[Case Study] Engagement Rate on Facebook Stays Flat For the UAE Market in 2021

Socialinsider may be, beforehand, an analytics tool you can always go to for inspecting your social media performance and what’s even better, your competitor’s as well, in order to maximize sustained social media efforts.

But we like to think we are so much more than this, that we’re a marketer’s best friend, that one friend one turns to in times of need.

So, based on our industry benchmarks study, we’ve adopted a more granular approach, and together with the Hanging Gardens agency, we’ve made an in-depth examination of Facebook’s engagement trends in the UAE market.

By looking into more than 290,958 Facebook posts from 1,535 business pages, across 20 industries, over the whole previous year, we’ve discovered that Facebook’s engagement was on a flat line in 2020, having a median of 0.29% across all the UAE industries studied.

And brace yourselves, because this trend line continues across major business categories.

UAE Social Media Benchmarks - Key insights:

1. Airlines, fashion, and magazine - journals: the industries with the lowest engagement rates on Facebook
2. The FMCG Food industry: the most engaging category on Facebook
3. Governmental pages have a significant active presence on Facebook
4. Images are the go-to type of media format on Facebook
5. Brands choose to group their photos into albums for bigger engagement rates

The pandemic’s influence over the world as a whole, and therefore, over social media as well, has certainly been felt, leaving a mark on the user’s online behavior by changing people’s interests.

1. Airlines, fashion, and magazine - journals: the industries with the lowest engagement rates on Facebook

With the limitations of outdoor spaces activities during the lockdown, the airline, fashion and magazine - journals industries had a lot to lose, the engagement on Facebook being located at the following rates:

• Facebook’ engagement values for airlines for the UAE market is 0.04%
• Facebook’s engagement values for fashion for the UAE market is 0.09%.
• Facebook’s engagement values for magazines-journals for the UAE market is 0.07%

2. The FMCG Food industry: the most engaging category on Facebook

As you can see from the graph above - Facebook engagement benchmarks for UAE market - the three most rewarded industries are:

• FMCG-food, with an average engagement rate of 1.01%
• Industrial, with an average engagement rate of 0.60 %
• Automotive, with an average engagement rate of 0.59 %

3. Governmental pages have a significant active presence on Facebook

With 2020 being a more special year due to the elections, Governmental pages realized they have to stay in touch with their audience.

And so, they turned to social media, and increased their influence across Facebook as a result.

When it comes to the posting frequency touchpoint, it gets obvious that the top three industries that stood out from the crowd were the ones that follow:

• Governmental: with a posting frequency per day with a rate of 1.30% posts per day.
• E-commerce: with a posting frequency per day with a rate of 1.15% posts per day.
• Beauty: with a posting frequency per day with a rate of 0.71% posts per day.
  

4. Images are the go-to type of media format on Facebook

Although nowadays video seems to be a much better approach for social posts, most of the images are still using images as their primary type of posts.

Actually, these 20 industries included in this analysis have an adoption rate of images between 23.49% to 78.37%.

A strategy adopted by most of the brands from the industries analyzed, as we have discovered while conducting our research, is to group their photos into albums on Facebook to increase their engagement rates.

Final thoughts

And this is how the Facebook engagement rates look like for brands in the UAE market.

Through our studies we try to empower social media managers to create strategic social media marketing campaigns that will go to their communities’ hearts.

Last but not least, we have one more suggestion, addressed particularly to the magazine - journals industry: go live and get more discussions started out there.

As long as a brand is genuinely interested in, and listens to their client’s needs, they will surely stick around.

Related articles:

• [CASE STUDY] 2021 UK Social Media Benchmarks
• [STUDY] LinkedIn engagement rate in 2021
• Complete guide on how to use Facebook Stories in 2021

* This article was originally published here