7 ways to fuel fandom on facebook – a report from 360i

360i Point of View

7 Ways to Fuel FandomInsights, Tactics & Strategy for

Building your Fan Base on Facebook

© 360i – June 2011

Four years ago, official brand pages on Facebook were a bit of a rarity. Today, not only are most major brands on Facebook, but over the last two years, their total fan numbers have skyrocketed.

During the first quarter of 2011, fan growth for many large brand pages leveled off – or in some cases, receded. Over-couponing, non-strategic advertising and dated management tactics have caught up with many of these shooting stars. Recent platform and algorithm changes, as well as more stringent Facebook policies, have also contributed to the slowed organic growth.

So how does a brand grow its fan base in this new Facebook environment, and how should you evolve your strategy to keep up? The answer lies in understanding how the acquisition – engagement – advocacy process works and implementing balanced, creative content that drives engagement.

This POV provides seven steps for growing your Facebook fan base.

Why This Matters

| 7 Ways to Fuel Fandom – June 2011 | http://www.360i.com | Twitter: @360i

http://www.360i.com/

Table of Contents: 7 Ways to Fuel Fandom

1. Expand your reach with content 42. Make the most of media buys 123. Respond and engage 174. Create incentives 215. Utilize Facebook tools 276. Optimize mobile & offline 307. Activate through Inside Pages 36Recap 39



1. Expand your reach with content

Engaging content sparks conversations. Fans interact by commenting, liking or writing on your wall, and those interactions foster the organic spread of brand content and experiences throughout Facebook.

More Interaction = Greater Reach



Likes Page

Served Content

Engagement?Yes – Fans entered the

conversation and activated the next tier of engagement.

No – Fans did not enter into the conversation and thus, content

reach was limited.

Amplified Reach Limited Reach

Engaged Not Engaged


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Information: Deliver valuable on-brand information that your community will both appreciate and share with their friends.



Why this works: Well above average fan growth can be correlated to the days when the page posts its best performing content.


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Conversation: If you want to really inspire your fans to participate, ask them! Make your ‘Call to Action’ as direct as possible.



Why this works: This type of interaction drives organic growth through impressions and reach -- and by its very nature,

conversational activity is communal.


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Photos, videos and links: If your fans enjoy your content, give them more of it within each post. Posts with photos or videos attached to them are more likely to appear in the News Feed of your fans.



Featuring two or more photos in your post will increase engagement and impressions. One example of a compelling way to incorporate multiple images is by setting up photo quizzes or basic polls. Using this tactic, a CPG brand recently saw a 60% increase in fan growth above its previous monthly average.


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1. Expand your reach with contentQuestions: The new Facebook Questions tool can be an excellent messaging tactic while also benefiting your brand as a valuable consumer/fan insight tool. The feature is designed so that anyone on Facebook can participate, which has both pros and cons. Since non-fans can answer, more people can see and engage with your message; however, this also means that you no longer require that people Like your page to engage.

Insights

Brand Advocacy


Although fans can engage with the post without being fans, 360i has observed that a “Questions” post can in fact attract new fans.


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Tagging: Being tagged by a promotional partner raises the exposure of your content by making it visible on the tagged brand’s page. It also adds value to your fans’ experience by exposing them to other pages they may enjoy.



Cross-Talk: Brands can now interact with other brand pages the way individuals interact with each other. Cross-Talk gives us two new capabilities:

• Pushing certain actions into the News Feeds of shared fans• Writing on another brand’s wall or commenting on their pages

Tag another brand

Tag your brand in photos


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Curate messaging: Ask your community for their opinion and then act on it. Championing fan messaging in your branded status posts is an easy and earnest that shows your appreciation for the community.

Fans who feel they are being listened to are more likely to engage on your page when they’re posed a question. Asking the community to write some of your content can also offer you valuable consumer insight.


Ask – The best way to find out what your community wants to talk about is to ask them.

And Deliver – The best reward you can offer to your fans is to show them that you’re listening.



2. Make the most of media buysMedia buys are your only sure-fire way to acquire a specific number of fans. There are a number of different ad buy options on Facebook, but the most successful of these tie back to a larger content or event strategy.

After all, it’s not only how you get fans to your page, but how you keep them there.

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2. Make the most of media buysEngagement Ads: These ads see a greater number of impressions and can include exciting and visual elements like Polls and Video. They work well to build broad awareness and brands can also utilize the size of the buy to execute tests (A/B creative testing, target testing, etc.).


The most effective media campaigns typically combine Front Page Engagement Ads with Run of Site Like Ads.

