You'd think it was a fairly obvious thing to ask, but it would seem that many marketers are confused about what exactly a Facebook fan is to them, or more particularly what it is that person wants from the brand they've just liked.
There was a surprisingly high spread of opinions on what motivated people to like their page.
- 57% thought that fans liked the content being shared
- 41% thought customers wanted a voice
- 33% thought fans wanted freebies
- 24% thought it was down to brand loyalty
This confusion for me stems from the confusion over just what it is that your social media presence should be achieving. I get the feeling that many marketers see the huge numbers of people flooding to social media and decide they simply have to be there. They have no idea what they will do there, who they wish to attract and what the will offer to people when they get there.
If you want your community to be a success you have to forget about the platform and focus instead on its purpose. You need to clearly define who you want to attract and what value you will provide them when they get there. Only then do you decide which platform to use to best meet those aims.
I think a lot of marketers apply the 'build it and pray' approach. They have no real idea why they have a Facebook page, and have no real idea why users would want to like their Facebook page. It's all a lot of guess work, but they know they have to have one because of the popularity of Facebook. It probably goes some way to showing just why so few Pages do any good.