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Egard Watches response to Gillette.   Result, a small watchmaker sold out of stock. 

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Egard Watches response to Gillette.   Result, a small watchmaker sold out of stock. 

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Social Media & Marketing Campaign Disasters

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Social Media & Marketing Campaign Disasters

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11 min video

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Everything from tone deaf racism to poor-shaming… sex-trafficking to virus spreading… There were some very inappropriate ads that ran in 2020. Some of these brands fessed up, and others are sticking to their guns. But one thing is for sure, they were all HUGE marketing fails.

Now, let’s talk about a little thing called… TRUST.

A brand without trust won’t get far these days, and I’ve said it time and time again that it’s not enough to just sell a good product anymore…

People want to buy good products, from good people, who share their morals, beliefs, and values.

They want to buy from brands they TRUST.

Once a brand loses the trust of its customers… they’re unlikely to EVER win that customer back again. There’s too much competition out there, so if one brand doesn’t align with its customers’ values, they’ll just take their business (and money) to a one that DOES…

And because of that – one little marketing *whoopsies* can really make or break any brand or business these days…

Just ask these 10 brands that faced some serious heat in 2020, thanks to their major marketing fails…

Hey Posse! What’s up, it’s Alex!

And in this week’s post, I’ll be talking about 10 marketing strategies that were totally face-palm-worthy in 2020… and yes, I’ll just tell you right now. One of them DOES involve “a Karen”.

Now, whether your name is Karen, Bob, Billy, Sue, Sally, or anything in between… be sure to leave me a comment below to let me know you’re here!

And if you’re new to the crew… welcome!

I put out a new video over on my YouTube Channel every week… so if you want to learn more about the hottest copywriting, marketing, and branding techniques that are working TODAY be sure to subscribe.

Okay, let’s get started with my list of major marketing fails in 2020 (heads up – these are SERIOUSLY CRINGEY) and will definitely make you feel uncomfortable… which is why we should talk about it.

1. Kraft

What started as a well-meaning marketing attempt to promote their beloved Mac ‘n’ Cheese product on National Noodle Day… quickly spiraled out of control when Kraft launched this marketing campaign, urging people to “Send Noods” to their loved ones during the pandemic, to provide comfort and make them smile.

The campaign quickly received tons of negative feedback and backlash from the public. Many people calling Kraft’s attempt at a “funny” marketing campaign wildly inappropriate, considering the fact that their main target audience is – you know – children.

Some critics even accused the company of promoting child sex-trafficking and exploiting children to sexual suggestions and innuendos.

Yikes. Not the type of PR Kraft was looking for. They promptly removed the content from all of their channels.

2. L’Oréal Paris

The Black Lives Matter movement blew up to huge proportions in 2020, and rightfully so. After countless unjust murders of black citizens and literally centuries of systemic racism in the U.S. and other places all over the world, thousands of protestors took to the streets to fight for equality and justice

And naturally, many businesses and brands shifted their marketing to show their support, and stand in solidarity with the movement and all it entails. Which is great… except when this marketing is NOT a genuine reflection of the brand’s values or viewpoints.

L’Oréal Paris was one of many brands that received public backlash for its seemingly inauthentic statement regarding the movement.

In 2017 L’Oréal Paris ended its contract with its first-ever transgender ambassador after she spoke out about racism and white supremacy… claiming that her statements were “at odds” with the brand’s values.

Naturally, the black community was quick to call out the makeup company on their blatant gaslighting and fake attempt to stay relevant.

I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this… but “jumping on the bandwagon” is not good marketing. If your brand doesn’t genuinely support the values and ideals of a particular movement or cause, then it should not claim that it does without taking some SERIOUS action to back it up.

Performative marketing is just not cool.

3. Giant Foods’

Now here’s an example of what happens when you don’t consider current events in your marketing strategy…

This U.S. supermarket chain ran a full-page ad encouraging people to host gatherings for the Holidays, and even *gasp* share food!

