For starters, here are the top 3️⃣ performing posts across Facebook in the United States last week mentioning “Climate change” or “Global Warming.” Ian Somerhalder and Heather Cox Richardson’s posts are pretty long but only tangentially mention climate change (if you’re interested, you can read their full posts here and here), while a post from Fox News gives us a small window into how hardcore Fox News watchers are reacting to President Joe Biden’s populist climate change message.
If you’re a social media manager, you probably already know this, but when the biggest reaction to a Facebook post that isn’t supposed to be funny is the “Laugh” reaction, it usually means that your content isn’t persuasive and folks are laughing at your message. So, it’s likely that Fox News’ above post got a lot of traction among its audience because fans so viscerally balked at Biden’s message, especially given recent news that Ford is planning to relocate a new project from Ohio to Mexico. To give you an idea of how viewers are reacting to Biden’s message in this post, here are some of the top comments on it:
Here are the top 10 posts from climate and polluter groups on Facebook last week and the # of interactions each post got:
Here are the top 10 posts from climate and polluter groups on Instagram last week and the # of interactions each post got:
Despite all the changes in social media over the past decade, it still holds true that cute little animals - especially uncommon ones - get lots of clicks, a rule that the National Wildlife Federation reinforced last week with pics of a molting Arctic fox that had just woken up from its nap. That post, as well as a post of a baby opossum among rhododendron blooms, wildly overperformed relative to the page’s average content. Similarly, over on Instagram, the top posts from climate groups include “pollen-filled bee-ritos” and a beaver happily doing its thing.
More relevant content by climate groups from the past week include posts trying to hold the Biden administration accountable to its aggressive climate action promises. Groups like Climate Reality and Sierra Club are trying a more conventional approach with easy-to-understand graphics and calls to action about the American Jobs Plan, while Greenpeace used a popular meme format to get their message across. Meanwhile, it looks like the Sunrise Movement has launched a “Clown of the Week” series, starting with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Among polluting groups, Minnesotans for Line 3 made a relatively successful post about a train carrying hydrochloric acid that derailed in southern Minnesota, citing the incident as evidence that pipelines “are needed and safer.” CFACT also seems to be enjoying continued relative success with social media engagement using anti-masking memes, while the American Energy Alliance used stories from Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal Opinion to imply that clean-energy tech is being hoarded by “wealthy coastal elites” at the expense of working-class Americans.