Here Are the 2026 Social Media Benchmarks for Retail Brands
2026 is well underway, and we thought it would be a great opportunity to share the social media benchmarks for retail brands. We will be utilizing Hootsuite’s industry-based analysis across primary KPIs for social media performance using year-wide data in 2025.
For a deeper dive on deriving some of these core metrics, such as engagement rates, check out our previous blog!
We will evaluate some of the core social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.
What Are the Social Media Benchmarks for Retail Brands?
The following table summarizes different performance metrics for retail brands, calculated by Hootsuite’s latest readings.
Summary of Retail Brand Benchmarks
Based on the tables, we can summarize the following key takeaways:
Multi-image content shows separation as the highest-performing content type on average across Meta channels, outperforming other content types by nearly a full percentage point.
LinkedIn has recently emerged as a platform with high engagement rates for video content, a content trend that has been fully embraced by the platform itself.
TikTok’s lower engagement rates on videos is likely more of a mix of platform and industry nuances. Their algorithms are built on fast vertical swiping, passive autoplay, and low-friction consumption, so users may be moving through content quicker than other channels.
FAQs on Retail Brand Benchmarks
Why are video engagement rates lower in comparison when they’re the most popular content type in 2026?
The question almost answers itself. Videos typically generate significantly higher viewership and reach across most platforms because they are prioritized by algorithms. This often results in a disproportionate gap between how many users engage with the content and how many consume it, directly lowering the engagement rate.
According to this data, is Facebook the best platform to digitally grow retail brand businesses?
Not necessarily. While the follower growth rate may look enticing, we must consider Facebook’s heavy reliance on paid reach. There may also be a negative correlation between its higher growth rate and its comparatively lower engagement rate when compared to our other channels because of those reasons.
As we emphasize in all our benchmarking studies, it is best to use this data as a general baseline. Nothing is more appropriate than analyzing your own social media data and optimizing based on the needs of your individual business channel.
Best Times to Post on Social Media: Updated for 2026
One of the prominent questions in social media, even in 2026, remains: what is the best time to post?
Glad you asked. In this blog post, we will review sources analyzing recent data across platforms and conduct an analysis on the best times to post across major social media platforms.
Sprout Social Analysis on 2025 Data
Sprout Social analyzed billions of interactions across a large profile dataset to identify posting time patterns across platforms. They aggregated the data to produce general windows for optimal posting times across platforms and for individual platforms.
For this analysis, we will focus on Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and LinkedIn - the most common platforms for crossposting activity. Here are their results:
Overall Best Times to Post on Social Media:
Mondays
10 a.m. - 7 p.m.
Tuesdays
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Wednesdays
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Thursdays
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Fridays
10 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Best days to post: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays Worst days to post: Saturday, Sundays
Facebook - Best Times to Post:
Mondays
9 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Tuesdays
9 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Wednesdays
8 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Thursdays
8 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Fridays
9-11 a.m. and 2-4 p.m.
Saturdays
8 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sundays
9-11 a.m. and 3-6 p.m.
Best days to post: Monday through Fridays Worst days to post: Sundays
Instagram - Best Times to Post:
Mondays
1-2 p.m. and 4-5 p.m.
Tuesdays
11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Wednesdays
11 a.m. - 6 p.m. and 7-9 p.m.
Thursdays
11 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Fridays
10 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Saturdays
10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Sundays
4 p.m.
Best days to post: Tuesdays through Thursdays Worst days to post: Saturdays
LinkedIn - Best Times to Post:
Mondays
11 a.m. - noon
Tuesdays
8 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Wednesdays
8 a.m. - noon
Thursdays
8 a.m. - noon
Fridays
7 a.m. - 2 p.m.
Saturdays
7 - 10 a.m.
Sundays
6 - 8 a.m.
Best days to post: Tuesdays through Thursdays Worst days to post: Saturdays and Sundays
Key Takeaways for Best Posting Times
Sprout Social produced these key posting windows per platform by aggregating engagement volume by hour and day. Another key note: all times were recorded globally, so follow these windows relative to your own time zone.
