Research : Top beer brands with a thirst for Facebook fan engagement

As beer brands scramble for business during a busy summer of sport, festivals and sunshine, social experts Expion have looked at which brands are winning the race on social media. Expion’s key findings were:

• Heineken has the most amount of Facebook fans (14,342,890), Bud Light is the brand demonstrating the highest levels of fan engagement. During the month of June, 20.8% of its fan base either posted, liked, commented or shared posts on Bud Light’s wa
• Bud Light posted far less than Budweiser, yet managed to encourage the largest number of fan actions at 1,267,53
• Bud Light monopolises the Top 10 posts for June – six posts out of 10 came from the beer giant
• Heineken failed to make the top ten at all

Last week, The Drinks Business announced the top 10 biggest beer brands including Budweiser, Bud Light and Heineken. With research suggesting beer sales are falling, social software specialists Expion analysed Facebook activity during the month of June to reveal what tactics are being deployed in a bid to boost beer sales ahead of the summer period.

Whilst Heineken has the most amount of Facebook fans (14,342,890), Bud Light is the brand demonstrating the highest levels of fan engagement. During the month of June, 20.8% of its fan base either posted, liked, commented or shared posts on Bud Light’s wall. This engagement figure is particularly impressive given that Bud Light has less than half the number of fans as Heineken (6,129,559 compared to 14,342,890). Heineken’s engagement was minimal for June at only 0.8%.

Proving that it’s not about the number of messages you post but its relevancy to the end audience, Bud Light posted far less than Budweiser, yet managed to encourage the largest number of fan actions at 1,267,539.

When looking at “share impressions” – the metric that looks at who is sharing the content, determined by how ‘social’ each follower is and how many friends each individual fan has – Budweiser takes the crown.  The American beer brand has the majority of share of impressions at 32.77% compared to Bud Light with 32.27% and Heineken with 25.5%.

Bud Light monopolises the Top 10 posts for June (See figure below) – six posts out of 10 came from the beer giant. The most popular being its ‘Bud Light Forever’ post  generating 114,640 fan actions consisting of comments, likes and shares.  The Dutch brand, Heineken fails to make its mark in the Top 10.

Peter Heffring, CEO of Expion said: “Many of the world’s biggest brands battle for the highest number of fans on Facebook yet it’s actually the levels of engagement that really matter. Its evident from our research that Bud Light has used Facebook intelligently and strategically to engage with its army of fans –  choosing to post meaningful and engaging posts as opposed to high volumes of irrelevant posts.”