British brands driving highest social media engagement in Europe

Brands in the UK are delivering the best social media engagement results in Europe, according to Adobe’s latest Digital Insights data.

In 2015, brands drove an average UK website traffic rate of 4.6% from social networks to their company websites.

In comparison, German rates were 0.54%, with French traffic at 0.69%. Outside of Europe, UK brands outperform the US, where the average rate is 3.7%.

Despite this, Adobe’s research unearthed a number of challenges for brands in the social media space, especially in terms of advertising.

In a survey of over 1,000 European consumers in conjunction with the research, just 7% of respondents ranked adverts as a form of content they engage with.

Only 45% of European consumers agree that social media channels are getting better at providing relevant content and adverts.

34% say they get annoyed by adverts from brands they don’t follow, yet a further 33% saying they don’t mind as long as they are relevant.

“As we’ve seen from the data, the leading companies and industries know how important a social platform is as part of a wider digital marketing strategy,” says Becky Tasker, managing analyst, Adobe Digital Insights.

“However, the challenge now lies in how brands can maximise social engagement and combine it with the overall customer journey.

“By honing their advertising even more and creating exciting, more personalised content that users want to engage with and share regularly, brands can be assured of greater success, and really take their marketing to the next level.”

In 2015, the advertising revenue of social networks worldwide amounted to $25.1bn, however this is expected to rise sharply, with 2017’s revenue forecast to grow to $41bn.