Based on what we see with these three major platforms, we can produce some additional takeaways:
Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn all conclude at least one weekend day as the lowest performing day. This does not mean these are the least engaging periods, but it is a stronger signal of timing misalignment.
Facebook and LinkedIn generally favor early-morning publishing when compared to Instagram. Our hypothesis points to desktop vs. mobile audience differences, as the typical start of the workday (9 a.m.) drives predictable logins, email checks, and tab opening.
Instagram shows more fragmentation in its timing windows for optimal publishing. This indicates users are more likely to log in at uneven intervals throughout the day.
All platforms see their largest overlap between Tuesday through Thursday.
Conclusion
With these resulting windows, use them as a broad starting point for publishing habits, as they reflect aggregated data.
Post engagement performance is contextually nuanced by platform and depends on factors outside the study, including platform algorithms, content type, industry, publishing cadence, and much more.
As with all our social media platform studies, it is best to analyze your own channel data, as results often show variation from broad benchmarks.
What Is a Good Video Watch Time in 2026? Benchmarks for Instagram & Facebook Reels
As 2026 begins, we’re answering one of last year’s most common questions. What makes a good video watch time?
Over the past few years, videos have become a top content priority across most platforms. Many apps now feature video as their primary content when you open them. We analyzed whether video watch duration impacts content performance across key metrics.
This analysis focuses on Meta’s two major platforms, Facebook and Instagram. Both have emerged as major drivers of reel-based content.
What Is Video Watch Duration and Retention Rate?
Before running each analysis across both platforms, we should outline the metrics used for this study. At the baseline level of social media analytics, you already recognize two core metrics across most platforms: engagement and reach. Engagement totals subcategories such as likes and shares, while reach allows us to see how many unique users watched the content. We will be utilizing these metrics to understand the relationship between video watch duration and content performance.
For analyzing watch time, we also need to consider metrics unique to videos, such as average watch duration and retention rate. Average watch duration measures the mean time (in seconds) viewers spend on a specific video or reel across all plays. The average retention rate then normalizes this by dividing the video's total length by the video’s total length and multiplying by 100, which yields a percentage of completion.
Analysis: What is a Good Video Retention Rate?
For this analysis, we will review all video content shared in 2025 across each platform at That Random Agency.
We took average watch duration and retention rate across all video content on each platform and modeled them against engagement and reach to test for linear relationships. For these outputs, we removed extreme outliers due to the wide performance variation of reel content across both platforms. What we call extreme outliers, most people will also call viral.
Facebook
From our 40 organic videos this year, we produced the following table for Facebook, showing linear fits between average watch duration and retention rate on engagement or reach.
Based on the results of each model fit, a linear relationship existed between average watch duration and reach, as well as between average retention rate and engagement.
A summary:
Average watch duration (“Weak Negative Impact” towards Reach): For each minor increase in average watch time in seconds, we saw some marginal decrease in reach.
Average retention rate (“Slight Positive Impact” towards Engagement): For each slight increase in average video retention rate, we saw some slightly higher engagement.
Upon reviewing the test results for average watch duration in relation to reach, we decided to investigate further by separating them into five different watch time brackets.
Supporting our conclusion of “Weak Negative Impact” from these metrics, higher video reach was achieved at shorter durations. This aligns with our findings across both Meta platforms throughout the year, given that shorter videos' boost to reach is driven by higher completion rates and algorithm preferences for quick, full watches.
Instagram
We also tested our organic Instagram video content, using a larger sample of 101 videos for the year. One thing to note about Instagram’s native reporting is that it rounds average seconds viewed to the nearest whole second, making this metric less precise than Facebook’s. This is where our larger sample size can make a difference.
After running the same tests, we observed a more linear relationship between watch duration and retention rate in relation to content performance.
A summary:
Average watch duration (“Moderate Positive Impact” towards Engagement): Notably, a higher average watch duration had a positive impact on content engagement.
