What's driving engagement on the Facebook pages of the industry-leading brands.

1. Know what works on Facebook Industry Report: August 10, 2011 Snack Foods Snack Food Industry Facebook Pages Performance Analysis www.zuumsocial.com Report Period July 9 to August 8, 2011 (Except where noted otherwise) Brands Analyzed Doritos, Oreo, Pringles, Skittles, Snickers, Starburst

3. Who's growing their fan base fastest? The first thing to notice is the remarkable community size of many of these pages. And keep in mind that large communities are more difficult to grow than small ones. That said, Oreo and Skittles are still pushing at 3% monthly growth, a good rate for their size.

4. Engaged Fans correlate to higher fan growth rate On the top chart we see the same brands with the highest growth rates from the previous slide (Oreo, Skittles & Snickers) as also having the highest daily engagement rates for their brand posts. When it comes to fan posts, the brands who's fans are most actively posting also correlates with fan growth rates. (Note than while Pringles has more fans, thus more overall posts, Snickers' smaller community actually posts far more on a per fan basis.)

5. Which media types are working best for snack brands? It's common to see brands posting mostly status updates. They're relatively inexpensive, and can be generated quickly. However, it's rare to see status updates generating the best engagement.

6. None of the top 10 most engaging posts are about product features. All but one are Status updates. The snack brands are generating strong engagement rates by not taking a hard sell approach, but rather trying to entertain and make an emotional link between the customer and their page.

7. Snickers has the highest fan growth rate. What are they doing? Snickers has the second highest brand post engagement rate. And their Fans post very actively to the Wall. So what's their content calendar look like? They don't post a lot. But they're posting consistently, and driving great engagement with virtually a single content type. Status updates.

8. Content-wise, Snickers is sticking to a consistent theme, "Hungry." Over 90% of their brand posts were on this theme. The "Hungry" theme is tied to their TV campaign . Brand posts keywords

9. Fans echo Snicker's TV campaign on their Facebook page The most engaging fan post for the month referenced the TV campaign. We also see the campaign theme reflected in the conversations fans are posting to the Page. 6% of their fan's posts for the month contained the campaign keyword "Hungry" Fan posts Fan posts including "Hungry"

10. For Skittles, many of their most engaging posts don't even mention the product

11. Oreo emphasizes their brand association with milk Almost 30% of their posts reinforced that connection. Those posts were also some of their most engaging.

12. "milk": The most engaging of the 20 most popular keywords in posts by the brands. Oreos practically "owns" milk, and continue to drive the association with their brand. Posts featuring the topic "milk" generated the highest number of interactions per mention.

13. What happens when a brand takes the month off work? Doritos hasn't posted to their wall since June. Not posting hurts a brand in two ways. One is lost fan engagements on brand posts. Brand posts almost always pull a significant amount of a brand's engagement activity. By not posting, brands lose the word of mouth ripple effect that generates news feed impressions. Secondly, not posting leaves a sense there's nobody home. While their fans continued to post actively, seeing an outdated movie tie-in and no brand activity must be hurting the brand's "Like" conversion rate for visitors. Doritos had the lowest fan growth rate of all brands.

14. Know what works on Facebook www.zuumsocial.com That's just a sample of what Zuum can reveal about what works with Facebook marketing Contact Doug Schumacher Co-Founder Product Development and Marketing [email_address] Join any of our social media networks to know what works for marketers on Facebook. Facebook Twitter