Facebook’s adding some new ways to help creators maximize engagement in-stream, and grow their in-app community, including fan challenges, custom Top Fan badges, and new metrics to help you keep track of your engaged member growth.
First off, on fan challenges. Facebook’s adding a new way for creators to drive direct response from their audience, by issuing custom challenges for their fans to participate in.
As you can see from these example screens, now, creators with over 100k followers will be able to issue prompts to their audience, inviting them to participate in a challenge of your choosing.
As explained by Facebook:
“Fan challenges enable an easy but powerful way to connect with your community over a shared moment or topic that matters to you. Invite your fans into the creative process by setting a prompt and empowering your fans to create and share content with you and each other.”
Facebook says that your challenges can be as simple as sharing your morning routine or a recipe, but creators can also use them to “prompt people to talk about and share content around an important moment that matters to you - like events, launches, or milestones - to build excitement with your fans.”
“Challenges can run anywhere from a quick 7-day burst to a multi-month run - so you can pick the timing that feels right for you and your community.”
Once you launch a challenge, a dedicated fan challenge details element will be accessible via your Facebook fan page, which will include a feed of all the entries that have been submitted, as well as a leaderboard of top contributors.
“Leaderboard rankings are based on public fan content that has received the highest number of reactions. Fans can submit multiple posts or reels to the challenge, and each post or reel counts as one entry.”
There are no specific rewards for participation, but creators will be able to recognize the top contributors as they see fit.
It could be a good way to get people engaging in a more focused way, which could also encourage more members of your community to participate. And as Facebook notes, it could also assist with promotion of upcoming events or launches.
Though it could also be misused, in issuing anti-social challenges or prompting illegal behavior. Fan challenges can also be private or public, and while Facebook will likely take action on any harmful uses of the option, there could be some vectors for misuse.
But in general, it may provide more opportunity to drive fan engagement, and prompt more contributions from your audience.
As noted, fan challenges are currently available to all eligible creators globally with at least 100k. More information here.
On a related front, Meta’s also launching new custom badges to recognize top contributors in large creator communities.
As you can see in this example, with this new update, creators with more than a million followers on Facebook can now name their own fan badges for their top fans, which will provide another way to recognize their more dedicated members.
So in variance to the regular Top Fan badges, you’ll also have this next-level recognition, which will give these members additional recognition.
Elite-level fans will be able to accept or reject the new badge type, and creators will be able to change the name of their custom badge each month, if they choose.
Finally, Facebook is adding some new insights into the number of Top Fans you have on your page, as another means to track engagement.
Facebook says that this data will help you understand how your engagement and recognition efforts are deepening audience connection and loyalty, by crediting your most engaged members with specific badges.
Some interesting considerations for fan pages in the app, which could help to drive more engagement, and provide more promotional opportunities.
