Emplifi’s Q3 2022 Social Media Benchmark report reveals social media trends; channel growth and engagement data; and customer response times across platforms worldwide

Emplifi, the leading unified customer experience platform, today revealed its quarterly social media trends and findings of global brands.

“The biggest takeaway is that short-form video is a vital part of a brand’s marketing mix and is here to stay. This has only been reinforced throughout 2022, and social platforms have continued to increase their video capabilities this year”

According to the Q3 2022 Social Media Benchmark report, median engagement rates for brands remained consistent with the previous quarter, except for Instagram brand engagement rates which saw a slight uplift. Looking at the format of the platform’s top-performing posts by median interactions, Reels came in first (35% higher than other content types), followed by carousels, video, and then images.

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Instagram Reels have outperformed all other post types since the start of the year, with 80% of brands on the platform publishing at least one reel in Q3 2022. This is a significant increase since 2021 when only 41% of brands on the social media network were posting reels content. Instagram Reels are most popular within the sporting industry – 92% of sports organizations, sports and sports events, and 88% of sporting goods brands publish reels to boost engagement with followers.

Comparing 463 sister Instagram and TikTok brand accounts, Instagram outperforms TikTok for median reach by a wide margin (63% to 37%), and brands also earn more interactions and more video views on Instagram. However, TikTok earns higher reach engagement for brands, with a 57% to 43% advantage and follower growth for brands on TikTok continues to climb, up 200%.

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“The biggest takeaway is that short-form video is a vital part of a brand’s marketing mix and is here to stay. This has only been reinforced throughout 2022, and social platforms have continued to increase their video capabilities this year,” said Zarnaz Arlia, CMO, Emplifi. “Brands have increasingly added Instagram Reels to their content strategies, and just a few years ago, not many had heard of TikTok – now, it’s easily the fastest-growing channel out there. To maximize reach and engagement, brands need to invest their resources in the content formats and on the platforms which resonate with their audience.”

In terms of social customer care, brand response rates to user questions on Facebook had a 14% year-over-year drop. And with Instagram, the rate has declined almost the same in the past two quarters, falling 13% since Q1 2022.

This drop aligns with a Forrester consumer survey from earlier this year that found customer experience quality fell for 19% of brands in 2022 – marking the highest proportion of brands to decrease in a year since Forrester began conducting the survey seven years ago.

Additional data points from the report, include:

• Most industries have seen a drop in click-through rates (CTR) over the past year, the biggest decreases being the retail and e-commerce sectors.
• After an 11% increase in Q2, median monthly cost-per-click (CPC) numbers fell 9% to get back to almost exactly where they were in Q1 2022 and YoY, suggesting this may be a reasonable baseline number.
• Brands continue to be the quickest to respond on Twitter, taking 3-4 hours for the fifth straight quarter.

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