Most Engaging Facebook Pages and Posts of 2012... So Far
With school back in session at most colleges and universities, we figured it would be a good time to take a look at the most engaging pages and posts on Facebook again. We've analyzed all the posts from the 600+ pages in our directory from January 1 to August 31 of this year.
A New Engagement Score Formula
Before we dig into the results, we want to tell you about a new wrinkle in our formula. We're now incorporating the number of shares a posts get into our Engagement Score. As we do with comments, we've given shares twice the weighting of likes. Our rationale is that sharing a post (and thereby giving your own friends an opportunity to see the post in their News Feed) is a more powerful form of engagement than simply liking a post. There's no hard-and-fast science behind these weightings and we definitely welcome any thoughts you may have for improving the weighting.
The 10 Most Engaging Posts of 2012 (January-August)
We have shared the ten posts (among more than 180,000 posts we analyzed) that had the highest engagement score. This is a very small sampling, but it hopefully gives you a glimpse into the type of content that can really spark your audience to like, comment, and share. One point that is worth highlighting is that nine of the 10 posts included a photo.
| School | Post Text | ||
| 1 | University of North Alabama Enagement Score: 2,173 Type: Photo | The University of North Alabama this morning lost a beloved member is its community, celebrated actor and entertainer George Lindsey. Lindsey passed away at 12:05 a.m. at age 83. | Link |
| 2 | Regis University Enagement Score: 777 Type: Photo | Share this prayer for Colorado written by President John P. Fitzgibbons, S.J. | Link |
| 3 | Miami University Enagement Score: 412 Type: Photo | Gorgeous photo of a snow covered MacCracken Hall taken by Miami University junior, Mike Zatt. Browse more of his great photography here: http://raulzatt.deviantart.com/ | Link |
| 4 | St. Bonaventure University Enagement Score: 385 Type: Photo | Bonnies flag spotted in the background of The Today Show at the London Olympics! Like this pic if you're a fan of the Bonnies and/or Al Roker in a pink jacket. Thanks to Cassie Orlowski (@cmorlo) for the pic via Twitter! cc: St. Bonaventure Alumni, St. Bonaventure Athletics | Link |
| 5 | Temple University Enagement Score: 253 Type: Photo | The BIG EAST welcomes Temple with a huge display in Times Square! | Link |
| 6 | Bellarmine University Enagement Score: 244 Type: Photo | Bellarmine Knights get a shout-out on ESPN broadcast, along with some other great Kentucky teams. | Link |
| 7 | Buena Vista University Enagement Score: 227 Type: Photo | Check out this old aerial photo of campus - can you guess what year this was taken? Leave your guess in a comment below, and we'll put the correct ones in a drawing for a $10 iTunes gift card. | Link |
| 8 | Marist College Enagement Score: 224 Type: Status | Marist. One College. One Community. One Family. | Link |
| 9 | Tarleton State University Enagement Score: 221 Type: Photo | Two of our Tarleton employees decided to bake cookies in their cars! A good reminder of how hot temps get inside vehicles. Be safe out there this summer! | Link |
| 10 | Tuskegee University Enagement Score: 217 Type: Photo | Tuskegee is my heart. Nothing is as dear to me as Tuskegee- Amelia Boynton Robinson, oldest Tuskegee alumna | Link |
Please keep in mind that these scores are related to the size of the fan base for the Facebook Page. There are definitely posts that received more likes, comments, and shares, but they were on Facebook Pages that had larger fan bases, and therefore had lower engagement scores.
Best to Post on the Weekend
Consistent with our previous research, the best days to post seem to be Saturday and Sunday. Interestingly, posts on Sunday were shared more than twice as often as posts on any other day of the week.
| Day of Week | Engagement Score | Shares / 1,000 fans |
| Sunday | 3.786 6,940 posts | 0.26 |
| Monday | 2.609 30,165 posts | 0.10 |
| Tuesday | 2.620 30,639 posts | 0.10 |
| Wednesday | 2.731 30,656 posts | 0.12 |
| Thursday | 2.735 31,158 posts | 0.11 |
| Friday | 3.009 30,288 posts | 0.11 |
| Saturday | 3.463 8,676 posts | 0.10 |
Engagement Trending Upward
One trend that surprised us a bit is that engagement has pretty much been on a constant upward trajectory this year. We don't have a clear sense why this may be happening. Are colleges getting shrewder with their Facebook posts? Has Facebook been showing these posts more frequently in News Feeds? Are schools spending more money to promote their posts through Facebook ads? We don't know.
| Month | Engagement Score |
| January | 1.822 26,827 posts |
| February | 2.150 24,572 posts |
| March | 2.738 20,499 posts |
| April | 2.170 23,423 posts |
| May | 2.972 19,310 posts |
| June | 3.044 17,889 posts |
| July | 3.485 15,250 posts |
| August | 4.903 20,752 posts |
The Most Engaging College & University Facebook Pages of 2012 (January-August)
Here are the top 10 most engaging college and university Facebook pages so far for 2012 by size category. We've broken them up into size categories so the comparison is more of an apples-to-apples one.