Average retention rate (“Very Weak Positive Impact”): We observed a very marginal impact on retention rates and overall content performance.
Once again, we can separate and see how average engagement is impacted by different watch time buckets and produce the following chart:
Considering that 16 seconds was our upper bound for the highest watch duration in a content pool primarily composed of shorter reels, it’s no surprise that our most engaging reels were those that kept users fully engaged. We also observed that retention rate on its own doesn’t strongly impact engagement, but when paired with average watch time, it has a more significant effect. In summary, for our Instagram account, higher-engagement video content appears to hit a sweet spot around 8-16 seconds of average user watch time in 30-second videos
Takeaways: Does Video Retention Rate Affect Other Metrics?
Based on our test results, here are the key high-level takeaways:
For Facebook,
Videos optimized for fast completion are slightly aligned with better platform distribution patterns.
Reach responded more to how fast viewers finished than how long viewers stayed.
For Instagram,
Longer average watch times drove higher engagement, with strongest results between 8 and 16 seconds watched on 30-40 seconds long reels.
Videos optimized to hold attention longer aligned better with interaction-driven performance.
Retention rate alone showed minimal impact, yet retention paired with longer watch time lifted engagement.
In conclusion, as noted in all our tests, these results may vary based on factors such as industry, audience, scheduling habits, and others. What we conclude as statistically significant may not be the same for another account, even if it's another digital marketing agency. It's important to consider results based on your own social data and observations.
What Is a Good Click-Through Rate on Social Media in 2026?
As we approach the end of 2025, marking another typically turbulent year for social media, it is a great time to examine click-through rates across various platforms. So, what is a reasonable click-through rate on social media in 2026?
What is click-through rate?
Click-through rate (CTR%) is primarily a key metric used in the context of paid digital marketing. This metric measures the ratio of users to the number of times a specific content was viewed, expressed in percentage format. Given the wide variations in factors such as ad budget, targeting, objectives, and more, CTR% serves as a standardized metric to analyze how effectively a paid strategy has been implemented.
What are the click-through rate benchmarks on social media?
The following table presents recent data on click-through rates across various social channels:
When evaluating clickthrough rates on a broad scale, it is best to consider them as a range when benchmarking, since countless variations impact this metric. A larger range, like we see with the percentages for Instagram, can indicate relatively higher overall variation, which makes sense for a platform like Instagram that flexes with so many different content types.
What factors contribute to click-through rate?
The following lists some of the major factors that can contribute to click-through rates for any ad:
Ad objective: A campaign set to maximize clicks as its objective will obviously have a higher CTR% than other campaign types. CTR% can even become a vanity metric for objectives like awareness or video views.
Industry and competitor context: Different industries and audiences come with varying sizes of audience pools, as well as different levels of engaged users within those pools. This directly ties into our earlier definition of CTR%, which we mentioned is a ratio dependent on audience size.
Ad quality: High-quality ads typically have compelling copy, clear calls to action, targeted keywords, and a good landing page experience, which collectively boost CTR%.
Scheduling and timing: Seasonality matters greatly in social media and it is no different for advertising performance.
Budget: Among major factors for CTR%, but it should generally be lower on the priority list compared to ad objective and quality. Increasing budget allows you to scale high-performing ad copies to a larger pool of relevant audiences.
Although a broad, platform-wide range is a good starting point for comparing your CTR% performance across different social platforms, we can narrow down comparisons further with additional context such as ad objectives, industry, or audience size.
Narrowing down benchmarks to your specific niche and campaign goals enables more meaningful comparisons and realistic performance expectations. Ultimately, the best benchmark is one that reflects the unique dynamics of your audience, ad creatives, and conversion goals, guiding you to optimize for both higher CTR and better overall returns.
What is a good CTR percentage? This depends on your business or objective.
Personalizing benchmarks that best suit your needs is definitely more involved, but that’s where we can help!
Need Help Optimizing Your Social Media Strategy?
Want personalized help with marketing strategies to optimize your social media results? Chat with our team today!
Random Labs: Does Posting on Holidays Decrease Performance?
