In my inaugural I could take a look at a small brand that’s near and dear to my heart, but what fun is that? Go big or go home! And you can’t get much bigger than Disney+. The House of Mouse’s subscription streaming service has a huge library of content that includes the entire Disney vault of movies, Disney Channel original content, Disney+ original content, plus movies and shows from all their other properties such as National Geographic, Marvel, Lucas Film, Pixar, and more.

With so much digital content at their fingertips, and what seems to be all the bandwidth in the world, I assumed checking off all the boxes for a strong social strategy would be small potatoes for Disney+. Surprisingly, that is not the case. Disney+ does have a consistent and frequent posting schedule, but they are falling short in a couple areas. I audited Disney+’s Twitter, Facebook and Instagram from Jan. 15 to Jan. 19.

So Many Followers, So Little Engagement

While Disney+ has 2.2 million followers on Facebook, 1.1 million followers on Instagram and 987K followers on Twitter, they rarely, if ever, engage with all those followers. In their article “14 Social Media Best Practices You Should Follow in 2019,” Hootsuite recommends brands respond to all their comments and mentions. With thousands of comments across all their channels, it would be difficult for Disney+ to follow that guideline to a t. However, in the five days I monitored their social media accounts they only replied to one user. They only interacted with other Disney brands, such as Marvel and Disney Studios.

Beside their lack of engagement with their audience, Disney+’s social media content follows many best practices across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

According to Hubspot’s “Ultimate Guide to Twitter for Business,” it is encouraged for brands to not only post frequently, but to add multimedia to each post. Disney+ takes this advice and really flies with it. From gifs to polls to videos and emojis, Disney+ does not have a problem creating a lively timeline of original content to entertain their followers.

Disney’s Magic on Instagram

Another best practice Disney+ employs is giving their Instagram captions and content a distinct personality, as is suggested by Social Media Examiner’s “5 Ways to Humanize Your Instagram Business Account.” Going through each of their Instagram posts you can pick up on their playful, but wholesome, tone. Their online personality also carries on through their Twitter and Facebook posts.

According to Meltwater’s “How Often Should You Post on Social Media,” brands should stick to one post on Facebook and Instagram, and up to 10 on Twitter. Disney+ follows this guideline very well, with the exception of their posting spree on Friday. Typically, they post once or twice to Facebook and Instagram, but even the Meltwater article states a brand with a large audience can get away with more posts. Ten tweets a day seems like a lot for even a brand of Disney+’s size, so even though they do not reach 10 tweets in one day, they post more frequently to Twitter than their other platforms.

Wish Upon a Meme

Disney+ does spend a lot of their time on social media promoting their brand, as they should, but because Disney is such a recognizable name, Disney+ has the opportunity and bandwidth to create fan-centric content. According to Brent Barnhart’s article, “10 Ways to Increase Facebook Engagement that Work,” brands should create content that entertains their followers instead of focusing solely on their products. You can see this in Disney+ do a little bit of this with the use of memes across all of their platforms, but I think they can do more.

To start, they can actually interact with their fans by replying to comments and replies. By doing this Disney+ can establish not only more trust with their followers, but they can develop and clearer online personality. They can also leverage their fanbase to create content for them, whether that be through a Twitter Q&A or a hashtag campaign that allows Disney+ to easily find and retweet content.

Overall Disney+ gets a thumbs up on their social strategy. They generally follow best practices, though as with anyone or anything that’s mega-popular, they don’t always have to follow the rules to be successful. What do you guys think? Should Disney+ create more fan-centric content, or am I being too demanding? Let me know in the comments.