Investigating Facebook engagement of Hong Kong's top airlines

Do you work at an Airline? Or just an in-house marketer not knowing how to navigate the treacherous seas of social media? Then this article is for you. We looked at 12 of Hong Kong's top airlines on Facebook and crunched all the numbers so you didn't have to.

Airlines in this study included: HK Express, Cathay Pacific Airways, Air Asia Hong Kong, Hong Kong Airlines, Vanilla Air, Air New Zealand, China Airlines, Cathay Dragon, FlyScoot, Peach Aviation, Eva Airways, and Japan Airlines.

Some notes:

Note that all of these pages were local Hong Kong pages with content made especially for the Hong Kong market. The data cut off for these numbers were between January 2017 to September 2017. Engagements is defined as (likes + comments + shares)

Key Highlights

Hong Kong Express had the most Hong Kong based fans on their HK fan page at about 360,000 followers. Japan Airlines came in last at around 25,000 fans Over 1,300 posts were made across all 12 airlines collectively, garnering over 392,000 engagements

Air Asia posted the most during this time period at over 290 posts, but Hong Kong Airlines received the most total engagement at 94,500 engagements However, if we were to look at the average engagement, Cathay Pacific performed the best, at an average of 700 engagements per post Sundays received the most average engagements at an average of 406

Interestingly enough, brands posted the most on Saturdays at 285 posts

Videos were by far the most engaging post format, at an average of 339 engagements across all brands. However, brands were more likely to post photos (981 photos vs 251 videos)

Top Posts of the Year

The top posts of the year came from Hong Kong Airlines, Hong Kong Express and Eva Airways. All brands were innovative with their approaches. Hong Kong Airlines came up with a "dating service in the sky" for April Fools' day, Hong Kong Express came up with a mini-game using a live video featuring a live hatching process. Eva Airways ran a contest commemorating the Boeing 747. 

Hong Kong Airlines: https://www.facebook.com/hkairlines/photos/a.128074617235553.12043.124470254262656/1386901844686151/?type=3

Hong Kong Express: https://www.facebook.com/HKExpress/videos/587163958148955/

Eva Airways: https://www.facebook.com/evaairwayscorp.hk/posts/2098913700159235:0

Bonus: Year on Year Comparison

And while the year hasn't ended yet, we thought it might be interesting to show some data on the winners of engagement in previous years.

2017 (7 months): Hong Kong Airlines @ 94,500+ engagements
2016: Cathay Pacific @ 360K+ engagements
2015: Cathay Pacific @ 145K+ engagements
2014: AirAsia Hong Kong @ 249K+ engagements
2013: AirAsia Hong Kong @ 79K+ engagements

Insights and Learning

A blog post wouldn't be complete without a few insights, so here they are.

While knowing the optimal times and days of the week to post content is great, it's not the only ingredient to success. Other important aspects including how you plan your content strategy, along with the usage of paid media are even more important

Look beyond the likes, comments and shares. Other ways of looking at the data include taking the average of all engagements which is a fairer representation of what engagement looks like for the brand

Creative, on-brand content is always key to success on social. As we saw in this 7 month period, the top posts were mostly creative - including a live video egg hatching trivia game from HK Express, and an April Fools' Speed Dating Service in the sky from Hong Kong Airlines.

We can help

Struggling with social media? At Catalyst, we breathe social - especially Hong Kong social. We're masters at crafting unforgettable moments, and we've done it for world-class clients such as ghd.

Get in touch today at info@whycatalyst.com or give us a call at 2815 6121 to see how we can help bring your brand to life.