Their advertisement, which featured a platter of classic “finger foods” such as shrimp, fruit, and cheese, also read “Hosting? Plan a Super Spread”…

*crickets*

Super spread – that’s your marketing message in 2020!?!??! hahaha.

Hmmm… probably not the best message to send out in the middle of a global pandemic.

Giant Foods later apologized for the insensitivity of their Advertisement, stating they realized that, in hindsight, it probably wasn’t the best choice of words.

4. Darlie Toothpaste

After the murder of George Floyd sparked social justice movements all over the world, many brands began the long-overdue process of re-branding their racist logos or marketing campaigns… companies like Quaker Oats with Aunt Jemima, and Uncle Ben’s Mrs. Butterworth’s…

But one of the more appalling re-brands that the public demanded was Colgate’s “Black Person Toothpaste” brand, Darlie, one of Asia’s best-selling toothpaste brands

Founded in 1933, the toothpaste brand was initially named “Darkie”. Its original logo was a man in Blackface wearing a top hat and tuxedo while showing off his shiny white teeth with a big smile…

The brand has been criticized for its racist mascot for decades and has only made minor tweaks over the years… such as changing the name from Darkie to Darlie, and changing the face of the man in the logo to be more “racially ambiguous”…

Now Colgate is being criticized for “dragging its feet” after it claimed it would be “reviewing and evolving” the brand back in June.

It’s brands like this that really make me wonder… HOW do you even exist? I mean some brands should just be straight-up eliminated immediately.

5. The Safety Warehouse

What happens when your advertisement builds off people’s biggest hopes, BUT it’s also extremely misleading?…

Well just ask the Safety Warehouse, who publicly advertised “New Zealand’s first-ever mass cash drop”, with the vague promise of $100,000 “in value” would be falling from the sky…

People showed up in mass numbers for the event, but when the cash drop began, and people realized that the money falling from the sky wasn’t real, but instead fake cash and $500 vouchers… a riot quickly began.

The Safety Warehouse stands behind its marketing, stating that “real money was given out” at the event. However many other people think their marketing strategy was dishonest and distasteful, playing on the hopes and dreams of people who needed money the most.

Definitely not very good marketing, especially during a global economic crisis when hundreds of thousands of people are struggling to find jobs or make ends meet. Not cool.

6. Unilever’s Fair & Lovely

Another epic fail rebranding attempt… the Asain whitening skin care product Fair & Lovely, renamed itself to Glow & Lovely in response to the global outcry to end racism.

However, the brand failed to address how it’s product (*ahem* a whitening cream) contributes to the issue of racism in the first place…  and it continues to push the same product under the revised brand name.

Someone should’ve told them that changing the name of their product doesn’t mean shit, if the product is STILL rooted in racism.

7. Aldi

Now here’s another example of a completely well-meaning marketing attempt, that just read the room very, very badly… and as a result, ended up offending a lot of people and coming off as insensitive and unaware.

Aldi grocery store teamed up with a popular social media influencer and created the #AldiPooresetDayChallenge. With the idea that January 24th is referred to as the poorest day of the year, because of all that post-holiday spending.

The influencer was “challenged” to feed her family of four on a budget of $32/week, shopping exclusively at Aldi and showing her grocery hauls and meals to her following.

Although Aldi had good intentions of demonstrating how far the dollar could be stretched in its stores, the challenge left a bad taste in the mouths of many people… coming off as insensitive to the families that were barely scraping by, and on budgets much smaller than $32/week.

Many felt as though the store was making a game out of people’s real-life struggles and hard-ships.

8. Volkswagon

Now, this might be one of the most face-palm worthy marketing fails of the year… and in a MASSIVE company like Volkswagen, it really makes you wonder who the hell is approving these things?

This German Volkswagen video ad was promoting their new car, Golf 8. It showed an GIANT white hand pushing a black bystander away from a parked Golf, before flicking him into a restaurant called Petit Colon, which translates from French to the Little Colonist.

