Two hundred thousand fans on your company's Facebook page, means that you are reaching your target audience, right? Not so, according to a study by Napkin Labs. The social media ideology that more fans equates to increased engagement has just been debunked. The study revealed that the key factors to developing a leads generating Facebook brand page and social media presence were quality interactions and superfans.
Over an eight week period Napkin labs analyzed fan engagement on 52 Facebook brand pages. Fans on each brand's page ranged between 200,000 and 1,000,000 fans. The results of the study showed that only 6 percent of fans were engaged with a brand's Facebook content. It was also found that as a brand's fans increased, engagement actually had the potential to decrease; brands pages with 900,000-1,000,000 fans had 60 percent less engagement than brand pages with 500,000-600,000 fans.
The study also found a brand's top twenty most engaged fans, superfans, have a greater influence than the brand's quantity of fans. One superfan equates to 75 fans. Subsequently, Napkin Labs found the top ten most engaged superfans received 2.3x more likes and 1.8x more comments than less active superfans.
According to Riley Gibson, co-founder CEO of Napkin Labs, "Superfans are vitally important to telling a brand's story. These numbers show that brand marketers need to focus less on the volume of fans and more on engaging the fans that they have. Involving engaged fans in richer experiences rather than just pushing messages is one key way to keep communities active and interested."
image credit: CBHdesign on Flickr