Facebook Brand Pages: One Global Page or a Confederation of Many?

Facebook Pages cannot be rated on size alone; engagements must be considered. But what approach leads to more interactions and more fans: a Single Global Page or A Confederation of Many Pages?

Looking at the 10 largest brand Pages on Facebook, we find an average of 7.8M fans per Page each enjoying 3,367 interactions (likes + comments) per post. Sounds high? It’s actually quite low considering the millions of people they’ve drawn into their Page. As a rule of thumb you should expect 1 interaction per 1000 fans (rating of 1/1000 x 1000 = 1.0). The average interaction rating for these Single Global Pages is 0.4 compared to 1.1 to 1.6 for brands adopting the Confederation approach.

Top Global Brand Pages
Coke – 14.8M fans, 0.4 interaction rating (5,783 avg interactions per post /14.8M fans)x1000
Oreo – 11.9M fans, 0.6 interaction rating
Skittles – 11.3M fans, 0.6 interaction rating
Red Bull – 10.0M fans, 0.2 interaction rating
Pringles – 5.6M fans, 0.3 interaction rating
Nutella – 5.1M fans, 0.1 interaction rating
Starburst – 5.3M fans, 0.4 interaction rating
Dr Pepper – 5.0M fans, 0.8 interaction rating
Ferrero Rocher – 4.3M fans, 0.0 interaction rating (there are no Ferrero posts!)
Reese’s – 4.3M fans, 0.8 interaction rating

How does this compare to the Confederation of Many approach?

• Starbucks – 18.8M fans total. In addition to the 15.9M fans in their US Page they have 24 Country Pages totaling another 2.9M fans. Overall the interaction rating is 1.1 – higher than any Top 10 Brand – and countries range from as high as 15.2 for Mexico (extremely high) to a low of 0.5 for the UK.

• BlackBerry – 5.0M fans total. In addition to the 2.6M fans in their Canada/US Page they have 21 Country Pages totaling another 2.4M fans. Overall interaction rating is 1.5 – high – with Pages like BlackBerry Thailand, Argentina and Indonesia running away with interactions. They all rate over 4.0.

• Captain Morgan’s – 660k fans total. 2/3rds of that are in the US Page, the rest split among 14 other countries. Interaction rating is 1.6 overall with some highly engaged communities like Captain Morgans South Africa rating 7.6 for their 20k fans.

Summary: The Confederation of Many appears to attract more fans and more engagements. Possible reasons include relevancy (instead of a general global message), language (successful Pages publish in the local country language instead of English) and culture (posts in Mexico are much riskier than Germany.)

*all figures pulled from Facebook externally

Top 1000 Facebook Pages: Summary of Categories

Summary of the top 1000 Facebook Pages ranked by size on September 2, 2008.  A few observations:

• musicians captured 1/4 of the top 1000 pages
• tv shows, film, and actors took another 1/4
• all brand names comprise another 1/4
• the remaining 1/4 are made up of a few dozen other categories including politicians, other celebs, sports teams, and random fan pages like chocolate, tattoos, and summer

Looking at the detail charts, a few other random observations:

• only 18 brand names made it into the top 100 pages
• Michelle Obama, a lawyer, is ranked as the 5th most popular politician on Facebook
• vodka, red flavour pringles, and Spider Pig are each more popular than John McCain

 

Facebook Pages: Summary of Categories
Top 1000 Pages Ranked by # of Fans
02-Sep-08
Page Category	Pages	Fans	Avg # Fans
Musician	252	30,970,642	122,899
TV Show	126	13,660,772	108,419
Film	96	9,832,186	102,419
Other Public Figure	79	7,868,008	99,595
Food and Beverage	67	6,285,075	93,807
Actor	57	4,903,207	86,021
Products	52	6,027,760	115,918
Comedian	37	3,907,230	105,601
Other Business	32	2,875,201	89,850
Athlete	31	4,854,531	156,598
Game	21	1,349,243	64,250
Fashion	20	2,140,543	107,027
Sports Team	16	1,093,375	68,336
Sports / Athletics	13	1,696,337	130,487
Technology Product / Service	11	1,561,169	141,924
Consumer Product	10	979,041	97,904
Non-Profit	10	578,394	57,839
Politician	9	2,537,562	281,951
Restaurant	9	625,302	69,478
Communications	7	521,486	74,498
Automotive	6	633,533	105,589
Cafe	4	346,448	86,612
Professional Service	3	197,016	65,672
Religious Center	3	189,459	63,153
Writer	3	231,928	77,309
Club	2	177,507	88,754
Critic	2	160,626	80,313
Model	2	116,943	58,472
Museum / Attraction	2	120,846	60,423
Pharmaceutical	2	269,433	134,717
Retail	2	141,971	70,986
Travel	2	249,363	124,682
Visual Artist	2	108,524	54,262
Website	2	396,392	198,196
Airline / Ship / Train Station	1	43,888	43,888
Financial Service	1	50,966	50,966
Grocery	1	48,999	48,999
Online Store	1	112,937	112,937
Park	1	135,902	135,902
Religious Organization	1	58,831	58,831
Technology and Telecommunications Service	1	95,728	95,728
Travel Service	1	52,690	52,690

Obama vs McCain on Facebook

Using Facebook Lexicon to measuring instances of the words “obama” and “mccain” on Facebook walls, guess who wins?  Even with the recent listeria outbreak from McCain foods adding a ton of traffic to instances of “mccain”, Obama continues to dominate his political rival in every web metric I’ve gathered.  This is even bigger than his web dominance over Clinton in the primaries.

John McCain may not need to be tech- or media-savvy, but his camp sure does.  They’re running out of time.

no surprises here