This week we compare two brands and their following to demonstrate the importance of social media engagement and fan advocacy.
Jack is the social media manager for a company with 1,000,000 “likes” on Facebook. Great! He posts content just about everyday to its Facebook page, seeing a few likes and maybe an occasional share per post. As far as Jack’s concerned, his company is doing well on social media, though he hasn’t seen any correlation between his program’s implementation and the sales of his product.
Jill is the social media manager that has about 10,000 fans on Facebook, which is a bit smaller than she would like. However, Jill runs a fan advocacy program for her brand, and 100 of her fans have signed up to share her content on their personal social media networks. With an average 400 friends per fan, Jill’s content reaches 40,000 people through personal channels. Jill’s content includes links to ordering pages, recipes for her food product, and other materials that fans of her product enjoy engaging with.
Which company is doing it right? While Jack has a large social media following, statistics show that 75% of people who “like” a Facebook page will never seek it out again, only interacting with it if its content reaches their news-feed. That wouldn’t be so bad, except Facebook’s algorithm only allows 16% of a company’s fans to see their posts organically, and that’s the high end of the estimate. So best case scenario, Jack will reach 160,000 of its fans from its posts, yet these posts come from Jack’s Facebook page, meaning its fans will implicitly view it as an advertisement or corporate-styled post.
Jill, on the other hand, has taken advantage of word of mouth marketing to mobilize its best fans and increase its reach online. Rather than just click “like” and forget about the brand, Jill’s fan advocates receive email updates 2-3 times per week and share her content in exchange for prizes such as discount codes and coupons for her product. When friends of these advocates see Jill’s posts, they appear as personal recommendations coming from these advocates. For instance, which of the two are you more willing to click on: 1) a banner advertisement, or 2) a link that your best friend shared? The answer is pretty simple.
But let’s merge the two: if you have 1,000,000 fans on Facebook and mobilize just 1% (10,000) for a fan advocacy program, you could reach 4,000,000 people with content that looks like a personal recommendation from a friend!
With fan advocacy, 100 engaged fans can be more effective than 1,000,000 so-so fans. When you create such a social media ambassador program, you encourage people to interact with your brand and increase your reach online. If you have any questions about fan advocacy, feel free to reach out to us or request a demo about SocialToaster’s fan engagement platform today.