• Premium placement• Multiple ad unit options• Pay on CPM• Recommended for campaigns with:

• Awareness objectives• High budgets ($50K+)• Engaging creative assets


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2. Make the most of media buysMarketplace Run of Site Like ads – If you have the resources, Run of Site and Marketplace ads can efficiently drive fan acquisitions. The most effective CPCs (Cost per Click/Fan) are attained when the ads are managed and optimized daily.



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2. Make the most of media buysSponsored Stories & Events – Sponsored stories and events leverage the power of social context. Nielsen reports that 90% of people trust recommendations from people they know.


Fans cannot directly like your page from an sponsored event, but using engaging and exciting content can draw users to your brand event and increase fan growth on your page.

Although there are three types of sponsored stories, only two effectively drive fan growth: Page Like Story & Page Post Like Story. These both target friends of current page fans.


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2. Make the most of media buysGaming Ads – Paid media within games on platforms such as Farmville, Rockyou and Social Vibe can be a powerful tool for targeting users engaged in social gaming. Gaming ads drive significant brand awareness and they have proven to be extremely successful when tied to an incentive.


Below: A toy brand’s Likes increased by more than 1,000% during the flight of a Facebook campaign that utilized Gaming Ads.


3. Respond and engageDriving engagement on your page requires both interactivity and proactive communication. A responsive messaging strategy sparks and rewards conversation – and encourages even more fan interactions.

More interaction means greater relevancy, greater reach & more fans.

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3. Respond and engage

Commenting: Focused and strategic responses help to create “super fans,” who develop a personal relationship with your brand and become top supporters. Identify opportunities to respond more frequently within status updates, as this notifies everyone who commented on the post instead of just the single person who posted on the Wall.


If engagement slows on your page, fan growth can be extremely difficult to retain.

Facebook will stop recognizing content as relevant if no one is engaging. As such, the content will not surface in your fans’ News Feeds.


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Like User-Generated Content: If you’ve asked your community to share UGC and they do so, reward them with acknowledgement and praise. Curating content means bringing the best UGC to the surface on your page by “Liking” comments and Wall posts according to their influence level. Liking UGC can also kick start conversations from your wall, which results in more relevancy to your fans’ friends.




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Customer Service: Brands are increasingly using Facebook as a means to field customer inquiries and concerns – and new platforms are making it easier than ever for brands to respond and resolve problems in a timely manner.

In some cases brands are using their Facebook page as a customer service destination, which accounts for almost all of their fan growth. RosettaStone and AT&T are two brands that utilize Facebook primarily for customer service.




4. Create incentives

Contests, sweepstakes and fan-championing are excellent ways to create big buzz while also offering an exclusive reward for your fans. The bigger and more custom-designed the contest, the more incentive someone will have to join your community.

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4. Create incentivesCreative Contesting: A retail company recently launched a sweepstakes in which fans of the page could enter for a chance to win a trip and a shopping spree. The sweeps on Facebook resulted in a spike in new fans 3,900% greater than the previous month’s average daily fan growth.


Be wary of over-couponing and dependence upon sweepstakes for your fan growth. If you create a community of fans who only arrive at your page for a sweepstakes, that’s all they’ll ever be.

Engage your fans, then reward with coupons if you want to retain fan growth.


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4. Create incentivesFan of the Week: One of the best ways a brand can celebrate its fans on Facebook is through fan recognition. Fan of the Week works best when the fans “earn it” by fulfilling an action or request. For example, Oreo fans are eligible for FOTW if they share a photo of themselves with an Oreo cookie.



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4. Create incentivesCoupons: Coupons are always a fan favorite, though they should be deployed strategically. Offering coupons to the community is a great reward for their loyalty and advocacy. However, using a coupon only to draw fans to the page will most likely result in acquiring fans interested only in those coupons. Finding ways to sustain engagement beyond the coupon/offer is critical to fan retention.


How this works: A coupon program recently helped to deliver fan growth 108% above the monthly average.


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4. Create incentivesGamification: Invite people to play with your brand and spread the word through gamification. Applications can allow you to incorporate games, contests, sweeps and promotions directly from your Facebook Wall.



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4. Create incentivesGroup Deals: Group deals like Groupon and Healthy Choice’s Progressive Coupon can also incentivize fans to spread the word on your behalf. Walmart’s CrowdSaver Facebook application invites shoppers to join together – from within the brand’s Facebook Page – to “unlock” a special deal.



5. Utilize Facebook tools

You’ve spent years building out your brand’s website, so the very least you can do now is take a few minutes to add social components to connect your digital assets in a meaningful way.

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Like Buttons: The Like Button lets brands promote and share from the company website back to their Facebook profile with just one click.




