WILDFIRE

TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES

With the debut of Timelines for brands on February 29th, brands and marketers everywhere wondered whether Facebooks fan page changes would cause noticeable differences in the behavior of fans on brands pages. Since there are no default landing pages, a brand new cover photo, and entirely different branding opportunities would users be more or less engaged with content? Without knowing these effects in advance, most brands decided to wait to make the switch. Some savvy brands, however, made the switch early and adapted immediately. These early adopters have blazed a trail through the unknown, and we decided to take a good look at what theyve learned.

THE WILDFIRE METHOD

Wildfire has compiled a statistically significant analysis of 43 early-adopter brands of Facebooks Timeline, including some Wildfire clients and Facebooks Timeline launch partners (Burberry, Old Spice, Coca-Cola, etc.). We were looking to understand engagement statistics such as People Talking about This (PTAT), Likes per Page Post, Comments per Page Post, and Fan Growth Rate for brand pages of all sizes within a representative cross-section of brands that switched on February 29th. 45% of the brands we tracked (for 21 days before the Timeline switch and 21 days after) have less than 1MM fans. 40% had between 1MM- 10MM fans. The remaining 15% had greater than 10MM fans. See the Appendix for a full list of brands included in the study.

THE RESULTS
We found a significant difference in the effects of switching to Timelines between different sized brands. For brands with less than 1MM fans (where the range of brands studied was from 22,000 to 265,000 fans) the effect on engagement of switching to Timelines was very large, and positive. Likes and Comments per post, as well as PTAT increased by doubledigit percentages. Brands in this category include Ad Age, Kate Spade New York, Diet Mountain Dew, and Bakers Delight. A smaller, but still significant increase on engagement was noted with brands sized between 1-10MM fans. This group included brands like Lexus, Dove, Tide, and ESPN. A different trend became apparent with the mega brands (those with over 10MM fans). The largest brands in the world actually experienced a negative impact. A small sampling of these brands includes Manchester United and Coca-Cola.

THE NEGATIVE CORRELATION

While several pieces of early press about the impact of Timeline were less than positive, this skepticism turned out not to apply to most brands. When investigating the reason for this significant drop in engagement statistics for the mega brands, a correlation quickly became apparent. All of the mega brands affected negatively by the Timelines switch were part of Facebooks debut partner brands. These are the brands whose Timelines were launched on the same day as Facebook made the major announcement, and used by Facebook in

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TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES
its press release and all related press materials. The huge influx of attention and eyeballs to these top brands because of their exposure as partner brands artificially elevated their engagement statistics for long enough that, after some of the initial hype died away, engagement rates returned to previous levels, and a downward trending engagement rate was perceived.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

Our study shows that these numbers, and the negative trend in general, do not apply to the vast majority of brands on Facebook: of the 37MM fan pages on Facebook, less than 5% of those pages have more than 10MM fans. One must look at the study of brands with less than 1MM fans to get an accurate picture, as these brands make up approximately 85% of the company pages on Facebook. Another conclusion from the effect of Timelines on engagement is that the popularity of certain post types has shifted. Photo and Video posts are performing better in a PostTimeline world. The visual structure of the Timeline may be the cause of the significant increase in engagement with Photos and Videos. This visual media has more screen real estate and is displayed very prominently. Videos and photos posted to the Timeline attract more attention from users, and the engagement numbers reflect this. We also measured the impact of the new Timeline features Pinned Posts and Featured Posts to see if having the ability to treat different posts in these ways affects user interaction with them. While the results were generally good depending on the type of content being featured or pinned, (i.e. video versus photo posts), there were some statistically significant trends, including that Pinned Posts are great at generating likes and comments, outperforming any other type of pinned or featured content by 1.1x on this specific measure. All of the numbers specific to this analysis are available below, as are a number of charts and graphs in an Appendix. The initial result of our analysis of early adopter brands is that Timeline has had a beneficial effect on measures of brand engagement. As the sample size and duration of Timeline pages increase, the analysis may yield different results.

Methodology
We studied 43 brands in total, all of which launched their Timeline pages on Feb 29. This set includes 20 of Facebooks launch partners, and a random sampling of 23 other brand pages. The date range for the study was February 1st March 23rd, which achieved statistical significance by tracking the 21 days leading up to the Timeline debut, and 21 days after the early adopter brands switched.

