The Power of Facebook Fans

Facebook Fan Pages are proving to open up dialog with consumers, empowering them to deliver actionable insights to global brands. Creating Facebook relationships and shifting communications from monologue (Brand-centric) to dialog (Fan-centric) can take time but if done correctly, can be extremely valuable. Addressing general trends and recognizing contributions from Fans can go a long way to motivating your Fans to become evangelists. The brands that are using Facebook effectively are actively engaging consumers. Their pages have creative content, two-way communication, active discussion boards, videos and images, and a fun and casual tone to match the medium. Below are five examples of brands that excel with this medium.

1. Coca-Cola (3.6 Million Fans)
The Coca-Cola fan page is a testament to the brand’s commitment to user participation. Coca-Cola has taken the unorthodox step of displaying user created content in their main page Wall feed by default, something that most brands shy away from. That’s a bold move for Coca-Cola, but one that really demonstrates their interest in getting fans involved with the brand. Coca-Cola also stands out in their approach to photo albums. Many companies simply incorporate an album of product pictures and call it a day, but Facebook offers companies a chance to get creative with photos, and Coca-Cola has taken advantage of that. They have a number of albums showing off the product, workers at the company, photos of Coke fans, pictures of Coke products from all around the world, and pictures of old Coke nostalgia. Coke knows that their brand is an icon and people don’t just interact with their product by drinking it — they actually collect it. The best example of how Coke is truly committed to their fans on Facebook is the story of how the page came to be. The page was originally created by two fans who just loved Coke. Coca-Cola found the page, and rather than trying to buy it or create another “official” page, they rewarded the two fans and worked with them to continue building the page and representing the brand. By empowering their existing fans, rather than trying to marginalize or steam roll them, Coca-Cola has been able to build on the connections that were already established with fans on Facebook before they even arrived in an official capacity.

2. Starbucks (3.8 Million Fans)
Starbucks is clearly dialed in to the world of social media, and that is reflected in the Starbucks fan page. The page incorporates great videos, varied content, and has active engagement with the fans. But what makes it truly exceptional, is its use of status updates. Status updates are an important aspect of any fan page because they provide two-way communication between company and fan, while keeping the page fresh with new content and information, which gives fans a reason to return. So many companies struggle to understand how best to utilize these updates and either don’t use them at all, update solely about product announcements, or update so often users become overwhelmed and the updates turn into so much noise. Starbucks, on the other hand, has established a good frequency of updates, sharing something new every couple of days. More importantly, though, the content is varied, fun, and interesting. Their updates share videos, blog posts about all aspects of coffee — and not just on the official company blog — including how to grow coffee beans, articles about Starbucks and Starbucks employees. The tone of each update is informative and casual, and even their product updates are kept varied enough to remain interesting, for example, by offering up reviews of new music or books for sale in their cafes. As a result, the quality status update content has led to a very engaged fan base, with every update receiving thousands of comments. The Starbucks Facebook fan page is a great example of how a company can still engage fans without the use of flashy apps, and instead simply focusing on quality content.

3. Adidas (2 Million Fans)
The Adidas fan page offers all the usual attributes of a strong page: active fans, a branded application, lots of content variety, plus, good video, pictures and notes. That’s all good stuff, but what really makes them stand out is the way they use their page’s tools to promote their other social media and advertising campaigns. Running a contest on Facebook brings variety to a page’s content, engages fans, and has the ability to directly increase the company’s revenue by introducing new customers to the brand. Lots of brands attempt to promote campaigns on Facebook, but there are only a few do it well. Most recently, Adidas teamed up with MTV to run an exclusive Facebook contest where a fan could win an all-expenses-paid house party. Their campaign was successful for a few reasons. First, Adidas chose a prize and partner that would resonate with their Facebook user demographic. Second, they wisely chose to promote the contest on their fan page not only before the contest, but after it had ended as well. Once they had chosen the lucky winner, they used their page to share the fan’s blog posts, photos and video from the party. The integration of status updates, photos, notes and videos, with a smart contest, resulted in a whole lot of fan engagement, and keeping the winning fan involved even after the contest had ended showed their commitment to fans and helped them get extra mileage out of the campaign. The contest also gave the page content variety by breaking up the usual status updates with something new, fun, and with an included call to action for fans to get involved.

4. Pringles (2.7 Million Fans)
While Pringles has created an inviting laid back tone, and managed to engage fans via reviews, discussions, and original interactive games, the most notable aspect of the page is definitely their use of video. Because videos are so easy to consume, video is among the most commonly shared types of content online. Pringles recognizes that its Facebook fans react well to comedy and have used their fan page to catalyze the spread of videos that certainly have the potential for virality. The videos are low budget productions with little editing or props depicting people singing goofy songs. It’s not much, but Pringles clearly knows its demographic, and the way Facebook works. By distributing the videos on their fan page, they’ve given users the chance to spread the Pringles brand to their friends without resorting to paid ad placements, which is exactly what thousands of people have done by “liking” the videos, an action which is then repeated in the newsfeeds of their friends and can potentially attract new people to the Pringles fan page.

5. Red Bull (1.2 Million Fans)
The Red Bull fan page is easily one of the best on Facebook simply because it has been able to break out of the typical fan page mold by providing fun content that encourages fans to interact with and ultimately connect with the brand. Their uniqueness is captured in their innovative incorporation of Twitter into their Facebook fan page. Integrating a Twitter stream is not special on its own, but Red Bull doesn’t just pull in tweets from their official corporate account, as you might expect most brands do. Instead, Red Bull has aggregated tweets from sponsored athletes like skateboarder Ryan Sheckler and snowboarder Shaun White and included them directly in their Facebook presence. Associating themselves with popular athletes, and letting fans connect to those athletes on a separate social network (i.e., not boxing them in) gives Red Bull some instant cool points. Their page’s “Boxes” section is also pretty darn incredible. Red Bull has built all kinds of content and applications that help them break out of the vanilla Facebook mold that forces all brands to look and feel more or less the same. They also deliver humor with an app that lets fans rate phone calls of people who “drunk dialed” the Red Bull 1-800 number. It’s not only hilarious, but it also successfully encourages fan engagement. Clearly Red Bull is a company that understands their audience and knows that the best way to connect with them on Facebook is with humor, fun, apps that get people engaged, and by being creative.

When designing your Facebook strategy, it's worth keeping in the mind the following objectives:

1) How can you drive awareness with product updates, promotions, events, etc.?
2) How can you build relationships with Fans by engaging in authentic conversations?
3) Can you get input and insights by requesting feedback from Fans and tracking what they are talking about?
4) Can you motivate action by encouraging Fans to try or buy new products?
5) Can you build brand evangelism by encouraging Fans to help reach new customers?

All the brands above have benefited from a solid brand image and loyal following before they actually joined Facebook and started using social media tools. They are all committed to engaging and empowering their Fans and have effectively done so.