How to Stink on Facebook with 17 Millions Followers: Learn from Burberry

by Member of TrueSocialMetrics team ~ 5 min

Want to learn how to stink on Facebook with 17 million fans? Ask Burberry how. They have 17 million followers but only around 0.06% of them react to their posts (rough estimation based on the number of engagements).

Most of us can only dream of having a 9-digit number of followers on Facebook. But for famous luxury brands, it’s a reality. A harsh reality. Because somehow they don’t manage to get any affection from these huge tribes.

In short words, here’s how Burberry’s Facebook fans probably feel:

And here’s Burberry’s feelings:

Gif source

They have an indecently big audience and a miniscule engagement. I used Engagement matrix from TrueSocialMetrics to compare the top 5 luxury brands and evaluate how big and active their fan bases are. So here’s how you use this matrix:

(Engagement = Likes + Comments + Shares). Report to use: Engagmement matrix

The main idea here is: “You get more followers - you get more engagement.” Ideally. And Burberry is in a-galaxy-far-far-away-from-great region here. I’ll show you why.

Red flag #1. I can draw an imaginary line parallel to the X-axis between several brands. This means the same level of engagement for these brands but a huge difference in the number of followers. Some of them are clearly not engaging their fans to the fullest.

(Engagement = Likes + Comments + Shares). Report to use: Engagmement matrix

In an ideal world, if you have more followers you have more engagement. Well, not in this case. Hermes, Prada and Burberry - they all have an enormous difference in fan base size, but the same level of Engagement. What’s the point of Burberry having 17 million fans if they have the same level of engagement as Hermes with just 2.5 million fans? What’s the strategy behind having a huge tribe of people who ignore you?

Red flag #2. I can draw an almost parallel line to the Y-axis between Chanel and Burberry. Which means they have almost the same amount of followers, but a huge difference in engagement. And again - Burberry is not engaging their fans to the fullest potential.

(Engagement = Likes + Comments + Shares). Report to use: Engagmement matrix

Uh-oh! Burberry has almost half a million more followers than Chanel (17.1 million vs 16.7 million), but 20 times less Engagement! Is it OK having only 10k engagements a month with 17 million followers? I’ll do the math for you - roughly speaking, only 0.06% of fans have actively interacted with their posts during the whole month (if we imagine that each like, share and comment was unique and not made by the same fan, otherwise the picture would be even more grim).

Compared to other luxury brands:

Well, I was wrong. Burberry is not in trouble, it’s in TROUBLE. Not only does it has super low engagement compared to fan size, it also has the worst engagement level among its competitors.

And if we calculate the same numbers per post, we’ll get severely depressed:

Report to use: Competite Analysis Metrics

6.79 Conversation rate (Comments per Post) - only 7 people out of 17 millions decided to comment on each post on average! It’s 0.00003 % of a fan base.

137.14 Amplification rate (Shares per Post) - 137 people shared each post on average, it’s 0.0008 % of a fan base.

605.36 Applause rate (Likes per Post) - 605 people cared to like each post on average, which is 0.004 % of a fan base.

Gif source

And why are the results so sad? The answer is: their social presence is not user-centric. Just look at the comments:

And not a single reply from Burberry staff all around their page. Bad customer service offline was transferred to the online market as well. Nothing user-centric here - they just post something and don’t care what customers feel about it. Posting for the sake of posting. Instead of shooting all these expensive videos, they could have spent the money on improving customer service. Or at least researching what content resonates with their audience:

You might think that luxury brands should be owning it in social media - they have good taste and big budgets. Well, not exactly. Looks like sometimes they also have no idea what they are doing, just like us mere mortals. Or are we? :) Try and use Engagement matrix for your brand and see where you stand.