Brands Chosen (43)

<1 Million fans: 40% (smallest fan page size 22K fans) 1-10 Million fans: 45% 10+ Million fans: 15%

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TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES
How did the fan growth rate and engagement stats of these groups change with Timeline?

< 1 M fans Daily Fan Growth Rate PTAT Comments Per Brand Post Likes Per Brand Post -0.04% 67.4% 40.0% 60.3%

For fan pages with less than 1 MM fans, a cross-section of samples representing the fan page sizes of over 95% of Facebook, all changes in engagement statistics were markedly positive. People Talking About This, Comments per Post, and Likes per Post all increased by over 40%, hugely significant changes. Interestingly, there was no corresponding change in fan growth rate after Timeline, so while users were markedly more engaged after the big switch, no more of them than usual committed to being a fan of the pages.

1-10 Million Fans

Daily Fan Growth Rate PTAT Comments Per Brand Post Likes Per Brand Post

-0.02% 28.58% -17.43% 13.56%

For fan pages with between 1MM and 10MM fans, PTAT and Likes per Post increased significantly. On the other hand, Comments per Post decreased significantly. Fan Growth Rate remained unaffected.

10 + Million Fans

Daily Fan Growth Rate PTAT Comments Per Brand Post Likes Per Brand Post

-0.06% -13.72% -16.72% -11.57%

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TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES
For the largest mega brands, with over 10MM Facebook fans, there was a markedly negative change in engagement statistics after the Timeline transition. One interesting correlation that may play a large role in this negative turnout is that all of the 7 brands of this size in the study were Facebook launch partner brands for the Timeline debut. This means that the brands got heavy press activity, having been part of a select group of brands that got promoted within Facebook press materials, as well as other articles published for days after. The increase in engagement was so steep across the period of heavy press promotion, that when the press subsided, the corresponding drop in engagement was thunderous. Therefore, the resulting engagement statistics are characteristic of the inflated engagement due to high press activity more so than any known effects of Timeline on the brand.

Finally, despite the significant differences in engagement activity after the implementation of Timelines for brands, none of the fan page size segments experienced any change in Facebook Fan Growth Rate. Despite all the extra traffic to these early adopter brands (especially those that were a part of Facebooks launch partner program, receiving high press attention) which led to significant directional impact on engagement scores, fan growth didnt budge. This indicates that users were not entirely convinced by the new and flashy TImeline activity they would engage with it, but were not persuaded enough to commit a Like to the page.

In addition to understanding the effect of a change to Timeline on engagement metrics, we also looked to see more information about engagement as it related to page posting practices.

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TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES THE PAGE POST CHANGES
Post Behavior
Dataset: This data is taken from 50 brands that switched over to Timeline on Feb 29 and covers the date ranges Feb 1 March 23. Links are the most common message type. Of the 4,780 posts created by brands during this time, 39.9% were links, with photos coming in second at 34.6%. The distribution of post types did not change substantially before and after Timeline rolled out. What types of content generate the best likes, comments, and shares?

PRE-TIMELINE LIKES Status (most) Photo Video Link (least) COMMENTS Status (most) Photo Video Link (least) SHARES Video (most) Photo Status Link (least)

Pre-Timeline
Status updates were the best ways to generate likes and comments, outperforming the next best post type by 21.8% and 17% respectively Video posts were the best way to generate shares, outperforming the next best type of post by 69.5%

POST-TIMELINE LIKES Status (most) Photo Video Link (least) COMMENTS Photo (most) Status Video Link SHARES Video (most) Photo Link Status

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TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES
Post-Timeline
Status updates are the best at generating likes, outperforming the next best post type by 21.1% Photos are the best at generating comments, outperforming the next best post type by 8.3% Videos are the king of generating shares, outperforming the next best post type by 90% IMPORTANT NOTE: Photo and Video posts are quantitatively performing better in a PostTimeline world. The visual structure of the Timeline may be the cause of the significant increase in engagement with Photos and Videos. This visual media has more screen real estate and is displayed very prominently. Videos and photos posted to the Timeline attract more attention from users, and the engagement numbers reflect this. How are pinned and featured posts performing? Since Feb 29, the brands we tracked published 98 featured posts and 18 pinned posts. In a head to head comparison against posts created before the Timeline launch, performance seems good.

AVE. NO. OF LIKES Regular Posts Featured Posts Pinned Posts 3051.15 3032.96 4228.83

AVE. NO. OF COMMENTS 363.90 354,.62 386.28

AVE. NO. OF SHARES 217.90 409.24 286.28

On a per post basis, pinned and featured posts perform the same or better than regular posts. The brightest spot is the performance of Pinned Photo Posts. How do photo pinned posts perform against other post types?

