Why Getting Facebook Fans Is Important To Your Brand
Facebook Fans are a measure of brand awareness, vanity, reach and achievement. However, before diving too deep into what being a Facebook fan means one must remember that becoming a "Facebook fan" of a specific brand is about a users social expression first, and about your brand second.
However, whether you're a politician, sportsman or model - or a regular being (like me) - you're likely to have some degree of interest as to how many Facebook fans or Twitter followers that you (or your favorite celebrity has) have. But does it really matter, and is it really creating value?
Groups too will be interested in how many Facebook fans they have: whether they're firms, product marketing teams or music bands. However, is the number really a success measure of success in itself?
Daniel Offer, strategist for our Facebook add on software "Chit Chat for Facebook" investigates:
Social Proof & Spread Of Influence
Robert Cialdini, Regents' Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University said in his bestselling book Influence that we "tend to like what our friends like." This concept he describes as social proof. So in essence, by having Facebook fans you are influencing their friends to like your image, brand and product or service. This in turn creates value and influences choices that people make.
Commitment & Consistency
When people engage with by "liking" a product or service, they commit subconsciously to buying it or engaging with it in future. Numerous studies have proved that where people commit to liking something they are more readily influenced by that product or service in the future.
Brand Awareness & Identification
Facebook fans provides an indication as to the quantity and type of people that identify with your product or service offering. Using Facebook insights from your group Admin Panel you can understand the gender, countries, cities and ages of people that use your product or service. This information/feedback can be used to influence future marketing campaigns to ensure that you correctly target whom your target market is. In essence, you have self selected market research as to whom engages and identifies with your brand.
Vanity
Whilst having more fans than someone may be an indication as to the level of popularity, it could also be a measure of a level success of social media strategy or level of social engagement or a particular audience. For example, at the time of writing Coca Cola has 35 million fans to Pepsi's 6 million. In the 3 months ending 2011-09-30 Coca Cola made $7.3m gross profit whereas PepsiCo made $9.1m gross profit. Whilst this small demonstration ignores the subsidiaries and other brands that the rivals own it does demonstrate that Facebook fan's isn't necessarily the best measure of success.
Brand Reach
Using insights provided by Facebook you will be able to identify where your brand is weak - or where your brand is strong. However, you must remember that some age groups are more social media engaging than others - you'll need to take this into account.
