Investigating Facebook engagement of Hong Kong's top airlines
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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
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.