The Five Reasons Why Most Facebook Brand Pages Aren’t True Communities
Posted on 08. May, 2012 by Jessica Malnik in Blog, brand communities, community management, facebook, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Jessica Malnik is a PR/marketing coordinator, social media specialist, videographer and an avid blogger. Visit her blog for social media, technology, public relations and marketing ramblings.
What are the defining characteristics of a community? It’s a topic I’ve been pondering more and more lately. Is it about geography, common interests, socio-economic similarities, or similar viewpoints? The list goes on and on.
To get to this point, it becomes necessary to define what a community is. According to dictionary.com, a community is
a social, religious, occupational, or other group sharing common characteristics or interests and perceived itself as distinct insome respect from the larger society within which it exists.
As community managers, it’s our job to manage a brand’s online (and offline) presence. It’s a daunting task that requires us to assume a leadership role, channel the company’s voice, create buzz and drive engagement on and offline to achieve specific goals/outcomes. It’s fairly natural to assume that as the leader, you are building and growing a “community.” After all, there’s X amount of likers, followers, subscribers, doers’, doubters, troublemakers and everything in between, who are communicating in the group. However with most brand pages, this environment is actually fostering a false sense of community.
Most Facebook brand pages aren’t actually online communities. They are just glorified marketing channels. Some are done very well, others not so much. Here’s five reasons to explain this seemingly subtle distinction.
1. Fans and likers usually don’t just like a page based on common interests (or other community defining characteristics)
Most Facebook fans didn’t decide to “like” a brand’s page because they wanted to be part of an online community. In fact, the two most common reasons to like a brand are if you are a current customer or to receive discounts and/or freebies, according to a study by research firm, Chadwick Martin Bailey. The next most popular reasons are to show support for a brand, to learn more information and to get exclusive content. Couple that with the fact, that more than 75% of Facebook users who like a brand, like fewer than 10 brands total, and you wind up with stiff competition for eyeballs and page “likes.”
2. The vast majority of fans don’t participate on Facebook pages.
One of the biggest misunderstandings about Facebook is the assumption that once a person “likes” your page, they are going to keep coming back for more. A “like” on a page doesn’t guarantee that they will ever come back to that page and participate or even read any updates. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. According to an AdAge article, only one percent of fans on the biggest brand pages actually engage with the brand at all.
3. It’s a one-sided conversation
Going right alongside that, the few fans that stay actively involved on the page often don’t feel inclined to post updates or comment. Most of them are just casual observers or lurkers. This leads to a one-sided conversation led by the brand, or frankly no conversation at all. 82% of brand pages are updated less than five times a month, according to a recent study by Recommend.ly.
4. Numbers still matter.
Many brands are still very interested in the numbers game. No matter how many times a community manager, specialist or strategist vouches for quality over quantity, there’s always going to be push back to expand the messaging to a larger audience. Brands will often do whatever it takes to get more. Many of these tactics are counterintuitive to the core community-building strategies.
5. Gimmicks, expensive apps and games drive a lot of the action
So, how do brands up their numbers? Often times, they create gimmicks, such as games, contests, other fancy Facebook apps and pump hefty media budgets into Facebook ads/sponsored story campaigns. Some of these apps are quite effective. Yet, all they are doing is creating a false sense of community to help a brand spread their message further.
All of these are marketing tactics that are “forced upon” anyone, who expresses interest in the brand. It’s not a natural progression in a community sense. In a true community, members stumble into the group and then start talking with one another, usually naturally and without any real incentives.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing that brands are more likely to market instead of build community on Facebook. When done right, marketing on Facebook can be quite effective. That’s evident from Fortune 50 companies all the way down to mom and pop shops. After all, it’s all about creating an overall marketing strategy that understands your core business goals, and then using the most effective channels and tactics to achieve them. Facebook is one of the popular channels to spread awareness, get people talking about you and your products, increase conversions, drive offline actions (like event attendance) and even increase sales. However, if you’re trying to build a community around your brand through Facebook, it might be time to reconsider those strategies.
Is your brand page a community or a one-sided marketing channel?
About the Jessica Malnik:
Jessica Malnik is a PR/marketing coordinator, social media specialist, videographer and an avid blogger. Visit her blog for social media, technology, public relations and marketing ramblings.
