No this isn’t an over hyped post as the headline may suggest. It’s actually a post that is incredibly useful for any Communications Directors or Social Media Managers who need help ‘leading up’. This post is very, very useful especially if you have a boss/leader that doesn’t really understand the power and potential of social media, and more specifically in this case, for Facebook.
There still seems to be a distrust in some places of social media from some leaders. But there is one key insight, which, IF your leaders knew about would make them salivate at the mouth about its potential.
Really. Truly. Get out the bibs.
Unfortunately Facebook doesn’t use this ‘insight’ anymore in its analytics, which is a real shame. Because every time I use this as an example of the potential of Facebook to reach new audiences, it never fails to impress. I don’t mean that in a bragging kind of way. When I first saw it, I nearly fell off my chair and had to pick my own chin up off the ground at the same time.
So enough teasing already I hear you say! Get on with it!
Here is a screen grab below I took a while back of the Facebook insight called ‘friends of fans’ before I took a lot of notice of social media as an incredibly powerful outreach tool. They are people who are only one click away from seeing your content. They are the friends of the fans who like your Facebook page.
Incredible right?
If only 1,198 people ‘like’ our page we have the potential to reach over 349,000.
Amazing.
It isn’t smart to spam them of course with paid sponsored content. But what if you can put compelling content at the fingertips of your fans who will then share it? That’s the potential right there. (I wrote a blog post which gives some easy ways to get started)
Here is another screen grab nearly a year later. After we invested human capital and financial capital into social media.
Look again at the key insight – ‘friends of fans’. Whoaaaaa 2.7 million people are just one click away!
That is the explosive power and potential for you and for me right there. Huge audiences.
Remember, it’s just the potential of your reach. While the insight, friends of fans isn’t around anymore. Your reach is. It just isn’t visualised anymore.
Facebook now tells you how much each post reaches, which is great. But we all love to see what would happen if our true social potential was reached.
Questions? Get commenting below.