After the ad caused a massive uprise on social media, the ad was removed and Volkswagen issued an apology for the ad…

“No one from the team realized that flicking away a person is inappropriate on its own — and racist in the context shown. We should never have made a mistake like that. Neither the agencies nor we. We must apologize for that — with no ifs and buts. And ensure that something like it can never happen again.”

Volkswagon, which was founded in 1937 under the Nazi regime (and also used slave labor from concentration camps to build vehicles)… is now the largest car manufacturer in the world…

As I said, a company this big really should not be making such obviously offensive and racists ads like this one. Get it together.

9. Dominos

This ad fail single-handedly proves that you can’t run blanket ads for different markets…

Dominos “Calling All (Nice) Karen’s” ad ran simultaneously in New Zealand and Australia, stating that it’s a “tough time to be a Karen” and that if you were a nice, law-abiding, mask-wearing Karen – they wanted to give you a free pizza.

The ad was meant to be lighthearted, funny, and bring people together with pizza… and in Australia, that’s exactly what it did! The Aussie took no offense to the ad, and Dominos saw no backlash in that market.

However, in New Zealand, it was a different story entirely. People massively criticized Dominos for being tone-deaf in their marketing. Because “Karen” is typically associated with an over-privileged white woman, the idea of giving this person more free stuff, while ignoring the minorities and oppressed, was not an idea that New Zealand thought was very funny.

It really goes to show the importance of market research…

The New Zealand Dominos apologized for the ad, and removed it from their marketing.

10. Khloe Kardashian

Khloe Kardashian has recently received tons of negative backlash for promoting the prescription migraine medication Nurtec ODT in a sponsored post… to her 26 million followers…

Now Khloe isn’t the first high-profile celebrity that Big Pharma has paid to endorse their products… we’ve seen the same thing from numerous other celebrities in the U.S.

However, that doesn’t make it right. And people continue to raise concerns about the ethics of allowing high-profile stars to market medications directly to consumers…

In fact, this practice is so questionable that the United States is one of only a few countries in the world that allow this type of advertising.

The American Medical Association has previously called for a ban on the practice, claiming that it contributes to inflated healthcare costs and interferes with doctor-patient relationships…

And while you can’t claim that every celebrity that endorsed a drug has ill intentions, you also can’t deny the fact that they are NOT a medical professional and should NOT be the one “educating” or “influencing” the public on what drugs they should be taking.

I mean come on, that’s just ethics 101.

Which fail was most cringey for you? Comment below and let me know.

Watch This Instead

Until next time, I’m Alex – ciao for now!

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Top 10 WORST Marketing Fails of 2020 | Alex Cattoni

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Everything from tone deaf racism to poor-shaming… sex-trafficking to virus spreading… There were some very inappropriate ads that ran in 2020. Some of these brands fessed up, and others are sticking to their guns. But one thing is for sure, they were all HUGE marketing fails. Now, let’s talk abo ...

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Social Media Marketing & Management Dashboard

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How to Manage a Social Media Crisis and Save Your Job: 9 Tips

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The best social media crisis management starts long before any issue arises. Learn how to create a plan to mitigate risk and respond quickly.

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Ragan Insider Premium Content

This article originally appeared on PR Daily in February of 2018.

For your audience to be engaged, they need to know, like and trust you.

Keeping your following involved is a great way to build a community of fans for your brand. What are some of the proven, time-tested social media ideas that can help build engagement?

Here are seven:
1. Curate content.
Posting curated content is a great way to build engagement and bridge any gaps in your content marketing strategy. By sharing top-quality content from other creators in your industry, you can position yourself among your audience as a reliable resource. You get the chance to introduce your followers to other content creators and reach a wider audience.
2. Create infographics.
Infographics are liked and shared on social media platforms 3 times more than any other type of post. Highly visual pieces that contain a lot of information in a format that can be easily digested by readers and have the potential to generate a ton of engagement and even attract new followers to your social media accounts.

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7 ideas for social media posts - PR Daily

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Part of building trust with your audience is making sure that they hear from you regularly. Here are some ideas for social media missives to stay connected with your followers. This article originally appeared on PR Daily in February of 2018. For your audience to be engaged, they need to know, like and trust you.

