2020 Social Media Stats: Facebook

This is the second in the series of our annual summary of social media stats for kombucha brands. Yesterday we highlighted the changes over the past year on Instagram.

Facebook is the second most popular platform for kombucha brands.

At the end of 2018, we published an initial, informal survey of kombucha brands’ presence on social media. At the time, we reviewed the stats for Facebook ‘Likes’ of a small group of 140 brands.

Last December we shared the 2019 numbers, based on 1,400 brands. Now, at the end of 2020, the survey selects from over 1,700 brands.

This table shows the percentage change in the number of ‘Likes’ for 2019 Leaders over the past year.

The trend we noticed in 2019 is even more apparent. Facebook has been a static or declining platform for most brands. Only a fifth had double-digit growth in the number of customers who ‘Liked’ their page, almost half saw a decline in the number of customers ‘Liking’ their Facebook page.

Indeed, this is consistent with changes to the Facebook algorithm over the past couple of years, reducing the relevance of counting the number of ‘Likes’ a page attracts as paid ads have replaced organic reach as a way of getting seen by customers:

The introduction of the News Feed algorithm has lead to a continual shift in optimal Facebook strategy. This was further underlined again early this year, when Facebook announced a new, major update that would favor person-to-person interaction and content over Page posts. Essentially, Facebook’s system works to show users the content of most relevance to them.

Whereas in the past, you could be assured that at least a certain percentage of the people who liked your brand’s Page would see your content organically, the various algorithm changes since then have continually reduced that capacity, meaning that the only way to be sure that a substantial amount of your community will see your content now is to invest in Facebook ads.

But given that paid strategies are now the best way to serve your content to a targeted audience, you no longer need to rely on building Page likes to have a community with which to serve your content. In fact, brands can now totally bypass counting likes and focus on other value-driven business metrics.

The frustrating part, for brands, is that due to the Facebook news feed algorithm changes, users who like your brand’s Page might never see your content organically.

Social Media Today, September 28, 2018

2020 Leader Board

This table shows the 20 leading kombucha companies. As with the Instagram table, we’ve removed companies that make products in addition to ‘booch that attract followers.

Facebook vs. Instagram

Comparing the popularity of the two platforms for the brands who made the leaderboard in either category shows that there are three main groups in terms of the ratio of Followers/Likers.

There are eight brands from both lists with a higher ratio of Facebook to Instagram followers. This is down from 14 a year ago:

An additional four brands have close to a 1:1 ratio, with most slightly favoring Instagram:

The majority of the leading brands now favor Instagram over Facebook followers. A year ago six were in this category, there are now 17:

Social Media Superstars

Incidentally, seven brands are in the ‘Top 20’ on both Facebook and Instagram. These are the ‘social media superstars’ of the kombucha industry:

• GTs
• Health-Ade
• Humm Kombucha
• Remedy Drinks
• KeVita
• Flying Embers
• Clearly Kombucha

Next up – the stats on Twitter.

Disclaimer

The content of this article is accurate to the best of our knowledge and is presented for general informational purposes only. The opinions are those of the editor. Please send corrections or questions to ian@boochnews.com. Comments are welcome.