EDA Assignment - Engage In Education
1 Introduction
This report presents an Exploratory Data Analysis (EDA) of a social media campaign data set consisting of 942 posts across multiple social media platforms. The purpose of this analysis is to see which content types, platforms, and targeting strategies drive higher engagement and conversions for Engage In Education. Using the tidyverse collection of packages, this report explores trends in the dataset through a range of visualisations, including scatterplots, histograms, faceted plots, heatmaps, and tables.
The findings are positioned in the context of Engage In Education, an organisation i work for that focus on students and youths engagement and education in Limerick City. As social media plays a central role in the organisation’s outreach, understanding which campaign characteristics perform best can guide more effective communication strategies.
I will use this data set to apply data driven insights for my organisation Engage in Education, that will help them to make good decisions when developing or planning a social media campaign for different social media platforms.
2 Average Engagements By Platform
This bar chart compares the average engagements generated across Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X. While all platforms deliver broadly similar results, X shows the highest average engagement, followed closely by LinkedIn.
For an organisation like Engage in Education, which relies on digital channels to communicate with students,parents, volunteers, and corporate partners, this finding is particularly valuable. The strong performance on X and LinkedIn suggests that these platforms are more effective at driving audience interaction for educational and community focused content.
LinkedIn’s high engagement levels align with its professional user base, making it especially suitable for promoting partnerships, funding updates, and organisational achievements.
Meanwhile, X’s strong performance indicates that short form updates and quick announcements may resonate well with the public. In contrast, Instagram and TikTok show slightly lower engagement averages, suggesting that while these platforms are still important for reaching younger audiences, they may require more creative content formats or targeted spend to achieve comparable results.
These insights can guide Engage in Education in prioritizing platforms that maximize visibility and interaction, helping to strengthen future communication and outreach strategies.
3 Spend vs Impressions
This scatterplot shows a clear positive relationship between campaign spend and impressions across all platforms, indicating that higher advertising investment consistently results in greater visibility. As spend increases, impressions rise sharply, with several high spend campaigns exceeding 20,000 to 30,000 impressions.
This trend is consistent across Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X, although the distribution suggests that some platforms may deliver impressions more efficiently at lower spend levels. For Engage in Education, these findings highlight the importance of budgeting strategically when planning social media campaigns.
Since impressions represent the number of times content is viewed, increasing spend can significantly amplify the organisation’s reach, making paid promotion a valuable tool for awareness campaigns, recruitment drives, or fundraising announcements.
However, the clustering of points at lower spend levels also suggests that modest budgets can still generate meaningful visibility, which is beneficial for a non profit organisation with limited resources.
Overall, the graph reinforces that paid advertising is a reliable method for expanding the organisation’s audience reach, and that even small increases in spend can substantially enhance campaign exposure across platforms.
4 Engagement Distribution By Post Type
This boxplot illustrates how engagement levels vary across different post types such as Carousel, Image, Reel, Story, and Video. Overall, the distribution shows that Reels and Stories tend to produce higher median engagements compared to the other formats, although they also exhibit the widest spread and the most extreme outliers. This suggests that while these formats can achieve strong engagement, their performance can be inconsistent and may depend heavily on content quality or timing. Carousel posts also perform well, with relatively high median engagement values, whereas Image and Video posts show lower typical engagement and tighter distributions, indicating more predictable but generally weaker performance.
For Engage in Education, these findings offer valuable strategic insights. Since the organisation aims to communicate with both young audiences and professional partners, prioritizing high performing formats such as Reels and Stories may help maximise visibility and interaction, especially on platforms like Instagram and TikTok where these formats are most effective.
However, the large variability in performance also highlights the importance of thoughtful content creation, simply choosing the right format is not enough without strong messaging. Carousel posts may be particularly useful for structured storytelling, educational highlights, or showcasing programme outcomes, while Image posts may serve better as supplementary content. Overall, the distribution suggests that Engage in Education can increase its engagement by focusing on dynamic, interactive formats, while maintaining a balanced mix of content types to ensure consistency and reach across platforms.
5 Total Reach Over Time
In this line graph shows a time series of how total reach fluctuates over the course of the year, highlighting clear variability in audience exposure across different posting periods. While reach levels remain generally consistent, there are several noticeable spikes where posts achieve exceptionally high visibility, reaching over 50,000 users.
These peaks suggest that certain campaigns that are likely driven by targeted spend, platform algorithm boosts, or timely content, captured significantly more attention than regular posts. The consistent oscillation between moderate and low reach values indicates that audience visibility is highly dynamic and influenced by factors such as posting timing, content format, and platform specific trends.