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Using Canva to create your business logo

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Using Canva to create your business logo

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Amazingly Simple Graphic Design Software – Canva

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Think about your business idea and create a social media presence for it - across the social media platfoms that you believe will be most relevant for your business eg Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.

Create a page in each platform for your business and upload three pieces of content - informational, promotional and to generate consumer engagement / sharing.

This will be assessed as part of Assessment One.

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Check In  - Class Activity from Week One and Week Two - these should be complete

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Check In  - Class Activity from Week One and Week Two - these should be complete

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Create your online portfolio /web site and think of a business idea that you would like to use for this unit.  Use Canva to create a logo for your business.

Locate 3 websites with good web design. Add a link / screenshot to each of these sites to your blog and your rationale on why you have chosen each of these sites.

Locate 3 websites with poor web design. Add to your blog in the same manner as the good sites above.

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For Assessment work
3-4 min video

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Social Media Marketing with Facebook and Twitter Online Class | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

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Discover how to leverage Facebook and Twitter to engage customers, build community, and generate great buzz for your brand.

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5 min read

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Looking for the latest social media demographics for 2023?

You've hit the jackpot.

The importance of a data-driven social strategy can't be overstated - up-to-date demographics are crucial to marketers.

Because the social space is constantly evolving. With more networks available than ever before, you need to spend your time and budget wisely. Specifically, you should focus on where your customers are.

And while you may think you know which networks matter most to your target audience, 2023's numbers might surprise you.

Social media demographics: the numbers you need to know

From choosing your priority platforms to conducting market research, demographic data is key to understanding which networks and campaigns deserve your attention.

Want to know which apps are up-and-coming? Curious about new opportunities to cross-post your content? Worried that a network might be "dying?"

We've got you covered.

Below is our list of must-know social media demographics for 2023 (and beyond). These numbers are based on the latest research and social media statistics available at the time of writing.

And as an added bonus, we've also highlighted strategic takeaways for each network to guide your social marketing strategy.

Facebook demographics and usage

Takeaways from Facebook demographics for 2023

Facebook still remains the largest social platform among consumers and marketers.

Case in point: Facebook accounts for the bulk of Meta's ad revenue versus Instagram (58% to 41.5% of $121.9 billion).

Still, time spent on Facebook continues to fall as overall social media usage grows.

Following 2022's social media demographic data, younger users continue to flock to TikTok and Snapchat .

Instagram demographics and usage

Takeaways from Instagram demographics for 2023

The platform's growth remains steady after experiencing a boom period in recent years.

Instagram saw a small (but notable) flip in its age demographics. The platform boasts a slightly larger percentage of Gen Z users versus Millennials.

As far as social media age demographics go, Instagram maintains a firm hold on both generations - these groups make up roughly two-thirds of their base.

Losing its status as the "hip" social network to TikTok, the platform doubled down on Emphasis on short-form video seems to be paying off. In fact, Reels reportedly drive Reels. the most engagement on the platform.

TikTok demographic data and usage

Takeaways from TikTok demographics for 2023

TikTok's popularity and growth remain unprecedented. There are over 150 million active users on TikTok in the United States alone.

Not only is TikTok's user base booming but also its daily activity. TikTok boasts the highest average time spent per day of any network.

The fact that the platform's gender demographics are leveling out is also notable. Last year, the split was 61% female and 39% male. This signals TikTok's status as a staple social app among the population at large.

As more and more brands get on board, we're seeing influencers do the same.

TikTok is ramping up and "maturing" to meet the needs of its business-minded users. New features include more advanced ads and CRM integrations.

Twitter demographics and usage

Takeaways from Twitter demographics for 2023

Twitter's usage and growth have remained fairly consistent year-to-year.

It remains to be seen how the recent shake-up in Twitter's leadership will impact the app long-term. The same goes for features like Twitter Blue and the platform's ads.

Some reports note a spike in activity while others note a migration away from the app.

