Brian Carter at Allfacebook offers some third party data that are pretty surprising and have some profound implications for Facebook marketing: “Among Facebook pages with a million likers or more, less than three percent of their fans are seeing their posts daily.”
Assuming the data are accurate, the takeaway seems to be: the larger the fan base the fewer people are actually paying attention. This applies much less to SMBs and local stores than it does to national brands. But even in the 1K to 10K category only 9.3% of fans are seeing daily posts (and doesn’t represent any type of action or conversion metric).
Carter goes on to talk about fan quantity vs. quality and how quality is more important. He also talks about keeping fans engaged on Facebook. But there’s often a big disconnect between the way that brands and agencies think about Facebook fans and the attitudes of the fans themselves.
According to data from email marketing firm ExactTarget, most fans are at best ambivalent or don’t really care about the brands they “Like” and will quickly disengage if they feel they’re getting too many messages from them:
Frequency is a key factor in consumers’ decisions to end brand relationships through Facebook. In total, 63% of consumers have “unliked” a company due to excessive postings—either the individual brand’s postings (44%) or in an attempt to cut down on overall marketing clutter (43%).
More data from the ExactTarget study:
- 55% of Facebook users have “liked” a company and then later decided they no longer wanted to see that company’s posts
- 51% of FANS say they rarely or never visit a company’s page after “liking” them
- 71% of FANS say they have become more selective about “liking” companies on Facebook
- 11% of people who created a Facebook account have stopped using Facebook
What the two datasets, if taken together, suggest is that brands and agencies need to find a balance between too few and too many messages. Beyond this Facebook marketers really need to be thoughtful about what they say and how they use Facebook.
Simply trying to collect a lot of Likes/fans, these data argue, won’t do much good — and may even do damage to the brand-customer relationship.
Thanks to Seb Provencher for pointing these data out.
June 22nd, 2011 at 2:45 pm
I imagine all of us have experienced personally how counter-productive “Liking” a business/brand is on FB. They need to rethink it. And then engage consumers when it actually makes sense by using their Likes database to drive personalized recommendations (vs unsolicited posts to my social feed). As an aside, they should consider buying Yelp to enhance their opinions database. My two cents. ideas are easy
June 22nd, 2011 at 2:55 pm
They’re moving toward a version of that recommendations idea with some of the Places changes. But I think you’re right.
Re Yelp they haven’t made any acquisitions that big and there’s a “we can build it bias” I believe. Most of their recent acquisitions have been more about people than technology or content.
After the company goes public there will need to be a shift, however.
June 22nd, 2011 at 2:56 pm
I will NEVER like a company because I don’t want their spam. I would be more inclined to follow one on Twitter however.
June 22nd, 2011 at 4:02 pm
Hey Greg
I’m interested as to why you say you would rather follow a brand on Twitter rather than Facebook…to me the mechanics are fairly similar and in my experience just as likely to result in spam.
(massive fan of your blog by the way - thanks!)
Dave
June 22nd, 2011 at 4:09 pm
Re Twitter vs. Facebook I don’t have the same expectations of Twitter. It’s purely a professional thing for me, whereas I have a mix of friends and professional contacts on Facebook. That makes it “messier.”
January 10th, 2012 at 2:02 pm
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