Trying to increase your Facebook fans, Twitter following or even charitable donation numbers? Give something away.
Brands make a habit of promising that if YOU follow or like they’ll give things away to a varying number of followers. Life as a Community Moderator has by no means made me immune to this. In the past year, I’ve become a fan of Einstein Bagels—even though I don’t eat bread. I’ve voted on my favorite feature of a Ford Explorer and “liked” the page—even though I have no use for a car in the city, and I’ve followed Chicago Food Critic Steve Dolinsky for the chance to go to dinner with him (and won)—even though (I’m sorry, Steve) I had no idea who he was. Why? Because these brands were all giving stuff away and even though I didn’t necessarily need this stuff, I did what these brands and people asked for a chance to win. Was I bought or was I earned? Short answer: I was bought in all cases except for Steve Dolinksy, he’s great. I don’t fit the other brands’ profiles of a model community member, and I’m a useless fan.
Upon realizing my own affinity to follow the directions of those who will buy or give me things, I started to think through successful contests and giveaways for branded communities. Thus, my proposal for a SXSWi panel, Fans for Freebies, was born.
Aside from my own anecdotal evidence in Einstein Bros Bagels’ giveaway, the brand posted some solid fan numbers after it gave away coupons for free bagels to all who liked its page. In an interview with Spinsucks.com, the brand revealed that it increased its fan numbers from 4,700 to 613,703. Suspecting that many would have dropped off as fans after downloading their coupons, I checked the Facebook fan page’s current fan count: 613,413. That’s a 310 fan loss, out of 609,003 fans gained through the giveaway, that’s over a 99% retention rate. In college, we called that an A+. Because Einstein featured more deals and giveaways since their initial free-bagel offering, my conclusion is that these fans actually frequent Einstein Bagels enough to make use of the page’s coupons, thus they are valuable and active fans. Aside from those who gave their coupons away (me), these fans were earned.
A venture brought to life by a few Critical Mass employees, Babybot, facilitates discount days based on Facebook fans numbers. Babybot sells all things modern for babies and kids on its Web site, but the e-commerce site used its Facebook presence to both reward the loyal and increase brand knowledge. To get the page to 400 fans, BabyBot offered to give fans a coupon code that gave them 10% off for two days. With every 100 additional fans, that percentage increases by 5. They just hit the 900-fan mark and will be giving a 35% discount for 2 days. Because kids seem to grow and need a plethora of things to grow with them, this deal seems to work for parents living on the cheap and fans are sticking around. These fans were earned, but I wonder how long this rewards structure can be sustained. It seems the hope is that once they reach 1000, enough of those fans will have purchased something and will stick with them for the quality of the goods and service, not the hope for constant discounts.
Non-profits have also been implementing these strategies successfully. LIVESTRONG encouraged new people to follow the non-profit to achieve a common goal: raising money for cancer. On several occasions, the moderator-facilitated fan drives with the end goal of receiving a donation from an outside party. LIVESTRONG once increased fans by an impossible number, around 15,000 in order to receive a $25,000 donation from a private donor. When it comes to seriously good causes like LIVESTRONG, buying or earning fans it’s really important to earn them because the end goal is continued donations and advocacy.
Facts: Currently, LIVESTRONG’s following of 76,569 is actively engaging with the brand. Approximately 11,028,000 people in the United States fighting some form of cancer. People are speaking positively about the brand in 9 instances out of 10 according to Social Mention. The facts are the facts. These followers were earned.
Because measurement and ROI comprise the takeaway I am most looking forward to from this panel, the brunt of my questions fall in the metrics category.
1. Einstein Bros Bagels saw a fairly large jump in fans after it asked its fans to simply like its page to gain access to their freebies. How much does that fan number go down when the barrier to enter goes up with contests like Gatorade’s Replay on Facebook?
2. The ease of calculating cost per fan is what makes contests so interesting to me: If the promotion runs for a week, simply subtract average organic fan growth per week from the fans or followers gained. Divide the promo cost by that number. But what about a promotion that awards something to everyone like Einstein Bros? How are sales and brand sentiment ultimately affected by social media freebies?
3. What types of fans come from these promotions? Is it ever detrimental to the brand’s community and its conversation to pull in fans that aren’t actually passionate about the brand already?
If these questions interest you as much as they interest me, please be sure to vote for my SXSW panel. If you have any additional questions that you’d like answered, please post to the comments.
Jeana is a Community Moderator for Nissan Cube and Juke brands in the Chicago office.