One-third of Twitter users are college-educated and make more than $75K annually, highlighting the platform's highly-educated and high-earning base.

Twitter's status as a place to discuss events and gather breaking news make it a prime place to share content and drive discussions.

Takeaways from LinkedIn demographics for 2023

Conventional wisdom might say that LinkedIn exclusively caters to an older audience. That said, Millennials dominate the platform.

LinkedIn continues to net record revenue and user growth. This growth was driven initially by the pandemic and continued during the shifting job market.

The platform's demographic of high-earning B2B professionals makes LinkedIn a potential goldmine for ads.

According to LinkedIn themselves, it's the top-rated social network for lead generation. This makes LinkedIn a prime source for B2B marketers looking for motivated audiences and communities.

Beyond the 200 million LinkedIn users in the US, the platform has a massive international reach.

Pinterest demographics and usage

Takeaways from Pinterest demographics for 2023

The platform saw a surprising spike in male users during 2021 but Pinterest's core demographic remains female.

The platform's dedicated base of 450+ million monthly active Pinners continues to grow. This number is up from 400 million in 2022.

Pinterest is perhaps the most produced-focused of any social network, signaling big opportunities for ads (hint: 45% of Pinterest users have a household income of $100,000+).

Shopping-centric organic content is fair game, too - almost 70% of users say they trust Pinterest and it's their favorite place to research products.

Pinterest is unique when it comes to demographics on social media due to its 1) gender split and 2) wide age range of its users.

Snapchat demographic data and usage

Takeaways from Snapchat demographics for 2023

Although Snapchat may not be the most talked-about or "trendy" network anecdotally, the platform saw growth in 2022.

Snapchat is still huge with the younger crowd, although it recently lost its top spot as teenagers' go-to network. The platform continuously emphasizes its popularity with Gen Z.

Even if you aren't active on Snapchat, it's a prime place for trendspotting and learning what younger consumers want.

With Snapchat's steady growth in revenue, the platform isn't going anywhere.

YouTube demographics and usage

Takeaways from YouTube demographics for 2023

YouTube's popularity among younger users highlights the ongoing, long-term shift toward video content.

The growth of YouTube Shorts is notable as the platform looks to tap into the power of short-form video.

Marketers note that YouTube is still a sort of land of opportunity advertising-wise. The platform's ad revenue held steady from where it was last year as it approaches $30 billion annually.

This revenue growth signals not only the platform's influence as a social network but also as a go-to streaming service.

Still, the majority of users claim to use YouTube for entertainment rather than to find brands and products. Brands still have a lot of work to do on the platform, finding a balance between entertainment and advertising.

Are social media demographics part of your strategy?

Keep in mind that this data is generalized across billions of users and serves as a starting point for brands looking to prioritize their social platforms.

If you're looking to expand your reach, we recommend looking into the demographic data from your own social presence to see how it compares to the averages above.

These social media platform demographics

Whether these numbers confirm what you already suspected or serve as eye-openers, make sure to bookmark them as you iron out your social strategy for 2023.

And speaking of which, make sure to check out our free social media templates to keep you organized every step of the way.

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Social media demographics to inform your brand's strategy in 2023

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Need an up-to-date list of social media demographics? Check out our breakdown of 2023's numbers and trends you need to know.

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Master the basics of digital marketing with our free Interactive Advertising Bureau-accredited course. There are 26 modules to explore, all created by Google trainers, packed full of practical exercises and real-world examples to help you turn knowledge into action.

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Hubspot is a great resource

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Same every week

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What did you learn today?
Add in comments below.

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14 min read - use for Assessments

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We built machine learning models and used them to analyze 400,000 articles in order to see what they would tell us about making engaging content.

There's an art and a science to writing great content, as well as a strong element of luck. For content marketers everywhere looking for that magic formula to apply to their uninspired content and suddenly receive 100 million shares - it doesn't exist.