For Engage in Education, this analysis underscores the importance of planning content around periods where audience responsiveness naturally increases. The spikes demonstrate that well timed, high quality, or strategically boosted posts can dramatically enhance visibility, supporting key organisational goals such as recruitment, event promotion, and awareness raising. Identifying what types of posts correspond with these high reach periods could inform future content planning and budgeting decisions.
Furthermore, the overall variability in reach suggests that Engage in Education should adopt a consistent posting schedule, supplemented by paid promotion during important campaigns, to maintain stable visibility across the year. By aligning content strategy with the patterns shown in this graph, the organisation can maximise audience reach and strengthen its communication impact.
6 Average Click Through Rate: Paid vs Organic Posts
This bar chart compares the average click through rate (CTR) of organic posts versus paid posts. The results show a clear difference between the two categories where paid posts achieve a substantially higher CTR, indicating that campaigns supported by advertising spend are far more effective at driving users to click through to external links or further content. In contrast, organic posts generate noticeably lower CTR values, suggesting that while they still attract engagement, they are less efficient at prompting deeper user actions such as website visits, event sign ups, or resource downloads.
For Engage in Education, this insight could play an important role in shaping future communication strategies. As a youth focused organisation that aims to increase public awareness of its programmes, attract mentees and volunteers, and highlight funding achievements, higher CTR is especially valuable because it represents meaningful interactions beyond simple likes or views.
The stronger performance of paid posts suggests that even modest investment into targeted ads can significantly improve the organisation’s ability to direct audiences toward key initiatives, applications, or informational pages. While organic content remains essential for consistent visibility and community connection, this analysis indicates that boosting important posts such as recruitment campaigns, event announcements, or funding updates that can greatly enhance audience responsiveness.
This evidence driven approach can help Engage in Education allocate limited resources more effectively and maximise the impact of future social media campaigns.
7 Spend vs Reach vs Engagements
This bubble chart visualises the relationship between campaign spend, reach, and engagement across Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X. The plot reveals a clear positive relationship between spend and reach, where higher expenditure consistently results in wider audience exposure. Larger bubbles represent posts with higher engagement and that are generally clustered within higher spend levels, suggesting that posts that reach more people are also more likely to generate meaningful interactions. Although all platforms follow this upward trend, the distribution of bubble sizes shows that some platforms produce higher engagements at comparable spend levels, which may reflect differences in audience behaviour or platform algorithms.
For Engage in Education, this insight highlights the importance of strategic budgeting and platform selection when planning future campaigns. The chart demonstrates that increasing spend can significantly boost both reach and engagement, which is particularly valuable for awareness driven initiatives such as programme recruitment, fundraising events, or partnership announcements.
Platforms that produce larger engagement bubbles at lower spend such as TikTok and X in several instances may offer more cost effective opportunities for youth engagement and public communication. Meanwhile, LinkedIn’s strong performance at higher spend levels suggests it is well suited for targeted campaigns aimed at corporate partners, funders, and professional audiences. Overall, the bubble chart reinforces the value of combining smart budget allocation with platform-specific strategies to maximise both reach and engagement for Engage in Education’s social impact goals.
8 Spend vs Engagements By Platform
This faceted scatterplot illustrates how advertising spend influences engagement across Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X. While all platforms show a positive relationship, indicating that higher investment tends to drive higher engagement.The strength of this trend varies. X shows the steepest upward slope, meaning that increased spend translates to noticeably higher engagement compared to the other platforms. LinkedIn also demonstrates a clear positive trend, suggesting that paid campaigns effectively boost interaction among its professional user base.
Instagram and TikTok display weaker but still positive relationships, with engagement remaining more clustered at lower spend levels. This implies that while higher spending can enhance performance on these platforms, content quality and relevance may play a larger role in driving engagement.
For Engage in Education, these insights highlight the value of tailoring budget allocation to platform behaviour. Since X delivers strong returns on spend, it may be particularly effective for driving attention to announcements, student achievements, or real-time updates. LinkedIn’s consistent positive trend suggests it is a highly strategic platform for targeted outreach to corporate partners, funders, and educational stakeholders, especially when promoting events, partnerships, or impact reports.
Meanwhile, Instagram and TikTok remain important for engaging younger audiences, but the weaker spend engagement relationship indicates that creative content formats may be more influential than budget alone. Overall, the analysis suggests that Engage in Education can optimise campaign performance by prioritising spend on X and LinkedIn for high impact posts, while using creative storytelling to maximise organic engagement on more visual platforms.
# A tibble: 5 × 2
post_type average_engagements
<chr> <dbl>
1 Story 448
2 Carousel 443
3 Reel 412
4 Video 377
5 Image 353| Post Type | Average Engagements |
|---|---|
| Story | 448.0 |
| Carousel | 443.0 |
| Reel | 412.0 |
| Video | 377.0 |
| Image | 353.0 |
9 Average Engagements by Post Type
This table shows the average engagements generated by each post type across all platforms. Stories lead with 448 engagements, followed closely by Carousels (443) and Reels (412). Meanwhile, Videos (377) and Images (353) perform comparatively lower.
