23
2010
Rewarding users to fan your Facebook page
An article by 
Collecting Facebook Page fans seems to be a core social media activity for many brands, both local and international.
And with good reason. Having a large fan base will give brands a competitive advantage over brands that do not, especially with the next wave of “social search” which will be hugely influenced by the size of a brands social footprint.
So it is no surprise that brands regularly reward people to “fan” their Facebook page, with little regard for whether the user is a genuine brand consumer or not. Almost every week sees a new campaign on Twitter asking people to fan a page, tweet the process and stand a chance to win an iPad or some other latest gadget.
When Bing, the Microsoft search engine, offered Farmville players “Farm Cash” in return for “liking” the search engine on Facebook, it got 400,000 new fans in a day.
Certainly, having a large fan base on Facebook can be worth a lot to a brand, especially if the Facebook pages are part of a bigger and well thought out strategy. But there is a fine line between getting genuine fans, to getting “fluff” fans who are there to grab an opportunity, but have little affinity to the brand itself.
Perception is also important here. If the brand starts a campaign to grow its fan base that is annoying “innocent bystanders”, there can be great fallout from something that had the best of intentions.
Brands should therefore think twice about the real cost of acquiring a fan, and should weigh up the pros and cons of an aggressive strategy. My recommendation is usually to reward only those users who are already interacting with the brand, and to recruit new users in a more authentic way.
Why do users fan Facebook pages?