AVE. NO. OF LIKES Regular Photo Posts Featured Photo Posts Pinned Photo Posts 4399.66 3268.79 6348.40

AVE. NO. OF COMMENTS 591.71 441.75 607.70

AVE. NO. OF SHARES 297.52 282.53 487.10

Pinned Photo posts outperform any other type of featured post content in terms of likes, comments and shares. More importantly, they outperform regular photo posts as well.

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TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES
What type of pinned or featured content drives sharing? Featured Video Posts perform the best at generating shares. In terms of encouraging shares, Featured Video Posts not only outperform any other type of featured or pinned content by 3.77x, they also outperform VIdeo Posts by 2x. One thing to note is that over 2500 posts were generated by our target brands since the Timeline launch, of which only 116 were Featured or Pinned. This isnt conclusive data, but the trend does point towards photos as the pinned content of choice.

Appendix: Data and Charts

Figure 1.0 The Average People Talking About this rate of change was increasing after the switch to Timeline.
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AggregatePTATforBrandPageswith<1MMFans

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TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES
Figure 1.1 People Talking About This rises after the switch to Timelines for midsize brands.
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Figure 1.2 People Talking About Mega-Brands decreases slightly after the introduction of Timelines.
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TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES
Figure 1.3 Likes on Brand Posts for Pages with less than 1MM fans increase significantly.
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Figure 1.4 Likes on Brand Posts for medium sized brands increase significantly.

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TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES
Figure 1.5 Likes on Brand Posts decrease after Timeline for mega-brands.

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Figure 1.6 Comments on brand posts decrease after Timelines, but not at as fast a rate as they increased. This is a net positive effect on engagement.

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WILDFIRE
TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES
Figure 1.7 Comments on Brand Posts by a medium sized fan base decrease slightly.
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Figure 1.8 Comments on Brand Posts made by mega brands decrease significantly.

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WILDFIRE
TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES THE BRANDS
Brand Name Advertising Age AT&T Bakers Delight Ben & Jerrys Burberry Burton Captain Morgan USA Chegg Coca-Cola Coldplay CONTOUR Detroit Lions Diet Mountain Dew Dove ESPN Ford Motor Company Harley-Davidson HubSpot Hyundai Worldwide Kate Spade New Yor Lexus Liquor.com Livestrong Louis Vuitton Macys Magnolia Bakery Manchester United Mountain Dew Nespresso Old Spice Red Bull SOL REPUBLIC Facebook Page http://www.facebook.com/adage http://www.facebook.com/att http://www.facebook.com/bakersdelight http://www.facebook.com/benjerry http://www.facebook.com/burberry http://www.facebook.com/BurtonMenswear http://www.facebook.com/CaptainMorganUSA http://www.facebook.com/Chegg http://www.facebook.com/cocacola http://www.facebook.com/coldplay http://www.facebook.com/contour http://www.facebook.com/DetroitLions http://www.facebook.com/DietDew http://www.facebook.com/dove http://www.facebook.com/espn http://www.facebook.com/ford http://www.facebook.com/harley-davidson http://www.facebook.com/hubspot http://www.facebook.com/Hyundaiworldwide http://www.facebook.com/katespade http://www.facebook.com/lexus http://www.facebook.com/Liquor.com http://www.facebook.com/livestrong http://www.facebook.com/LouisVuitton http://www.facebook.com/Macys http://www.facebook.com/MagnoliaBakery http://www.facebook.com/manchesterunited http://www.facebook.com/mountaindew http://www.facebook.com/nespresso http://www.facebook.com/OldSpice http://www.facebook.com/redbull http://www.facebook.com/solrepublic

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WILDFIRE
TIMELINE FOR BRAND PAGES

SportsCenter Starbucks Subway The New York Times Tide Tiffany & Co. Today Show Toyota USA Verizon Wireless Walmart Windows

http://www.facebook.com/SportsCenter http://www.facebook.com/Starbucks http://www.facebook.com/Subway http://www.facebook.com/nytimes http://www.facebook.com/tide http://www.facebook.com/tiffany http://www.facebook.com/today http://www.facebook.com/toyota http://www.facebook.com/verizon http://www.facebook.com/walmart http://www.facebook.com/windows

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