Nobody wants to be responsible for a resurgence in clickbait ("10 weird tricks you won't believe about conveyancing - number 3 will shock you"). However, we've tried to take a novel approach to understanding what tweaks you might be able to make to your content to help make the most of its potential.

We trained machine learning models with BuzzSumo data to find out what boosts your content engagement on social media and help you get those extra likes and shares. Here's just some of those key insights:
Skip to the methodology here.
Choose your platform wisely

Success on Facebook does not equal success on Twitter

Content which generates very strong engagement on one social networking site isn't necessarily going to see much engagement elsewhere.

Below plots the number of Facebook shares versus the number of Twitter shares for the content in our dataset. As you can see, a lot of content performs very well on one platform, but very poorly on the other:

There are different ways of interpreting this.

It could be that Facebook users and Twitter users are interested in very different things. Another factor may be randomness in content engagement patterns, or factors often outside the control of a content creator, such as if an influencer happens to chance upon your content and amplify it. This might be comforting to those who've written highly engaging content one day, which then only gets 2 measly likes the next.

Although we can see general patterns, realistically, chance probably plays an important role too. This underlines the risk of drawing bad conclusions by reading too much into the performance of a small group of posts.

Tools like BuzzSumo let you escape your social media bubble and access enough data to look into the broader trends, which will allow you to better assess and understand the themes your audience engages with.

Which platform is best for you?

We've seen that successful content on one platform isn't always successful on the other, and our modeling suggests Facebook and Twitter users do engage with different types of content (which we'll explore soon).

One way you can understand this, is by keeping records of the content you release, and how much engagement it gets on different platforms. When you have the volume, you can look for patterns in what Facebook users are interested in, versus what Twitter users are interested in, etc. This could help you understand what your audience on different platforms are interested in, saving you time and money on successful content.

Alternatively, you can use BuzzSumo for trend spotting to understand what consumers engage with, and how users of different platforms engage differently. Simply type in the url of your own site into the Content Analyzer to compare content engagement over time and find out which articles are driving success across different networks.

As an example, if we look across tasteofhome.com's content engagement, it's clear that most comes from Facebook, with Pinterest being the second most popular network.

Digging a little further into their output and it is clear that, in some cases, engaging content on Facebook doesn't have the same effect on Pinterest. Here are two of the most popular articles in the past year: both have similar levels of content engagement on Facebook but, whilst one got 6.5k shares on Pinterest, the other only got 14.

One is a recipe post, with mouth watering photos and handy tips (6.4k Pinterest shares). The other is a news article probably based on a press release (14 Pinterest shares). Breaking down your content into themes and then cross referencing with the engagement will help you recognize what content works best where.

Facebook provides the most content engagement

It's difficult to make direct comparisons between platforms (is a Facebook share really equivalent to a retweet?), but any way we split it, Facebook comes out on top. Given the platform's dominance, we have focused on Facebook analysis, with some comparisons to Twitter. Links outside of these platforms are not shown, as they made up a very small percentage of measurable engagement.

On Facebook, create likeable content for substantial engagement

On Facebook, likes made up the bulk of content engagements (70%).

Likes were highly correlated with shares and comments, suggesting that if you can write content that can stimulate people to click the 'like' button, you'll also be putting yourself in the best position to get more substantive engagement, too. You don't need to seek out specific responses, like asking people what they think - those will come naturally.

If Twitter is your main platform, carefully consider amplification strategies

Twitter does have the advantage of being far more open than Facebook, in the sense that you can better understand what people are talking about, and more easily find influencers who can help amplify your content.

Using these strategies can help you overcome some of the challenges of working with a platform that has a smaller user base.

Tweaking content can turn a dial, not a switch

This following section is based on the behavior of machine learning models, which predicted whether or not a piece of content would be in the top 20% of most highly engaged posts (Compared to the expected number of engagements based on the prominence of that site).

We provided these models with information about the words and phrases in the title, as well as some metadata about the content (for example, the number of words and the readability score). These became our "Features"; things that the model can identify within content, and that a person creating content is able to change.

