Your Facebook Fans are "1 Percenters" - Ed Keller

With this weekamp8217s Facebook IPO filing a lot of big numbers are being bandied aboutAn estimated 5 billion initial offer and perhaps between 75 and 100 billion for the total market valuationFacebook also represents big numbers to brand marketers An audience of nearly 1 billion consumers and the growing legions of brand fans amp8211 often tens of millions amp8211marketers have accumulated on Facebook Social media pundits often liken them to an army of brand advocates ready to engage on a momentamp8217s noticeThe only problem with this scenario is that it turns out most fans are quite unenthusiastic about playing this role After the initial click to quotlikequot the brand they rarely interact again with the brand on Facebook That39s the headline finding from a new study just released by the prestigious EhrenbergBass Institute for Marketing Science in Australia The Institute summarized the findings as follows quotBig Brands Snubbed by Fans on FacebookquotAccording to Dr Karen NelsonField who led the study quotmany brands moved quickly onto Facebook when it emerged as the new frontier for reaching an audience but it has since proved a challenge to engage with who claim to 39like39 themquotMore specifically the researchers looked at Facebook39s quotPeople Talking Aboutquot metric to better understand consumer involvement with brand pages for which they are considered fans quotPeople Talking Aboutquot which was launched in October 2011 is designed to be an engagement metric for Facebook fan pages It measures people who contribute any type of content to a fan page including initial liking liking specific content on a page posting to a wall commenting sharing a post or other content answering a question photo tagging sharing a deal or any other way a user can share interactions with brand pages The EhrenbergBass study analyzed these consumer interactions for the top 200 brands on Facebook during a six week period last fallThe result Only 13 of fans engage with the fan pages during the course of a week And many of these are the result of an initial quotlikequot Among those who have already liked the brand in the past engagement drops to a mere 045The results are consistent with research I have written about previously which also showed quotof the ten brands with the largest number of Facebook fans amp8211 20 million fans on average amp8211 just 045 are active fansquotAs I wrote then quotFacebook has tapped into a powerful social need of consumers around the world and has amassed an extraordinarily large audience But it has not yet unlocked the secret to engagement with advertiser brandsquotDr NelsonField agrees calling 045 quotnot a totally miserable figurequot but rather quota sobering one particularly given engagement is supposed to be what differentiates Facebook from other mass reaching mediaquot And she continues quotThis doesn39t mean we don39t think Facebook is an important part of the marketing mix amp8211 we do amp8211 we simply encourage marketers not to spend a disproportionate amount of time and money trying to facilitate engagement or drive loyalty when we know that39s not going to happen with the push of the 39like39 buttonquotThis is further evidence that brands must think holistically about social engagement and consider all the mediamarketing channels that drive consumer word of mouth and brand advocacy Driving fan engagement on social networking sites is one vehicle among many As we have said before quotall media are socialquot suggesting there are multiple touch points that can be deployed by marketers to unleash advocacy And the behaviors that define engagement need to be looked for offline as well as onlineEd Keller CEO of the Keller Fay Group has been called quotone of the most recognized names in word of mouthquot The publication of Keller39s book The Influentials has been called the quotseminal moment in the development of word of mouthquot Ed can be contacted at ekellerkellerfaycom You can follow Ed Keller on Twitter kellerfay Read all Edamp8217s MediaBizBloggers commentaries at WOM MattersCheck us out on Facebook at MediaBizBloggerscomFollow our Twitter updates MediaBizBloggerThe opinions and points of view expressed in this commentary are exclusively the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaBizBloggerscom management or associated bloggers MediaBizBloggers is an open thought leadership platform and readers may share their comments and opinions in response to all commentaries

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Your Facebook Fans are "1 Percenters" - Ed Keller

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