How Important are those “Likes”?

It’s a common thing, that brands and businesses do…It has become a race to get the most “likes” on Facebook’s Pages if you brand or company is setup as a page. It does make sense, as if you come across a brand or person with over 25 million likes, like Starbucks for instance. Looking good on paper may not be enough for your brand’s ultimate internet marketing, though.

Clyde McKendrick, founder and executive strategy director for Cultural Capital, has spent the last 15 years developing big-brand names like Pepsi, Redbull, and T-Mobile. He has brought a new light to the surface of social media marketing: Brands need friends, not fans.

“Starbucks, one of the most popular brands on Facebook, has startlingly low engagement numbers, despite its 26 million fans. A recent post from Starbucks mentioned the company’s popular red holiday cups. Yet, its engagement rate (the number of gestures on the post divided by the total number fans at the time of this writing) only calculated to 0.28% Likes and 0.02% comments,” explains McKendrick.

Most fans tend to get the urge to “like” a page with either (1) incentive for a free gift or discount, and (2) to show support for that brand. So why can’t fan involvement still be done with “people” pages, versus brand pages. That way, you don’t have to worry about those unhealthy analytics, just because you are extremely popular.

From taking the “friend” approach rather than focusing on gaining a large number of fans, it could be incredibly beneficial for a brand to connect with the billions of users the same way that all of their hyperactive friends do—With tags, events, conversations, connect with outside apps, and of course, “like” everything they see.

Some important characteristics that brands can build a “friendly” focus are:

• Provide Ranking and Recognition
• Grant Exclusive Access
• Reward and Incentivize Sharing

McKendrick reminds brands to think like the fan, so you can become intertwined with the minds of the boost to your brand’s name: the people.

This is a really interesting concept that McKendrick brings up…Perhaps all these “likes” are simply just clothing the big brands in the most fashionable and poplar clothes…But what lies beneath is much more important.