Facebook, the social network that has encouraged heightened individualism for Internet users, is not so much concerned with you anymore as they are with your friends. Fan acquisition, a term noted by Mashable’s Stacey Politi, has become the main drive behind Facebook’s new business strategy.
According to a recent comScore report, fans are 40 to 150 times more likely to expend branded material in their personal news feeds than on the actual fan page. This insight drove Facebook to create the “Page Insights” feature that incorporates new metric tools intended to consistently remind business owners about one of the big players in customer acquisition: engaging content.
Because Facebook’s algorithm ensures more relevant content to appear on every user’s news feed (relevancy defined by likes, shares, comments, etc.), it encourages interaction not only amongst the first degree of influence, but the second and third as well.
Thus information passing from one person is exposed to another, encouraging friends of fans to more than likely visit a brand’s store, website and even more motivated to purchase than the first degree of influence (or un-influence).
Interestingly enough, according to Stacey Politi’s Facebook Analytics Fans Report, the average friends-of-fans group for the top 100 Facebook brand pages is 34 times larger than the initial fan group (meaning corporations have greater influence amongst its second-degree connections).
Another metric Facebook has introduced earlier this year is “People are talking about this.” This measuring tool permits the page administrator to know what type of content has proven to be the most compelling and interactive.
The more engaging content posts are, the more likely they are to lead to yet another important factor in fan acquisition: virality. Virality helps to analyze the success of individual posts, as well as investigate how people are connecting. And how we are connecting is an even bigger indicator of what type of content is deemed (by its users) as more appropriate to post to a particular social network.
By gaging fan behaviour (and ultimately the act of sharing), marketers can allow for better understanding fan and friend conduct, where they need to be and when, and what type of content they’ll get the best reaction out of from not just you, but your friends too.
If you have any questions or comments about fan acquisition, we’d love to hear from you.