With Facebook Fan pages now migrated to the new Timeline format we’re starting to see some interesting statistics appear. Apparently 52% of Brands that migrated prior to the 3o March deadline experienced a reduction in Fan engagement on their pages. On the plus side, 27% of Brands saw an increase in their Fan engagement and it’s been attributed to pages following some best practice guidelines such as those listed below:
- Cover shot image is visually appealing
Remember it’s the first thing your readers see when they find your page, so make sure it represents your brand well - Profile picture is resized and clear
Your profile picture is what a Fan sees in their newsfeed, so make sure it looks good - The ‘About’ information is completed giving your reader a quick overview of what your business does
- Milestones images are uploaded
- Thumbnail Apps are displayed showing events, Twitter or Goggle+ , whatever is important to your brand
And lastly, the pages showing an increase in their Facebook Fan engagement are using the freely available Facebook ‘Insights’ to understand who their Fan is, their demographic, and the kind of content that most appeals to them. Getting that right is crucial for Fan engagement.
Have a look at the demographic example below. These are two companies within a similar industry and yet they have quite different Fan demographics. Company A has a Fan base that is primarily Female and in the 35-44 age bracket. By comparison, Company B is more evenly spread across all age groups.
Understanding Facebook Insights
Now imagine both of the companies above are selling holidays and each one decides they want to market, on their Facebook page, party type holidays to destinations like Ibiza and Corfu. What do you think of Company A’s chances of engaging that Fan base in the 35-44 age bracket? Chances are the content is not going to interest them. At the very least they’re not going to engage with your content, but if they think your content really isn’t for them, you run the risk of them ‘unliking’ your page altogether which means you lose them and any opportunity of reaching their friends. And by the way, the average number of friends for a Facebook user is 130 so that’s a lot of fan engagement you can lose by not tracking who your Fans are and giving them the content they want.
So, if you want to build Fan engagement, keep an eye on your Facebook Insights and use the information in there to post the kind of interesting and relevant content your Fans want from you.
I hope this blog has given you some food for thought however, if you’d like to know more about our social media training programmes, contact us for details.
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