Across all models, we didn't see any features making more of a 6% contribution to the probability of creating high content engagement, which reinforces that there's no magic formula to uncover when creating high performing content. Some tricks may help you, but the actual content itself matters, and we have every reason to believe there's still a strong element of chance.

How to write engaging content

To understand what businesses and individuals can do to create more engaging content, we recreated the model with only blogs included. Here, our dataset is mostly made up of three types of blog: business, hobbyist and commentary on social and current affairs.

See below for our top-level findings on the most engaging 'Content types' across Twitter and Facebook, and read on for more insight into each category.

Simpler language doesn't necessarily appeal to more people

Having a word length less than 1000 words reduces the likelihood of high engagement on Facebook by 1%, while having 1000 to 2000 words increases the high engagement likelihood by 1%. Similar results were seen for Twitter.

Additionally, another feature in our model was the Automated Readability Index, a readability measure which takes into account the lengths of words and sentences, with posts containing longer words and sentences receiving higher scores.

We found that the content with readability scores in the lowest 10% had about a 1% lower chance of being predicted as high engagement on Facebook. Similar results were seen on Twitter, with higher scores being associated with greater engagement.

However, there seems to be more to lose with a very low readability, than there is to gain with a very high readability, with little discernible difference between the performance of average and high readability scores. This suggests you don't necessarily need to oversimplify, but there's probably not much to gain by breaking out the thesaurus for words like "abnegation" (renouncing or rejecting) or "antediluvian" (before the Biblical flood).

If you want to look at the readability score of your own content, you can use this online test.

It's very interesting to see that the simplest language isn't always the most engaging, even though that's the advice that's been passed around for ages. I think this speaks to one of the most important marketing principles: Speak to your audience. All best practices come second to what your particular readers are looking for, and if you provide the content they want, you're much more likely to engage them.

- Amanda Milligan, Marketing Director, Frac.tl

Longer content, a little more engagement

If we rank all posts by the number of words they contain, those in the bottom 10% can be expected to have about a 1% smaller chance of having high Facebook engagement. There's a familiar pattern of diminishing returns, however, with very little to gain by having extremely long content.

Images help drive engagement

Posts with images are around 2% more likely to have high Facebook engagement, but didn't make a discernible difference on Twitter.

Politics in titles can generate strong engagement

It was difficult to find examples of businesses discussing politics or individual politicians - perhaps that's due to a cautiousness on their part. However, political content, from comment-oriented blogs to more analysis-based posts, do seem to outperform expectations. This suggests that brands could benefit from exploring how they might be able to make content relevant to politicians.

Interestingly, we saw greater effects on Facebook for individual political figures (Trump and Bernie are shown below, with similar effects for Obama and Buttigeg), than for more conceptual political terms, such as poll, and policy. Party-related terms, such as "Democrat" and "Democrats" were linked to higher engagement.
"Trump"
Change in high engagement likelihood (Facebook): +3%

Change in high engagement likelihood (Twitter): +5%

"Bernie"
Change in high engagement likelihood (Facebook): +2%

Change in high engagement likelihood (Twitter): +1%

Hyperbole doesn't seem to help

"Love" was one of the more common words in titles, giving the model a good opportunity to learn if this term would help content get more engagement, yet it didn't appear as one of our highly explanatory features.

Including the word "love" seems to have negligible impact, with other hyperbolic, such as "great" and "amazing" also not appearing to boost engagement. We actually found evidence that "best" was linked with lower buzz.

Having said that, posts including these terms did appear to elicit around double the number of "love" reactions on Facebook (14 on average for posts without these terms, compared to 33 for posts that did include these terms).
"Best"
Change in high engagement likelihood (Facebook): -1%

We also didn't find any measurable effect from listicle-related terms, such as "10", "things" or "ways", despite these being very common.

Facebook users respond to individualized content

We saw evidence of a variety of people-oriented terms, such as "man", "woman" and "female" and "mom", being linked with higher-than-expected buzz on Facebook. The most significant of these appears to be the term "people":
"People"
Change in high engagement likelihood (Facebook): +3%

Change in high engagement likelihood (Twitter): No measurable change

However, these effects appear to be much smaller on Twitter, suggesting that, as a platform, Facebook may be a little more interested in people-oriented content.

