Will Saara Aalto win the UK’s X Factor? Or will it be Matt Terry? Or maybe 5 After Midnight will take the trophy home?
Follow the finalists’ results from the EzyInsights’ data, updated regularly. We measure each finalists’ Facebook pages’s engagment twice a day.
We started on Monday, 5th December, after the X-Factor semifinal, where the three finalists were chosen.
So, who wins the social media election?
Update on Moday 12.11.: X-Factor has announced that Matt Terry won the competition with a margin of victory of 8.1%. 48.5% of votes went to Matt and 40.4% to Saara.
Update on Sunday 11.12. at 8 PM: We may have bad news for Saara’s fans. Matt’s Facebook updates have started to gather as much and even more engagement than Saara’s. Saara still clearly leads on total engagement numbers, as she posts much more than Matt. However, because it is very likely that Matt’s fans are from the UK and can vote, and Saara has lot of fans from Finland, the fact that Matt now gets almost as much engagement per post as Saara changes the situation. Matt is going strong. When we started our analysis, Monday 5th December, Saara’s result spiked – her posts often got over 10 K engagements, whereas Matt’s posts only got circa 3000 engagements per post. Matt’s average engagement per post today is circa 7500 while for Saara it is 9900. Considered that not all Saara’s fans can vote, Matt is doing much better on Facebook today than he did after the semifinals.
Update on Sunday 11.12.: Saara’s Facebook engagement has spiked! She has posted several videos. The final competition will be today. 5 After Midnight’s falling out of the race supports our hypothesis.
Update on Saturday 10.12.: Saara’s Facebook page engagement grows faster now. She has posted several photos of her preparations to the finale. So has Matt, but not as many as Saara. Still no posts by 5 After Midnight.
Update on Friday 9.12: The finals are getting nearer. We are prepared to huge spikes!
Update on Thursday 8.12.: Matt posted two videos and a photo in the evening! Well done, Matt. The gap between Matt and Saara is now only circa 2K engagements. Saara, post videos! Preferably live videos. 5 After Midnight, please wake up.
Update on Tuesday 6.12.: Saara was leading strongly on Monday evening, but as her results have dropped during the night, Matt’s results have grown! This will be an exciting race.
We know that the contestant with the most social media engagement tends to win. This was true for Donald Trump, as well as for Barack Obama, and even for the Democratic and Republican parties’ primaries, the outcome of which was correctly predicted by the artificial intelligence system developed at MogIA.
Saara has much more Facebook fans, likes, reactions, comments, and shares than the other contestants.
Based on that data, our prediction is that Saara will win the X Factor!
Saara has thousands of Finnish fans who are not allowed to vote. No worries! Our hypothesis is that the “raw likes” count.
The more likes you get, the more likely you are to win.
Our breakdown of the X-Factor finalist’s Facebook data is a test of a hypothesis – it is playful, but it may indicate future directions.
Photos or videos?
All three finalists post most often photos – and photos are their main source of engagement. However, there is another potentially worrisome point for Saara’s fans. Matt posts more videos than her, and videos and live videos are among the most effective ways of generating audience engagement – used much more effectively by Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton during the American presidential elections.
This is why we will also pay attention to the posting strategy of each finalist – how many different post types and how many posts they will share. What strategy will work best?
5 After Midnight’s Facebook page data is no longer updated.
Illustration:
http://www.saaraaalto.com/, Saara Aalto and Matt Terry Official Facebook Pages