As we enter the peak holiday season, we thought it would be a great time to share our latest Random Labs experiment, which explores one of the most common marketing dilemmas: Does posting on holidays decrease performance?
Specifically, we are analyzing whether posting content during these holidays impacts both content and channel metrics to identify any cause and effect from a holistic perspective. We will analyze our content across Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to determine any significant impact of holiday posts on performance and growth.
The Data
Looking back at the 2024-2025 content, we decided to include eight holidays in our analysis, selecting four federal holidays and four observances to provide a broader range.
Holiday
Month
Type
Christmas (Winter Greetings)
December
Federal
Halloween
October
Federal
Thanksgiving
November
Federal
New Years
January
Federal
Earth Day
April
Observance
International Women's Day
March
Observance
World Kindness Day
November
Observance
Mental Health Awareness
May
Observance
Having pinpointed these eight holidays throughout the year, we will evaluate content performance and potential channel-wide effects across three platforms. This will enhance our multivariate analysis by revealing whether certain platforms have a higher affinity for specific holidays (or holiday content in general).
The Analysis
The following percentage heat map was created to evaluate content from various holidays and observances against overall monthly post performance:
Although the output contains substantial numerical data, the interpretation is straightforward. The percentages indicate performance differences between posts related to specific holidays or observances and the monthly content average for their respective months. For instance, our Facebook post achieved 447% higher engagement and 36% higher views than the content average for December, the month in which that post appeared. Vice versa, negative percentages indicate that the holiday or observance content scored lower than the average monthly posts for each metric and platform.
The Conclusion
When evaluating our output, the results were extremely typical of what we see daily, even for non-holiday posts: a lot of variation. For instance, we observed a slightly higher positive lift in count across Meta channels compared to LinkedIn. However, some of LinkedIn's extremely high lifts (over 100%) resulted from individual holiday posts significantly outperforming that month’s overall content. The spread of positive and negative percentage lifts likely indicates that there isn’t enough evidence to suggest that the holidays themselves are the determining factor behind content performance - especially when we start looking at the type of content itself.
So does posting on holidays decrease performance? Not inherently.
As mentioned before, in some months, especially around New Year’s, we saw one of our relatively higher-performing pieces of content, while in other months, we fell short in comparison to other non-holiday content. The performance of holiday content is likely dictated by the same factors as any other content—primarily content relevance, content type, audience activity levels, individual platform algorithms, and other contextual variables.
Need Help Optimizing Your Social Media Strategy?
Want personalized help with marketing strategies to optimize your social media results? Chat with our team today!
Here Are the 2025 Social Media Benchmarks for Financial Brands
We’re heading into crunch time for 2025, and thought it would be an excellent opportunity to identify key social media benchmarks for the financial industry.
Why Engagement Rates Matter for Financial Services
Engagement rates remain a popular choice of KPI as they directly reflect how effectively financial brands are connecting with their audiences through content. We will look at these specific percentages for this industry across five of the more mainstream platforms: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and LinkedIn.
2025 Engagement Rates by Platform (Financial Services)
We will draw from Hootsuite’s report, which covers average engagement rates across various industries in a study conducted this year.
Engagement Rates (Per Post)
Platform
Engagement Rate (Industry: Financial Services)
Facebook
1.8%
Instagram
3.8%
LinkedIn
3.2%
X
2.1%
TikTok
1.6%
How Engagement Rates Are Calculated (Hootsuite Formula)
As discussed in previous blogs, when comparing to benchmarks or studies, it is essential to ensure that our KPI (engagement rate) is calculated similarly to the metrics we are referencing. Since engagement rates can vary depending on the variables and platforms used, we will use the following formula from Hootsuite as the basis for these benchmarks:
In the context of the Hootsuite report, engagement also includes the number of clicks and DMs, which may not always be conventionally included in other variations of this formula. Additionally, the number of posts is subjective to the chosen time period. For example, you may count posts from a given month or year. We recommend using monthly durations to better account for significant platform changes or updated studies. If the post volume for any given month is small, consider a duration that covers at least 30 posts.