Activity Feed: The Activity Feed plug-in shows users what their friends are doing on your site through likes and comments.



Like Box: The Like Box enables users to like your Facebook Page and view its stream directly from your website.


6. Optimize your mobile & offline

Growing your Facebook community shouldn’t be limited to only online channels. You can make the most of your offline investments by tying messaging and creative back to your Facebook community.

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6. Optimize your mobile & offlineTelevision: Use your programming and commercials to incentivize or announce your Facebook promotions. Below, TV spots for Panda Express, Oreo, Toyota & Golden Corral promote their respective Facebook communities (photos via Teach to Fish Digital).



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6. Optimize your mobile & offlineEvents: Are you speaking somewhere, hosting a golf tournament or sponsoring a concert or a fundraiser? One great way to reach the masses is tell people about your page and give them a reason to visit.


A recent product promotion directly correlated to a 586% above average daily fan growth for one brand.


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6. Optimize your mobile & offlinePoint of Sale: If you have the opportunity to be face-to-face or put your product in fans’ hands, put a little reminder in their hands too, via stickers, signs, cards, magnets and prints. Some brands, like Heinz and Cold-Eeze, have also promoted their Facebook communities on their product packaging.



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6. Optimize your mobile & offline

Print: Through QR Codes and promotions, the old print world is still in play, and can drive to your digital properties.


Print + mobile combine to drive fans for American

Eagle Outfitters, Toyota and other brands.


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6. Optimize your mobile & offlineFacebook Places, Events and Deals: It’s difficult to directly correlate fan growth to mobile acquisition tactics. However, you would be remiss in excluding mobile from your fan acquisition strategy.

Mobile elements add both reach and innovation to your existing tactics. For instance, Gap created an event to promote its Free Jeans Giveaway.



7. Activate through ‘Inside Pages’

Although Inside Pages (formerly Tabs) are more hidden in the new Facebook layout, they can still add significant value to your page.

Create good content, drive consumers there, and then activate them to participate, share and advocate for you.

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Inspire advocacy: Build a destination for participation. This can be a home for your brand to inspire and showcase your fans’ love of your brand.

Engagement and sharing are the goals here. Ideate on how what you offer on your inside page directly ties back to your strategic goals.


Smirnoff invites its fans to “Be the Face of Smirnoff” and be featured on the brand’s Facebook page.


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Value comes in the form of emotional connections or functional activity. Identify value exchange opportunities to encourage communal activity.



Philly’s Cooking Creme tab incentivizes users to Like the page in order to unlock additional exclusive content

Oscar Mayer’s Good Mood Mission page connects fans to each others’ good deeds and incentivizes them to share the good feeling and “Good Mood.”


Recap

1. Content: Rich, engaging content inspires an emotional connection and taps into new Facebook features that help ignite optimal reach.

2. Paid Media: No fan acquisition strategy is complete without a smart, focused paid media plan.

3. Converse: A responsive messaging strategy demonstrates your brand’s commitment to its fans and capitalizes on your most influential advocates.

4. Incentivize: Exciting, brand-appropriate incentives strategically reward engagement, participation and advocacy – not just a visit to the page.

5. Facebook Tools: Analyze your digital architecture and find opportunities to utilize Facebook plug-ins and other social tools.

6. Offline and Mobile: Connect your fans across your assets. Add more entry points to your page from all of your available media outlets (including Word of Mouth).

7. Inside Pages: Combine your goals, your assets and your brand voice to create a new experience on Facebook that welcomes, engages, rewards and delivers a unique and exclusive experience for your fans.



If you only remember three things…

• Fan acquisition is vital to the health, perception and reach of your brand on Facebook. Ultimately, total fan numbers are only as important as the percentage of active users who engage with you.

• Understand what it is that your fans and consumers perceive as valuable. Then give it to them.

• The decisions that you make should not be selected at random. The most successful growth on Facebook comes as a result of blending a number of tactics together and tailoring them to meet your objectives.



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360i is an award-winning digital marketing agency that drives results for Fortune 500 marketers through insights, ideas and

technologies. 360i helps its clients think differently about their online presence and evolve their strategies to take advantage of the new world of marketing communications – one where brands

and consumers engage in interactive and multi-directional conversations. In 2011, 360i was named to Ad Age’s Agency A-List

and to Fast Company’s list of the “World’s Most Innovative Companies.” Current clients include Oreo, jcpenney, Coca-Cola,

Bravo, and Smirnoff, among others. For more information, please visit blog.360i.com or follow us on Twitter @360i.

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7 ways to fuel fandom on facebook – a report from 360i

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