This pattern indicates that short form, interactive and dynamic content consistently drives higher audience response. Stories, in particular, appear to be the strongest format for building quick attention and encouraging reactions. This aligns with what we know about modern social media behaviour where users increasingly prefer quick, digestible, in the moment gotcha content over static visuals.
9.1 What This Means For Engage In Education
1. Prioritise Stories for Higher Engagement - Stories should be used more frequently, especially during:
Funding announcements
Event highlights
Student achievements
Behind the scenes content
Stories’ strong performance suggests that the audience wants authentic, real time updates from Engage.
2. Use Carousels for Education & Awareness Posts - Carousels performing almost as well as Stories shows that the audience engages with:
Multi step explanations
Success stories
Program breakdowns
“How we help” educational slides
Carousels work well for social impact messaging, which is core to Engage’s mission.
3. Reels Are Strong but Underused - Reels have high potential and are already performing well:
Short videos explaining your mission
Youth interviews
Quick recaps of events
Increasing Reels could significantly boost visibility, especially on Instagram and TikTok.
4. Reduce Reliance on Static Images - Images receive the lowest engagement, meaning:
They should be used sparingly
Or redesigned to be more visually impactful
Or replaced with short form video or carousel formats
This aligns with your goal of making Engage’s content more dynamic, modern, and attention grabbing.
9.2 Strategic Takeaway for Engage in Education
Engage’s audience responds best to fast, interactive, and narrative style content.
To increase visibility, follower growth, and awareness among students and corporate supporters, Engage should prioritise: Stories, Carousels & Reels
These formats match Engage’s mission of empowering youths, showcasing impact transparently, and communicating in a way that today’s audiences naturally engage with.
10 Distribution of Hashtag Usage
This histogram shows that most posts use a small number of hashtags, typically between 1 and 5, while very few posts rely on heavy hashtag use. This suggests that creators prioritise focused and relevant hashtags rather than long lists.
For Engage in Education, this means a low to moderate hashtag strategy is most effective. Using 3 to 5 targeted hashtags such as #EngageInEducation, #Limerick, and #YouthEmpowerment will keep posts professional, clean, and easy to read, especially on LinkedIn. This approach supports better reach, stronger brand identity, and improved engagement without overwhelming audiences.
11 Correlation Heatmap Analysis
This heatmap shows strong positive correlations between spend, reach, impressions, engagements, clicks, and conversions, meaning that when organisations invest more money into posts, they reliably achieve higher visibility and user actions. This confirms that ad spend is one of the biggest drivers of campaign performance.
We also see moderate relationships between Emoji count and engagements, and Post hour and Reach, suggesting that tone and posting time also influence how audiences respond, although not as strongly as spend.
For Engage in Education, these correlations provide clear strategic direction where paid promotion significantly boosts reach and engagement, which supports Engage’s goal of expanding awareness among schools, universities, and corporate partners.
The strong link between impressions, engagements, clicks, and conversions suggests that boosting high-quality posts could directly support Engage’s funding applications, event promotions, and partnership outreach.
The moderate influence of posting time and emoji use means Engage should continue posting during peak hours and using approachable, youth friendly language but prioritise content quality and budget allocation.
Overall, the heatmap shows that targeted spend combined with strategic posting can maximise Engage’s impact and help the organisation grow its online presence quickly and effectively.
12 Conclusion
This exploratory data analysis showed clear insights into how different content types, posting strategies, and campaign investments influence social media performance. Across all metrics, spend, reach, impressions, engagements, clicks, and conversions showed strong positive correlations, demonstrating that paid promotion is one of the most powerful drivers of visibility and audience action. For Engage in Education, this highlights a significant opportunity to amplify high quality posts through targeted boosting, especially during key periods such as funding announcements, programme launches, or corporate outreach campaigns.
The analysis also revealed that Stories and Carousels achieve the highest average engagements, suggesting that dynamic, multi frame and narrative style content resonates most strongly with audiences. Similarly, platform comparisons showed that X and LinkedIn generate higher engagement levels, which aligns with Engage’s strategic focus on reaching professionals, universities, and community partners. Hashtag usage patterns further showed that most successful posts use only a small number of focused hashtags, reinforcing the importance of clarity and relevance over quantity.
Time based analysis of total reach showed that engagement fluctuates throughout the year, but strong peaks often align with periods of increased posting or campaign activity. For Engage In Education, this means maintaining consistent posting especially during high impact seasons can strengthen long term reach and awareness. Overall, these insights support a clear content strategy for Engage in Education.
13 Meme