In contrast to this, there was also evidence that terms around organizations may be linked to lower engagement.

That suggests business-oriented content could sometimes benefit from a more human-angle. Here we focus on the term "business", but a similar effect was seen for "Marketing".
"Business"
Change in high engagement likelihood (Facebook): -2%

Change in high engagement likelihood (Twitter): No measurable change

Again, these business terms appear to be strongly connected with low engagement on Facebook, but we didn't find strong evidence this is the case with Twitter content. Together, this may suggest that if you do want to take a business angle, your promotional money may be better spent on Twitter.

Cats aren't the secret to winning the internet

Similar to findings around individual-oriented content potentially pushing the dial upwards on Facebook more than Twitter, terms around animals weren't highly predictive of success on Twitter.

For cat lovers, we unfortunately didn't see as much of an impact, but that could partly be due to fewer posts containing the words "cat" or "cats", thereby giving the model fewer opportunities to learn.

" Dog", "Dogs"

Change in high engagement likelihood (Facebook): +5%

Change in high engagement likelihood (Twitter): No measurable change

Retrospective content may not be as engaging as current topics

The term "Book" was associated with a 3% decline in the likelihood of performing well on Facebook; a chunk of this content was book reviews. However, it should often be possible to reframe this content and play off the interest that Facebook users show in the human angle.

" Review "

Change in high engagement likelihood (Facebook): -4%

Change in high engagement likelihood (Twitter): No measurable change

Technical content struggles on Facebook, but may succeed on Twitter
"Data"
Change in high engagement likelihood (Facebook): -3%

Change in high engagement likelihood (Twitter): +3%

A similar pattern was seen for "Cloud", which was linked to low buzz on Facebook (-1%), but high buzz on Twitter (+5%).

Conclusions

Facebook remains king of generating content engagement. Twitter still has an important role to play, especially because the openness of the platform allows you to connect with influencers more easily. If you are able to create content that gets passive engagement, such as likes, you can expect to see more substantive engagement, too.

Facebook and Twitter users show broad similarities in what they engage with most, although Twitter may be more receptive to overtly business-facing content, with Facebook more interested in the human angle

Random chance seems to play a very important role in how much engagement individual posts receive. Don't abandon a topic just because you've written about it once and didn't get much interest - you might find a similar post in the future gets widely shared. Similarly, you can't assume that a well performing post demonstrates consumers are going to engage with that topic again. Instead, try to look at broad trends in what people engage with, across many posts - you should find it easier to see real patterns that way

Features turn a dial, not a switch - in our analysis, no feature increased the high performance likelihood by more than 6%. Of course, this figure is likely to vary by context, but it does suggest that you can't expect to change one small thing about your content and expect it to perform very differently

Diminishing returns - if you find it difficult to write very long and complex content, that's okay - a little effort goes a long way

Method

Random forest models were created to predict whether a given piece of content would over- or under- perform based on the prominence of the website. Given the weak relationship between engagement on different platforms, a model is aimed at predicting only engagement for a single platform - i.e. the model predicting Facebook engagement is different to the model predicting Twitter engagement. In general, they tended to be around 60% accurate.

Compared to other models used in the field of social media data analysis, the accuracy of these models is low, however, this is to be expected, given that the model has very limited information - for example, it doesn't know how many subscribers the author of a YouTube video has, or information about what people are talking about in the real world. Additionally, these models are not optimized to be highly accurate - rather, the ideal model is highly interpretable, as the interpretation is the real goal.

The LIME Python library was used for some of the model interpretation, and you can read more about it here.

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400,000 Articles: What We Learned About Content Engagement

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There's an art and a science to writing great content, as well as a strong element of luck. For content marketers everywhere looking for that magic formula to apply to their uninspired content and suddenly receive 100 million shares - it doesn't exist.

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