Industry Report:

September 21, 2011

Coke vs PepsiPepsi Sprints To Catch Coke on FacebookA look at the posting tactics Pepsi used in gaining 10% fan growth in August

Know what works on Facebook www.zuumsocial.com

Report PeriodAugust 2011(Except where noted otherwise)

Pages AnalyzedCoca-Cola, Pepsi

Executive Summary

Pepsi, 28m fans behind Coca-Cola, employs a range of posting tactics to drive engagement 

Posting in high volume in August, they maintain good overall engagement rates by doing things that many brands aren't.

Insights• Pepsi frequently posts at the same time, day after day (slide 7)• Pepsi posts a lot on Saturdays, when they get their highest response rates (slide 4)• Pepsi posted the same video four times in August (slide 6)• Pepsi actively seeks users input through a range of questions and open-ended

sentences (slide 5)

Pepsi's behind in fan count, but working hard to catch up

Pepsi is employing some highly-unusual posting tactics

Their content calendar reflects a very methodical effort to find out what's working. 

Weekends are working for both brands

Few industries are taking advantage of this time-slot ignored by so many brands

As social media becomes more integrated into our daily lives (think mobile), look for weekends to be a top spot. 

Don't be afraid to ask for the 'Like'

Both brands have directly solicited 'Likes' in their posts. Both posts ended up in the top 5 in performance. 

Pepsi is really pushing engagement overall. Notice how many of their posts end with a question mark. Also, note the portion of Status updates leading in engagement. The top ten posts are almost always a richer media format, but Pepsi's really doing a great job of using simple, conversational language to drive engagement. 

Got great content? Post it more than once.

Pepsi posts the same commercial 4 times in 1 month

The frequency doesn't hurt their engagement rates. Either people hadn't seen it previously, which is likely given that 'maybe' 5-10% of fans will see a given post, or people liked it so much the first time that they replayed it. 

You can also see how they posted it at regular intervals throughout the month.

Post at the same time each day to create expectations

Pepsi posted 37% of their posts during the 8am Pacific time slot

Normally I'm not a fan of being too mechanical about posting, but an alternate view could be that you're creating a kind of regularly-scheduled programming. 

From the engagement-rate chart, you can see that 8am Pacific is their best performing time slot, despite the high volume. (Times are GMT)

Know what works on Facebookwww.zuumsocial.com

That's just a sample of what Zuum can reveal about what works with Facebook marketing

ContactDoug SchumacherCo-FounderProduct Development and Marketingdoug@zuumsocial.com

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