Do you know the value of your "Superfans?" At Xynergy® we help manage the social media profiles of several Santa Fe businesses but we had no idea how valuable our Superfans were. What is a Superfan? Superfans are your most loyal supporters who are extremely responsive and involved in all of your business's social media activity and every business has them.
A recent article by Allison Howen in “Website Magazine” claims that these superfans are the key to higher engagement rates. It turns out that only small portions of a brand’s Facebook fans are actually active on that brand’s timeline. If they are inactive they are not helping raise brand awareness for other users. Therefore, companies should measure success by engagement rates instead of total audience members because these involved interactions (shares, comments, and retweets) have a far greater impact on the metrics, such as site traffic and product views, which lead directly to conversions.
In the article Howen encourages businesses to use social media to build trust and generate interactions among their superfans. These superfans are invaluable because they are brand advocates whose interactions provide free viral advertising for your business across social sites. So these superfans are the lifeblood of your social media presence, but how do you get more superfans?
Howen goes on to suggest that the best way to earn more superfans is to become one yourself. She conducts a simple experiment to gain a better understanding of the value of acknowledging fans and of providing better content by becoming a superfan. She begins by engaging the company Tillamook Cheese in a conversation about one of their products. In response Tilamook Cheese goes out of its way to continue the conversation with her. Howen remembers this positive interaction next time she goes food shopping. On the other hand, Howen reached out several times to another company, Burt’s Bees, and received no response. This turned out to be extremely discouraging to her and prompted her to stop interacting with them via social media.
The results of this impromptu experiment are simple; when a customer interacts with a brand through social media they expect a response, whether it be a comment, a retweet, or even just a like. As a general guideline – the more clever and interactive the response – the better. These interactions are a much stronger way to get your audience involved than to push nonstop promotions at them At Xynergy® we can target our social media activity towards our superfans by acknowledging fans eager to get involved and by providing great content. It also wouldn’t hurt to become superfans ourselves and gain some perspective.
http://www.websitemagazine.com/scripts/sub/digital.aspx?issue=61&startpage=39