XX Large (75,000+ Facebook fans)
| Rank | School | Engagement Score | |
| 1 | The University of Kansas (Lawrence, KS) | 6.557 198 posts | |
| 2 | Indiana University (Bloomington, IN) | 5.506 145 posts | |
| 3 | Oregon State University (Corvallis, OR) | 5.379 106 posts | |
| 4 | Liberty University (Lynchburg, VA) | 5.136 191 posts | |
| 5 | Texas A&M University (College Station, TX) | 4.807 191 posts | |
| 6 | University of Wisconsin-Madison (Madison, WI) | 4.300 230 posts | |
| 7 | The University of Texas at Austin (Austin, TX) | 3.889 135 posts | |
| 8 | UC Berkeley (Berkeley, CA) | 3.825 250 posts | |
| 9 | West Virginia University (Morgantown, WV) | 3.749 329 posts | |
| 10 | University of Georgia (Athens, GA) | 3.427 244 posts | |
X Large (20,000-74,999 Facebook fans)
| Rank | School | Engagement Score | |
| 1 | University of North Alabama (Florence, AL) | 9.705 291 posts | |
| 2 | Utah State University (Logan, UT) | 7.850 70 posts | |
| 3 | North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC) | 6.547 334 posts | |
| 4 | Marquette University (Milwaukee, WI) | 6.460 418 posts | |
| 5 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Lincoln, NE) | 5.892 146 posts | |
| 6 | Montana State University (Bozeman, MT) | 5.804 152 posts | |
| 7 | University of Mississippi ~ Ole Miss (Oxford, MS) | 5.372 266 posts | |
| 8 | Xavier University (Cincinnati, OH) | 5.370 103 posts | |
| 9 | Grand Valley State University (Allendale, MI) | 5.226 122 posts | |
| 10 | University of Nevada, Reno (Reno, NV) | 5.160 88 posts | |
Large (7,500-19,999 Facebook fans)
| Rank | School | Engagement Score | |
| 1 | Siena College (Loudonville, NY) | 20.523 50 posts | |
| 2 | Kenyon College (Gambier, OH) | 12.067 119 posts | |
| 3 | Prairie View A&M University (Prairie View, TX) | 10.702 176 posts | |
| 4 | Marist College (Poughkeepsie, NY) | 9.536 151 posts | |
| 5 | Wellesley College (Wellesley, MA) | 9.515 189 posts | |
| 6 | Berry College (Mount Berry, GA) | 9.501 102 posts | |
| 7 | Denison University (Granville, OH) | 8.917 69 posts | |
| 8 | University of Dayton (Dayton, OH) | 8.908 82 posts | |
| 9 | University of Portland (Portland, OR) | 8.639 325 posts | |
| 10 | Smith College (Northampton, MA) | 8.338 434 posts | |
Medium (2,500-7,499 Facebook fans)
| Rank | School | Engagement Score | |
| 1 | Buena Vista University (Storm Lake, IA) | 32.098 45 posts | |
| 2 | Regis University (Denver, CO) | 25.082 80 posts | |
| 3 | Tuskegee University (Tuskegee, AL) | 15.236 109 posts | |
| 4 | The Citadel Alumni Association (Charleston, SC) | 15.212 56 posts | |
| 5 | Shaw University (Raleigh, NC) | 14.931 76 posts | |
| 6 | Martin Luther College (New Ulm, MN) | 14.873 51 posts | |
| 7 | Allegheny College (Meadville, PA) | 13.540 64 posts | |
| 8 | Bethel University (Saint Paul, MN) | 12.678 34 posts | |
| 9 | California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA) | 11.039 47 posts | |
| 10 | Covenant College (Lookout Mountain, GA) | 10.669 86 posts | |
Small (Fewer than 2,500 Facebook fans)
| Rank | School | Engagement Score | |
| 1 | Saint Joseph's College (Rensselaer, IN) | 20.940 42 posts | |
| 2 | West Liberty University Gary E. West College of Business (West Liberty, WV) | 12.424 38 posts | |
| 3 | Lasell College (Newton, MA) | 12.044 58 posts | |
| 4 | Hesston College (Hesston, KS) | 11.963 43 posts | |
| 5 | Capitol College (Laurel, MD) | 10.281 59 posts | |
| 6 | Husson University Admissions (Bangor, ME) | 9.822 79 posts | |
| 7 | Simon Graduate School of Business (Rochester, NY) | 9.386 102 posts | |
| 8 | VCU School of Business (Richmond, VA) | 9.265 124 posts | |
| 9 | Grace University (Omaha, NE) | 9.104 50 posts | |
| 10 | Bellevue University (Bellevue, NE) | 8.418 163 posts | |
Research Note: While we have made efforts to include a wide range of schools, we do admit that our directory is not an exhaustive list of college and university Facebook Pages. If your college or university is not in our directory and you'd like it to be included, simply contact us and provide a link to your official Facebook page. We're happy to add you to the directory and include your school in future studies.
