How Facebook forces gradual engagement.

Many recent brand efforts are designed to end up in user streams, whether on Facebook, Twitter or any other social network. Campaigns should be ‘worth sharing’, ‘conversation-worthy’ or ‘retweetable’. The aim is to be conversation-worthy on every brand level, so that people will talk about you, whether offline or online.

Often these ‘conversation-worthy’ ambitions are translated into short-term social media campaigns. Success is measured in views, clicks and likes. In effect, the reach and “success” of Facebook social media campaigns is often guesstimated by counting the number of people that shared a campaign element, multiplied by the average number of Facebook friends (e.g. 2,000 likes times 130 friends is a campaign reach of 260,000). That means that campaigns are deliberately designed to collect likes and shares. As a result, some digital agencies and brands do the weirdest things to get a high number of likes: people who like a brand page are offered a bag, people are promised non-existent ‘fan’-only content and can win pretty much everything by liking, retweeting, sharing or subscribing.

This is an extremely short-term effect. As an old friend of mine puts it: “Brands who are new to Facebook often get things the wrong way round. They want to be liked first before they share what they have to offer. For example, how many fan pages have you seen with big arrows pointing to the ‘Like’ button? It’s as if these newcomers think that they have to explain to experienced Facebook users how to use the ‘Like’ button…
This is usually an objective for marketeers who have not yet learned how to measure the success of this ‘new’ medium. Either that, or they want to build up a critical mass first and put off creating a bond with their ‘fans’ until later.”
But it isn’t merely about managing expectations and disappointing consumers by offering no compelling content and no bonding. A key reason is the importance of gradual engagement.

Actual reach: the stuff that REALLY ends up in the consumer news feed.

First, what types of content end up in the news feed? Facebook says: “News Feed, the center column of your home page, is a constantly updating list of stories from people and Pages that you follow on Facebook. The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update)”.

So exactly what decides what’s interesting? This is pretty much a black box. Chances are you’ve worked extremely hard to get fans to like your page and now they’re most likely never going to see your updates. Facebook’s thinking makes sense: to encourage users to interact more with, and grow closer to, the people they already have a history of interacting with. Weaker social connections (like those with brand Pages) are given less priority in this view.

In other words: a campaign that collected 100,000 likes at some point didn’t actually collect 100,000 likes. Every day a brand page doesn’t engage with its likers, the reach of the brand page updates declines. The longer a user doesn’t interact with a brand on Facebook, the fewer wall posts, videos and photos end up in the user’s news feed. That means:

1. It is really important to post relevant content that triggers user interactions.
2. It is better to invest less in acquiring likes and more in relevant small interactions that keep people engaged, to be able to maintain reach and have a relevant long-term presence.

Gradual engagement.

Hence the importance of gradual engagement: small mini campaigns that create a continuous stream of small interactions. The more a brand is able to keep a user engaged, the greater the actual reach.

That means Skittles’ Facebook presence might be even more brilliant than you thought. They use small copylines and images to trigger likes and comments.

That means KLM’s action, where they asked users to comment on the picture of a whiteboard to actually write all those names on the same whiteboard later that day, was really smart.

That means that besides planning for campaigns (and reach), brands should start planning for long-term reach through gradual engagement. Not only to be relevant and to stay interesting. But most importantly, to actually maintain an audience.

Written in 2011, left as it was. Where I took it later: How Twitter forces gradual engagement.

Original: How Facebook forces gradual engagement, 7 June 2011. Historical links may no longer work.