Give Me A Reason Why I Should Like You On Facebook

As I was putting gas in my car this morning, I notice that the tower holding the propane tanks for sale had a “Find us on Facebook” tagline and logo affixed to the side. I thought, ‘Why would I want to ‘like’ my propane?’

I’m clearly not alone on this thought. Andrew Blakelet, a Social Strategist at DDB UK, decided to conduct an experiment. Similar to my propane tank experience, Blakelet’s boss’s yogurt told him to ‘Find them on Facebook,’ yet the yogurt brand failed to tell him way.

So for his experiment, Blakelet vowed to Like every brand that asked him to for one week. He would then blog and analyze the various offerings of each brand, in particular how they were attempting to drive people from the offline world to the online, social, world. Here were the results:

Only 21% of brands gave him a reason why he should ‘Like’ them.

“In 2011 it’s more or less a given that your brand can be found on Facebook, and consumers know that,” said Blakelet. “What they don’t know is why they should bother.”

So if brands want to give a call to action or reason to follow them, here are some of the reasons people ‘like’ brands on Facebook, according to GetSatisfaction

• 36.9% of fans follow a brand on Facebook for special offers/deal
• 32.9% of fans follow a brand on Facebook because they are a current customer
• 6.2% of fans follow a brand on Facebook because their friends are fans of the brand
• 18.2% of fans follow a brand on Facebook because of interesting or entertaining content
• 5% of fans follow a brand on Facebook for service, support or product news

Another interesting note that Blakelet found was that a number of brand Liking requests were coming from email marketing. These were brands that he had chosen to receive email marketing from directly into his inbox, and here they were asking to appear in his Facebook news feed too. They weren’t, however, telling him why I should open himself up to them in another channel.

“Only 1 of the 16 brands provided an incentive to make the leap from email to social media,” said Blaketet. “I literally had no reason to bother with the other brands, as I was already receiving their deals and offers, and they weren’t giving me another reason.”

Something I always tell brands is to not jump into all the available channels without having a plan. Being in a social networking space and being ill-prepared is worse than not having a presence at all.