An engaged audience on Facebook is an audience that is more likely to buy or to recommend your products or services to their friends.

Facebook has evolved over the last several years, moving its strategy to a pay-to-play model and changing our behavior as businesses and individuals.

There was a time when brands were competing for fans, total fans is still a solid metrics for agencies and digital marketers, but it’s a vanity metrics - good for feeling awesome, bad for action. A higher number of fans doesn’t reflect the way brands should empower its users and welcome them.

Is Facebook Engagement a good metric? Should we focus on Facebook Engagement? Andrea Vahl noted in her latest article:

If your Page doesn’t get engagement, the posts start to drop out of the News Feed even more with your community. [...] Also a good reason to have an engaging post is that if you were to Boost your post and add some advertising budget to push it out to more people, Facebook rewards good content with lower costs to get more reach!

Facebook Engagement is a good metric for your business visibility.

How to create an engaged Facebook community around your brand

Let’s find out together looking at top 10 coffee brands from the US and see how and why they succeeded with the engagement through their Facebook community:

• Gloria Jeans Coffees
• Caribou Coffee
• Starbucks
• Costa Coffee
• Tully’s Coffee
• Peet’s Coffee
• Tim Hortons
• Dunkin’ Donuts
• Folgers
• Seattle’s Best Coffee

Facebook Engagement Rate

Peet's Coffee - Facebook engagement rate

In the last 30 days, Peet's Coffee had the highest Engagement Rate / Page - 3.421% with an Engagement Rate/Post - 0.171%. But most important is that they got lots of LOVE reactions from their community while they had two posts per day in the last 30 days.

Why Peet's Coffee has an engaged Facebook community:

• they posted good quality posts which inspire their community.
• they supported the #SFPride activities in the last 30 days.
• they knew their buyer persona and integrated offline festivals with online communication.
• they had a consistency in posting.

Gloria Jean's Coffee - Facebook engagement rate

Gloria Jean's Coffee got an Engagement Rate / Page of 2.695% and an Engagement Rate / Post - 0.150%. They got lots of LOVE reactions in the last 30 days, and they published on average one post per day.

Why Gloria Jean's Coffee has an engaged Facebook community:

• they offered something to their community: winning a coffee for a friend.
• they promoted their Drive Thru Coffee.
• they created dreamy and quality posts.

Seattle's Best Coffee - Facebook engagement rate

In the last 30 days, Seattle's Best Coffee got an Engagement Rate/Page of 2.302% with an Engagement Rate/Post of 0.767%.

Seattle's Best Coffee had a disruptive fans evolution for the last 30 days - take a look at the image below. Not so many reactions from the community because they didn't have a consistency in publishing.

Caribou Coffee - Facebook engagement rate

Caribou Coffee had an Engagement Rate/Page of 1.231% in the last 30 days with an Engagement Rate/Post of 0.077%.

Caribou Coffee published on average one post per day and the most visible reaction on the page was the LOVE reaction.

Why Caribou Coffee has an engaged Facebook community:

• they integrated offline activities (pride activities) with online communication.
• they run contest on their Facebook page.
• they offered a discount to their Facebook community.

Folgers - Facebook engagement rate

Flogers got an Engagement Rate/Page of 1.148% with an Engagement Rate/post of 0.383% and 25k people talking about this brand in the last 30 days.

Folgers posted just three posts one of them with photo and the other two with videos. The last post was posted on July 4th celebrating America's birthday. Not so many reactions in their community because they didn't post with regularity.

Dunkin' Donuts - Facebook engagement rate

For the last 30 days, Dunkin' Donuts got an Engagement Rate/Page of 0.313% with an Engagement Rate/Post of 0.015%.

Dunkin' Donuts published 21 posts.

Why Dunkin' Donuts has an engaged Facebook community:

• they created good, dreamy posts of summer days
• they cross-promoted a live from Instagram
• they promoted their summer edition of coffee: Frozen Dunkin’ Coffee!

Starbucks - Facebook engagement rate

Starbucks had an Engagement Rate/Page of 0.199% for the last 30 days with an Engagement Rate/Post of 0.028.
Starbucks published only seven posts in the last 30 days, and 528k people were talking about the brand on Facebook.

Of course, the community loves the Starbucks coffee and send them LOVE reactions to their community.

Why Starbucks has an engaged Facebook community:

• they welcomed their community with love, bold and brave messages.

Tully's Coffee Shops - Facebook engagement rate

In the last 30 days, Tully's Coffee Shops had an Engagement Rate/Page of 0.391 with and Engagement Rate/Post of 0.036%. Their Facebook community is decreasing.

Costa Coffee - Facebook engagement rate

Costa Coffee had an Engagement Rate/Page of 1.167% with an Engagement Rate/Post of 0.058%.

20 posts were published by the brand and the community responded with lots of LOVE reactions.

On average, Costa Coffee posted one post per day.

Why Costa Coffee has an engaged Facebook community:

• they showed their love for coffee through photos and videos
• they promoted specific campaigns
• they promoted news flavors of Costa's coffee

Tim Hortons - Facebook engagement rate

Tim Hortons had an Engagement Rate/Page of 0.050% with an Engagement Rate/Post of 0.017%.

But they posted only 3 posts with photos during the last 30 days.

Wrapping up

Creating products and services for a time-poor audience, it's our role as marketers to move from the "winners takes all" mentality to "one person at a time" approach for our businesses.

Key takeaways from this analysis:

• have a consistency in posting, focus on quality, good posts.
• cross-promoting the campaign from different channels.
• give something to your community: discounts, contest, special offers.
• welcome and empower your community, inspire them with your story.
• support local or national events where your buyer persona is attending.