The Five Reasons Why Most Facebook Brand Pages Aren’t True Communities is a post from: Convince and Convert Blog: Social Media Strategy and Social Media Consulting
Crystal Light Challenged Getting Ready For Bikini Season
Posted on 24. Feb, 2012 by Lisa Loeffler in Blog, brand communities, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media case study, social media optimization, social media strategy, Video Marketing
Guest post by Lisa Loeffler, Research & Analysis Lead at Convince & Convert. She is also founder and principal of Genuine Media, a marketing agency that helps clients build their individual and brand reputation through social media.
It started out innocently when I saw Crystal Light’s new TV commercial last month.
After rewinding it a handful of times and rolling in my personal laughter I thought it was funny enough to share. I grabbed the footage on my iPhone and loaded it up on YouTube.
Watch the video now to follow along on this post.
Like many other social media marketers you need to know a bit about SEO. And after loading the video to my YouTube channel I ran through my mental check list to optimize the title, description, tags etc. I even added a poll question for a little extra fun in the video description: “If you were stuck on a deserted island, what would you want to have the most?”
The next day out of curiosity I checked the views. I was pretty surprised to have more than 300 hits in 24 hours and 50 visits to my website. Pretty good stats as Crystal Light’s YouTube video only had 1,490 hits and they’d loaded their video 13 days before I did.
Today, seven weeks later, I have approximately 36K hits with 116 likes, 42 dislikes and a lot of comments – many of which I’ve had to remove for their surprising illicit content.
I attribute my video’s success mainly to optimizing my YouTube video, because through some searches (in which I logged out of Google) my video usually comes up number one for the terms “Crystal Light Commercial,” “Crystal Light Bikini Beach,” “Crystal Light Plane Crash Commercial.”
Below you can see the difference in the meta titles, description, tags, etc. between Crystal Light’s and mine. Initially when Crystal Light posted the video, they had no link directing visitors to their Facebook page. This was added approximately three weeks after the video was uploaded around the middle of January.
Crystal Light Commercial lacking SEO optimization and campaign detail.
My Commercial, SEO Optimized:
Curious to see what other people were saying about the commercial, I headed over to Crystal Light’s Facebook and Twitter sites.
When I landed on Crystal Light’s Facebook page I saw this fan gate…
But not until after liking Crystal Light’s page did I see this fan gate…where Crystal Light asks viewers to vote on the commercial’s ending. You can read the ending here.
I checked their Facebook wall and discovered they were promoting the contest regularly there…
As well as on Twitter…
But as an initial non-Crystal Light Facebook fan landing on their welcome page I was confused.
I, and I’m sure several thousands more, didn’t see the Crystal Light Challenge campaign reveal until after liking Crystal Light’s Facebook page. I wonder if they lost other people in the transition, especially those who didn’t know they had to like Crystal Light’s page in order to participate in the campaign after being directed from YouTube, Twitter or just casually landing on their campaign page.
That’s why it’s always important to test your campaigns before they go live. If possible, utilize some people outside your organization and others who may not be readily familiar with your brand so you can gain more audience perspective.
Crystal Light Challenge Campaign Overview
What they got right:
- Shock Value. Don’t over think the plane crash bit – this video is fabulously funny!
- Takes you to the fantasy and out of every-day life.
- Creates controversy and passion. People love it OR hate it!
- Attempt at social media integration – but doesn’t hit the mark.
What they could have improved:
- Add CTA (Call-to-Action) at end of TV commercial to drive viewers to Facebook promo landing page
- Push out official press release or SMR (social media release) to tease it
- Promote “Crystal Light Challenge” commercial on website
- Enhance YouTube SEO description and tags
- Drive people to “Crystal Light Challenge” landing page with Facebook/Twitter Ads or retargeting program.
What they got wrong:
- Bury the promo behind the fan gate on Facebook. You can’t see the promo until you “like” Crystal Light’s Facebook page.
- Non-Fans who visit via Twitter are directed to the fan gate page asking them to join the Crystal Light community – Again no mention of the promo on fan gate prior to “Liking” page
- Poor SEO optimization of YouTube video
- Title, tags, description lack depth for optimized search
- A little too late: They initially didn’t have a URL to drive people to Facebook, but added the link approximately 3 weeks after video launch.