Platform Insights: Winners and Laggards
Based on the overall report, financial services show strong engagement performance compared to other industries on:
Instagram (3.8%) → boosted by visual storytelling and partnerships.
LinkedIn (3.2%) → driven by professional content and employee advocacy.
Meanwhile, engagement is lower (<2%) on:
Facebook → declining organic reach, heavier reliance on paid ads.
TikTok → high variability in video views creates disproportionate engagement gaps.
What These 2025 Benchmarks Mean for Financial Marketers
Instagram and LinkedIn = prime channels for partnerships, thought leadership, and employee advocacy.
Facebook and TikTok = paid-first strategies may be necessary to close the engagement gap.
Frequent benchmarking = critical in 2025 as algorithms and audience behaviors shift faster than ever.
Key Takeaway for Financial Services Brands
Financial institutions should:
Monitor engagement monthly, not yearly.
Double down on LinkedIn + Instagram for organic traction.
Use paid strategies to offset lower returns on Facebook and TikTok.
Need Help Optimizing Your Social Media Strategy?
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Which Social Media Platform Has the Best ROI for Brands in 2025?
We examined which social media platforms have delivered the best return on investment (ROI)—a key performance indicator that our clients understandably value.
Assessing this KPI in the context of social media is more nuanced than in conventional businesses, since not everything on these platforms can be quantified in monetary terms.
As expected from much of our cross-platform research, our results show that each platform demonstrates varying levels of success in this category, depending on business objectives. We will dive into different platforms in this study: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube.
The following evaluates the benefits of each platform from a marketing perspective.
What is the ROI for Facebook?
Facebook
Highly trusted by B2B marketers - 22-28% of these users cite it as having the highest ROI relatively, among their platforms of choice.
Garners strong video reach and engagement - Video content reaches 135% more users compared to photos and are posted 2x more than other content types.
Ranked as the first purchasing platform - Leads the way in purchasing conversion among platforms when users are ready to make a purchase at 39% (slightly ahead of Instagram and TikTok).
Currently leading the way in ROI and lead generation - According to HubSpot, 76% of over 500 surveyed marketers say that Instagram leads in ROI, lead generation, and engagement.
Ranked second in trust rate by marketers - With a trust rate of 68%, Instagram ranks just behind LinkedIn among marketers when it comes to confidence in generating positive returns on advertising investment.
Video content leads the way in conversions - Instagram videos between 1 and 2 minutes have the highest retention, and ads with product catalog videos show a 41% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS).
High quality conversions - LinkedIn ads increase purchase intent by about 33%, making it a key platform for high-value conversions.
Holds the highest trust rate by marketers for ROI - With a trust rate of 70%, LinkedIn leads in platform for marketers when it comes to confidence in generating positive returns on advertising investment (this does not indicate that it is the leading platform by overall ROI).
Video has emerged as a content type - According to Social Pilot, videos on LinkedIn are generating 5x more engagement than other content types.
Known for very high but short-term ROI - The platform’s individual research highlights an 11.8% short-term ROI although 75% of their advertisers achieve their highest ROI on this platform compared to others.
Leader of engagement among Gen Z - Gen Z significantly leads the way in terms of overall purchase intent on TikTok.
Leading platform in global ad revenue - According to Social Pilot, TikTok’s global ad revenue is over $331 billion, indicating a platform demand for reaching wide audiences.
Ranked as top platform for video marketing effectiveness and brand awareness - Among video marketers, 90% use YouTube for marketing purposes, more than any other platform, highlighting its dominance as a video-hosting and engagement channel.
Ranked 2nd in social media active users - In Q2 2025, YouTube ranked second in social media active users at 2.74 billion, just behind Facebook (at 3.065 billion).
Strong for both brand awareness and driving sales - YouTube is favored for upper-funnel awareness as well as bottom-funnel conversions, making it a strong all-around ROI platform.
