Blog

This entry is part of our ‘Social By The Numbers’ series which features weekly content focused on social marketing data analysis, insight and trends that marketers and business intelligence managers can use to better engage with their social communities. Look for a new post from Fred Stuk and the Vitrue Business Intelligence team every Tuesday at 10am EST.

Is television dead?  Is it dying?  Is it even sick?  This week, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at current TV programming to try and determine if there are any particular kinds of shows that lead to significantly more Facebook engagement than other kinds.  Are TV shows getting their fair share of viral spread?

Using Facebook API data from September 1^st through January 19^th, I tracked over a hundred shows that generated more than 9,000 posts.  I split these shows into seven categories: comedy, drama, dramedy, reality, reality competition, talk shows and children’s cartoons.

Looking at the average engagement rate (defined here as likes + comments/Page likes) for each category, we can see that users are more likely to engage with cartoons and comedy than drama and reality-based programming.

We can come up with plenty of questions as to the forces behind the bars on this graph.  Do cartoons do especially well because their audience tends to be younger and thus, heavy Facebook users?  With all the “water cooler” talk reality TV shows supposedly get, why doesn’t that translate into Facebook engagement?  If you make the assumption the cartoons are funny, and combine those numbers with the comedy TV show figure, is it safe to say humor is the single most powerful engagement tool you can use on Facebook?

Next, I wanted to take it a step further and see what kind of show is most likely to produce viral posts.  You can go to my earlier blog for more detail on my definition of the “virality” metric.  We can see that comedies and dramas (and of course my favorite, dramedies) are more likely to go viral than reality show or cartoon posts.  Perhaps users are more likely to repost about a show that has an ongoing, serialized plotline.  As for talk shows, they don’t seem to be giving users much to talk about.

Key Takeaways

• People seem to engage much more with shows that are funny and lighthearted, so it’s rarely a bad idea to include humor in your posts.  If the humor is actually funny…well even better!
• As much fun as it is to make someone laugh in person, users aren’t nearly as eager as I thought they’d be to share a laugh online.  Getting people to repost comedy content is apparently a tricky proposition.