I’m sure Kraft spent thousands of dollars hiring a creative agency, scheduling TV airtime, developing campaign graphics and utilizing their social media marketing team. But they failed to take full advantage of the entire tool chest to promote their ad and just picked a few – Facebook, Twitter & YouTube.
If they had taken the time to integrate their campaign across more channels, they may have experienced media success similar to Old Spice – The Man You Could Smell Like.
Take away:
Don’t make art for art’s sake.
When you develop an advertising campaign for your brand, step back and take a look at all the channels you can re-atomize your creative content to grab the most eyeballs.
Incorporate a strategic blend of social media, SEO, your PR and social teams, website, email and other channels you think (through research and testing) will get you in front of your customers and potential new customers.
Remember to develop a list of success metrics for your campaign (comments, reposts, downloads, forwards, RTs, etc.) and standardize your list against future campaigns so you’re measuring apples to apples.
If you do…You’re likely to come up with bigger success and more profits.
Measuring Facebook Fan Engagement Beyond the Like
Posted on 23. Jun, 2011 by Matt Simpson in Blog, brand communities, bulbstorm, facebook, Facebook fan pages, fan engagement, Guest Posts, Matt Simpson, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing
Guest post from Matt Simpson, interactive marketing director for Bulbstorm. Bulbstorm executes campaigns for brands seeking to create passionate bonds with consumers.
Not long ago, the ultimate measure of a successful Facebook promotion was fan growth. That was sooooo 2010.
Fan growth is simply not enough. Disagree? Throw out a sweepstakes app, dangle a free iPad, and buy some cheap Facebook ads. You can easily buy fans, but to what end?
It’s time we adjust our aim – and retrain our stakeholders’ focus – beyond that initial click of the like button and toward real engagement. Here are two ways we measure Facebook promotion success in the post-like world.
Depth of engagement
Boasting of fan count is like bragging about the size of your email list. A big list is nice, but how effectively are you using it?
At Bulbstorm, we’ve defined a metric we call brand engagements. It’s a tally of any and all thoughtful interactions consumers have with your brand on Facebook. Engagements range from liking or commenting in the news feed to interacting with content within a promotion application.
Brand engagements often form the bottom of the conversion funnel of Bulbstorm promotions. Some of our clients also want to drive to a campaign-specific objective like coupon distribution, email list growth, or user-generated content collection, as shown in the funnel graphic.
One recent promotion soliciting the submission and rating of user content drove 309,133 brand engagements in five weeks. That’s serious interaction!
That averaged out to 61,827 engagements per week – not bad considering the brand averaged 6,808 weekly engagements in the weeks leading up to the promotion. Here’s the data:
Of course, not all engagements are created equal. Consumers invest more of their passion into submitting a piece of user-generated content than into liking your fan page’s status. But a consistent approach to aggregating brand engagements enables you to compare campaigns and track depth of engagement over time.
Breadth of engagement
There are so many reasons individual Facebook users might miss your brand on a given day. Maybe they were playing Farmville. Maybe they didn’t log in. Maybe your content sucks – and suffers the wrath of Facebook EdgeRank or the user’s hide option.
That’s why one of our favorite pieces of data available through Facebook Insights is active users. This metric lets us see how many unique users viewed or engaged with a brand in the last week or month (either on a fan page on in the user’s news feed). This metric does not include users engaged with a promotions app, but your developer should be able to provide that number from App Insights.
Divide weekly or monthly active users (WAU or MAU) by fan count to get a rough gauge of engaged vs. non-engaged fans for the period.
Not surprisingly, WAU and MAU increase dramatically during a promotion. After all, a promotion gives you a compelling reason to ask for engagement. For example, one of our CPG clients experienced the following jump in engagement during a recent promotion.
Beyond the like
Is engagement the end all be all? No. Ultimately, we’re all looking to sell products or services at a healthy margin.
However, the metrics outlined above are indicators of a passionate bond between brands and consumers than fan count … at least until Facebook gives us a “love” button.
It’s time we wean ourselves – and our stakeholders – off of like campaigns driven by meaningless iPad giveaways. It’s time we evolve past validating our Facebook promotions by fan growth alone. How are you measuring engagement beyond the like button?
(Bulbstorm is a Convince & Convert client)
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