In conclusion, we can provide a general overview of the benefits of investing resources in each platform:
Facebook
Facebook remains a strong platform for video-driven marketing and B2B strategies, but success increasingly depends on well-planned paid campaigns due to reduced organic visibility.
Instagram
Investing in Instagram is highly effective for driving engagement and leads, especially through video content that resonates well with audiences.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a trusted platform for B2B marketing investments, offering valuable opportunities to drive high-quality conversions.
TikTok
TikTok stands out for delivering quick returns and strong audience engagement, making it a smart choice for brands targeting younger demographics.
YouTube
YouTube is a versatile platform that supports brand awareness and direct conversions, making it worthwhile for comprehensive marketing strategies across the customer journey.
Like most questions that compare different platforms, especially when it comes to ROI, there isn’t a single platform that offers the best of all worlds. The most effective choice for investing in advertising depends heavily on your specific business goals, target audience, and overall marketing strategy. Different platforms excel in different areas—some may be better for driving brand awareness, while others focus more on direct conversions or engagement with niche communities.
Ultimately, the key to maximizing ROI is tailoring your platform investments to align with your business objectives and understanding where your audience spends their time. A well-rounded advertising strategy often involves leveraging multiple platforms in ways that complement each other, rather than relying solely on one. This approach ensures that your marketing efforts are both efficient and effective in meeting your unique goals.
Want personalized help with marketing strategies to optimize your social media results? Chat with our team today!
Here are the 2025 LinkedIn Benchmarks
LinkedIn has transformed in 2025, introducing a more intelligent algorithm that rewards meaningful interactions, expanding its capabilities for video content, and rolling out innovative features for personal and company branding. These strategic shifts have redefined how professionals connect and businesses promote their brands on the platform. In this blog, we’ll dive into the 2025 LinkedIn engagement benchmarks—drawing on trusted insights from Hootsuite—and explore what these numbers mean for your strategy in the year ahead.
What Is Social Media Benchmarking?
Benchmarking is key to the analytics process. It allows you to compare your social media results against specific thresholds or standards. This enables you to set realistic objectives, optimize strategy, and identify what's best for your business.
In our LinkedIn benchmarking analysis, Hootsuite utilizes a follower-based engagement rate. This particular form of engagement rate is a solid KPI for assessing users' activity levels within your existing community.
This can be calculated manually using this formula:
Understanding how each metric is defined is key when comparing your results to studies, as formulas can vary between sources.
What Are the 2025 LinkedIn Benchmarks?
After reviewing Hootsuite’s latest study on LinkedIn engagement rates, we can summarize the following percentages across various industries:
Agencies: 3.7%
Education: 2.8%
Media and Entertainment: 2.0%
Financial Services: 3.2%
Dining, Hospitality, and Tourism: 3.9%
Government: 2.7%
Healthcare, Pharma, and Biotech: 3.3%
Real Estate, Legal, and Other Professional: 3.2%
Consumer Goods and Retail: 3.9%
Construction, Mining, and Manufacturing: 4.0%
Technology: 3.6%
Utilities and Energy: 3.3%
NonProfit: 3.0%
Other: 3.8%
What are the Key Insights from the 2025 LinkedIn Benchmarks?
According to Hootsuite, the Consumer Goods and Retail industry consistently maintained higher engagement rates across multiple social platforms—an important trend when analyzing social performance at the industry level.
Content in this industry could be leading the way in:
Visually appealing and shareable content
Regular and timely promotions
Discussion-driven and informative posts (as mentioned in Hootsuite’s analysis)
Community and brand loyalty
When comparing how much one industry outperforms another on a specific platform like LinkedIn, it's essential to consider potential variances caused by external factors that may not be accounted for. As noted in the formulaic breakdown of the average engagement rate above, the number of posts and follower count heavily influence the final percentage, both of which can vary significantly between profiles.
It’s extremely important to use these 2025 LinkedIn benchmarks as a surface-level comparison, and to build on them with personalized benchmarking that aligns with your specific strategy.
Want personalized help with benchmarking strategies to optimize your social media results? Chat with our team today!
