A recent study by Napkin Labs found that the Facebook pages of major brands engaged an average of only six percent of their fans over an eight week period. The report analyzed fan engagement on more than 50 brand pages with 200,000 to 1 million Facebook fans each. Engagement was lowest among brands with higher numbers of fans.
It’s common strategy for brands to increase awareness by acquiring more likes, but the study reveals that the influence of one engaged fan versus many inactive fans is more valuable in terms of overall reach. The approach isn’t new, and now there are stats to support it. Napkin Labs found that on average, the engagement of each one of a brand’s 20 most engaged fans is equal to that of 75 average fans.
So how can brands measure overall success
The answer is a higher focus on brands’ core audiences, or what the study calls “super fans,” the most devoted groups of users. These are the people who spend more time interacting; commenting, liking and participating in polls, thereby helping organically increase engagement.
The study comes as a result of some brands reporting diminished reach due to the recent change in Facebook’s EdgeRank algorithm that no longer shows brand posts in user news feeds if a user hasn’t recently interacted. The change is being seen as a way for Facebook to boost ad dollars. At the same time, it has presented brands with the challenge of creating more engaging content. Napkin Labs study lends even more credence to creating highly sharable content while at the same time targeting the most influential fans in a brand page community.
“If you can get fans involved, get them talking about the brand, the engagements of each of those fans gets pushed to their friends feeds. So you can actually build more presence in the news feed by engaging your core audience,” said Riley Gibson, co-founder and CEO of Napkin Labs.
Source: Mashable
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