facebook campaign: good posts, bad fans?
Those looking to inspire people through facebook is quickly disenchanted. Though an organization's Fan page is often quickly "liked" by many fans, comments and discussions are rare and interaction low. High-quality, relevant posts are the only way to fight against fans' passivity.
facebook is a noncommittal platform. Although 500 million people are connected to each other, with an average of 120 friends each, such "friendships" are invisible so long as the users don't comment on what they like or don't like, post an update or interact with others on facebook.
In our last blogpost, we suggested that nonprofit organizations use a Fan page. It only takes one click to like an organization's page, which then shows up on a user's wall, visible to their entire network. It's much easier than the requirements for creating a group page, but a fan page also requires less commitment from a fan.
But organizations want to connect with their fans! They want their message to come across! And they want their posts to be rewarded with likes or comments. In this way, the fans become tangible -- they are not only one of an unseeable mass of onlooker fans, but are active and re-active.
Quantity vs. Quality of Fans
The goal for organizations should not only be to acquire as many fans as possible, but rather to use interactive means of hauling them from a noncommital stupor into becoming active supporters of your message. The employees of an organization should suggest their organization's fan page to their networked friends. This makes the number of fans grow. At some point, though, the network has been formed and the number of thumbs up, "likes" slows to a trickle.
At that point, it's all about content. Are your posts interesting enough for your fans that they click on "like," or share it further with their own friends? Any fans who share your posts further are doing it because they find your post truly interesting and commit themselves a bit more as your friend.
The following fan categories were organized by social media expert Aliza Sherman.
Only a fraction of fans on facebook can be considered "super." Most of them are the hidden, behind-the-scene onlookers. (We will look at how to observe even this group of fans in our last blogpost "Measuring Success"). What should you post in order to activate the most fans? Beth Kanter, the co-author of "The Networked Nonprofit" says: "There is no formula. I suggest trial and error, since each organization is different and has a different group of fans."
Still, organizations can follow some basic suggestions:
- When to post? The best time is on workdays between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Active facebook users are online during the course of their workday. I haven't been able to find any numbers for this, unfortunately, but after looking at our own betterplace lab facebook statistics, I've seen that we have little to no interaction from our fans during evenings or on weekends. (If you know of any statistics or numbers to back up my claims, please leave a comment!)
- How often should you post? This is where it comes down to quality over quantity. We think that five posts per day should be the maximum, and the Nonprofit Tech 2.0 blog has said the same thing. You should spread the posts out over the day and not one directly after the other so that the superfan doesn't become super-irritated and decide to "unlike" your organization.
- Don't bore fans with your content: don't post automatic RSS feeds, twitter updates or dry press releases, but be choosy about your feeds. Even better is to encourage interaction with your posts: ask questions, start discussions, post mini-quizzes. And don't just spread your own gospel to the world, but post interesting and relevant links to content from other organizations.
- Don't forget to say thanks! The interaction from fans, even from critical feedback or for just being a fan (you could post a photo that shows how many fans you currently have, or post a short video clip)
- Post event photos! Following an event, you should be sure to post up photos from facebook and tag people who were there (if someone doesn't like this, they can easily untag themselves).
You can also keep up your presence on Facebook externally, by embedding "Like" and "Recommend" buttons in your blog, newsletter, email signature and website. (See our "Recommend" button above this blogpost and the "Like" button in the column on the right).
There are also offline ways to spread the word about your facebook page, whether it's on a sign in your office window, on business cards or flyers. That's why it is important to put some thought into a simple fan page name that is easily recognizable and remembered. You can choose a custom username URL as soon as your fanpage has reached 25 fans. For example, our customized username is facebook.com/betterplacelab.
Fans create more fans - but is more always better?
Even if you've done everything correctly and have a truckload of fans to show for it, you still have to live with the noncommital nature of facebook. I believe that pages with thousands of fans will automatically collect even more. On the one hand, this shows the empathy and importance of relationships: if my friend is a fan, I may want to be one too. On the other hand, perhaps a user just wants to belong to an in-group, though they may not actually have much interest in your cause.
I took a quick look at the Mashable facebook page, which announces new trends and resources in social media. Mashable has 289,975 fans as of October 12 at 10:30 a.m. and they almost always post questions such as "Let us know what you think?" The question that recently generated the most comments and likes on the Mashable page was "What do you think of the new GAP logo?" which dealt with the US American apparel company's heavily criticized attempt to create a new logo using crowdsourced social media. 0.059 percent of the Mashable fans (173) liked this post at the time of my research, and 0.051 percent (150) had left comments.
The betterplace lab currently has 547 fans. And do we have over 100 comments or likes? That would, of course, be nice. But the hard truth is that we have very few active fans. We've as yet never received more than three comments for any one post. However, even this small number of comments is already 0.55 percent of our fans, which is ten times higher than the percentage of active users on the enormously well-liked Mashable page.
At the end of the day, it's also the quality over the quantity of fans that one has collected that counts. Even a surge in fans may not translate to a corresponding surge in attention and activity. Most people react to relevant, interesting content. High quality material will bring in the quantity.
Translated by Becky Crook
