visual content and disfavors text only content. The social agency should take a look at the brands showing a drop (AT&T, Target and Old Spice) and see what they are doing incorrectly.
March 30 is the deadline when all pages on FaceBook will be ported to the Timeline format. Few days remain to be prepared, but even after that moment the social media agency needs to stay on top of the studies about Timeline and how to best maximize it.