[Update: This number grew from 2019 to 2020. Find the 2020 data here.]
How much time do you spend creating organic social posts? Many of the world’s best brands don’t spend any time at all.
In the first two weeks of the year, 14% of top brands didn’t post anything on their primary Facebook pages. Another 10% posted only once. The top five global brands (Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Coca-Cola) published to their primary Facebook pages a total of just six times in the first two weeks of 2019.
They don’t even post big product launches. Nine of the top 50 brands make consumer technology, and all announced products during the January 8-11 Consumer Electronics Show. But Google published to its main Facebook page just twice in the first half of January; Amazon only three times; Apple and Microsoft, not at all.
They don’t activate key sponsorships. Nike and Adidas compete to sponsor the best college sports programs. But neither posted even once on its primary Facebook page about the January 7 college football national championship, or as college basketball teams started league play in the first half of January.
They’ve been posting less for a while. Coke posted just once in the first two weeks of 2019, and also posted only once in December. IBM hasn’t published to its main Facebook page since November; Adidas, since March. McDonald’s has averaged less than one post a week for months.
Many don’t post to sub-brand pages, either. Think these companies are publishing on product-specific Facebook pages instead? Not usually. Amazon posts on its Echo and Kindle pages even less than on its main page. Google hasn’t posted to its Android page this year, and has posted to its Chrome page only once. Nike hasn’t published on its primary soccer page since August, or on its golf or running pages since 2017.
If you still labor over organic Facebook posts, take a tip from top brands: Stop. Spend as little time as possible publishing organic social network content. Focus instead on social strategies that drive results, like on-site product reviews, brand communities, and social ads.
(A note on methodology: We tracked top brands’ posts from the US, both logged out and logged into a US users’ account, and found only small variations between posts visible to logged-in and logged-out users.)