They're Followers. Not Deal Hunters.

“Customers only follow us because they want deals and discounts.” I’ve heard this countless times in meetings. There’s often a misperception that a brand has to offer steep discounts and exclusive offers for consumers to pay attention to them on social networks. The truth is, deals are just a bonus. What they really want is to hear from the brand.

Deals and discounts certainly help, but they’ve never been the key to success. If anything, they offered a way to get people to follow a brand, giving the brand a chance to deliver a different kind of value in the form of ongoing content, which consumers value over the long-term.

Now, we have the stats to prove it.

We’re all evolving.

Facebook declared that brands needed to offer value to their communities in the form of content when it got rid of landing tabs. Facebook pages can no longer be treated like microsites. They now need to be leveraged the way they were always meant to--as a way to connect with a community of brand fans. Marketers have been forced to evolve their approaches to Facebook.

Consumers are evolving too. eMarketer reports that 59% follow companies online because they shop at their stores or purchase their products. 45% want insider knowledge and special deals, and 38% want to keep tabs on the company. The bottom line is people follow brands they advocate for.

We can leverage this mindset.

This means consumers who follow a brand are ripe with opportunity. They aren’t just people we can deliver content to. They’re individuals we can mobilize.

With mass media, advertisers are paying a network for its audience. With social media, we’re using our audience to reach their networks (their social networks). A consumer who follows a brand can be motivated to spread word of mouth, multiply engagements and deliver a brand message far more effectively than a brand can do on its own to their interpersonal networks.

The opportunity is significant. Wildfire released a report on the impact of superfans and found, among other things, that: 

• For every 10 advocates a brand gets to join a social campaign, 13 new people interact with the brand.
• Brands that focus on engaging advocates see three times more engagement than average brands.
• Brand advocates generate an average of 14 earned media impressions each.

They’ve raised their hands.

Consumers who have chosen to follow a brand have raised their hands. They’re interested. They’re invested. Now, use the tools (deals, exclusive access, content, promotions, etc.) to mobilize that community into action. They’re waiting for something other than deals.

Tab Engagement Is Down and It Doesn’t Matter

Last week Mashable published an article based on data from PageLever that Facebook tab engagement dropped 53% since the transition over to Timeline. The article cites two reasons for the drop: brands can no longer set custom landing tabs and tabs are less visible on the Timeline layout.

The study’s worth noticing because many brands have invested significant resources in developing tabs to supplement their Facebook Pages. Once again, Facebook changed the rules, leaving some marketers with reason to question their current approach to Facebook.

In reality, it gets brands to refocus or continue focusing on where Facebook wins. In many ways, tabs can be a distraction from where success really occurs on Facebook consistently.

It’s always been about the News Feed.

Often marketers consider their Facebook Pages to be their primary avenues for reaching their Facebook communities when in reality Pages are only a means to an end. That end is the News Feed. The majority of a brand’s Facebook community isn’t going to go to a Facebook Page, but they will go to their News Feed (they have to to use Facebook).

This means brands must focus on content (text, photos and videos) that receives engagement (Likes, comments, shares) to have a voice in that News Feed. That’s the mechanism Facebook has put in place to drive engagement with its users on a consistent basis, and that means it needs to be marketers’ focus.

Facebook Is and Never Was a Microsite.

Facebook can’t be viewed as a microsite, but that’s how many brands have approached it in the past. Facebook’s taken the ability to even come close to making Facebook a microsite away with the removal of default landing tabs. A Facebook Page is a branded community driven by content and conversation between members of that community, and no tab can make it anything else.

Tabs Should Enhance a ‘Facebook’ Experience.

Facebook tabs should be viewed as a way to deliver a deeper Facebook experience by driving another level of interactivity, but they shouldn’t be the main attraction. They can’t be. So they need to justify user attention and should fit into the Facebook ecosystem by being participatory, entertaining and worth sharing.

Marketers can then userFacebook posts, ads and organic virality built into their tabs to drive traffic and attention to them.

An Opportunity to Refocus

Tab engagement may be down, but the opportunity to use Facebook as a community engagement platform is as high as ever. Facebook has refocused marketers on the content they’re creating to display in user News Feeds. Now’s the time to focus on content if you aren’t already. Tabs still have a place, but they take a backseat most of the time.

Brave Ad World - Episode 60

Another week, another podcast, and this week's episode is full of some big developments for marketers, including the rollout of Twitter's self-serve ad platform and Timeline coming to brand Facebook Pages.

This week’s headlines: Social TV Momentum Continues, Zynga Reports Stable Financial Earnings, Twitter Not Ready for an IPO in the Near Future, Twitter Rolling Out Self-Serve Ad Platform to 10,000 Businesses and Facebook Timeline Coming Soon to Brand Pages.

The week’s news quick hits cover: Facebook for Windows Mobile Gets an Update, Apple Lowers the Cost for iAds Again, Twitter Admits that It Too Uploads Your Phone Contacts, Facebook Introduces Verified Accounts Program, New Open Graph Apps Come to Facebook, Mac OSX Mountain Lion Resembles iOS with Twitter Integration and More, Yelp’s IPO Scheduled for March 2 and Groupon Announces VIP Program.

Check it out on iTunes, or visit the podcast section to get a link and add it to your preferred podcast player.

Let us know what you think. Leave a review, find us on Twitter or send us an email to braveadworld [at] gmail [dot] com.