Why Walmart Has 5,500 Unanswered Consumer Questions On Its Facebook Page

Walmart had 5,563 unanswered questions from consumers on Dec. 11 -- the height of the Christmas shopping season -- according to SocialBakers, the social media analytics firm. That's a lot, but bear in mind that Walmart was asked 10,496 questions on Facebook from Sept. 1 through Dec. 11, and it answered 4,933, or 47 percent, of them

Its arch-rival Target, by contrast, had 1,879 unanswered questions, and its staff answered 60 percent of the 4,763 questions it was posed.

The numbers give a glimpse into how labor intensive it can be for a big brand to have a popular Facebook page with a lot of fans. Walmart and Target have about 26 million and 21 million Facebook fans, respectively. Once a company has established an army of fans on Facebook, it can't not deal with them. Both companies are stuck with "always on" social media communications, whether they like it or not.

We recently wrote that Walmart was winning its Facebook war against Target because its posts were more engaging overall than Target's. But that's not so, according to SocialBakers CEO Jan Rezab.

The difference between Walmart and Target's ability to answer questions on Facebook -- 47 percent to 60 percent, respectively -- shows that Target is actually holding its own.

Average post and page engagement levels are comparable too, Rezab says.

SocialBakers prepared this analysis of engagement on the two companies' Facebook pages for us.