#PSEWEB

Published on June 12, 2014

We’ve all been watching our Facebook Pages with anxious eyes over the last few months, wondering if the recent algorithm changes have made the subscribers that we’ve worked hard for irrelevant. Our team took advantage of a new Facebook analytics feature to take a peek across the board and see which universities are thriving in the new Facebook climate.

Facebook’s new Pages to Watch feature allows you to add competitor and comparator Facebook Pages and provides you with a running dashboard showing their total page likes, weekly increase in page likes, weekly posts published and weekly engagement. Our team was able to add 45 universities from across Canada via this handy tool.
Total Page Likes

University of Toronto is doing something very, very right.  They have the largest subscriber base with 173,900 total page likes – almost double the runner up (McGill University at 99,600) and almost triple the average of all ten schools in our Top Ten* (66,770). UQAM, UBC and uMontréal round out the top five in this category.

*Throughout this report, the Top Ten will refer to the ten Canadian university Facebook Pages that have the largest subscriber bases.
Engagement

UofT also takes the crown in terms of Engagement with 12,800 shares, likes and comments earned with just 5 posts. McMaster comes in second here with 1,500 shares, likes and comments earned via their 5 posts but with a subscriber base of 46,900 (127,00 less than UofT), something tells me that McMaster is the true winner of the engagement category.

McGill (872 engagements via 17 posts), uWaterloo (795 engagements via 9 posts) and uManitoba (743 engagements via 21 posts) round out our top five in this category.
Secret Sauce Required

Since our universities posted a widely ranging number of posts, as low as none at all and up to 32, we also looked at who was receiving the most engagements per post.

Apparently the masters of CUF (Canadian University Facebooking), UofT champed this test as well with an average of 2,560 engagements per post. McMaster earned themselves second place once again with 300 engagements per post, followed by Queen’s University in third place with 89 engagements per post. The average for the Top Ten in this category was 318 engagements per post.

If we take UofT’s extraordinary performance out of the numbers, the average engagements per post among the remaining Top Ten is 69.  The average total engagements for the week among the Top Ten is 559.

Want to play with the data and see where the other universities came out? Enjoy.
ps. Yes, folks from many of the Top Ten will be speaking & sharing at #PSEWEB this year – including Kristina Doyle from UofT who will be a panelist on our second annual Social Media Panel. Get your ticket over at pseweb.ca/tickets and remember that our $129 / night hotel rate is only available if you book before June 27th!