Are you struggling to grow your Facebook Fans ? Or not getting enough quality followers on Twitter? Do a Google search and you will find zillions of articles telling you “10 ways to increase your Facebook Fans” and “5 Tips to Getting more Twitter Followers”. And perhaps following some of these tips may actually help to get some numbers.  However as Social Media matures,  we will see a shift happen from “activity” based thinking to building a “strategic” approach to finding and more importantly retaining Followers and Fans.

I like to the think of a Social Media communication  strategies in terms of 3 concentric circles. Think of the brand as being at the centre.

• Circle (A) is the circle of fans (say on Facebook)  who are already connected to the brand
• Circle (B) is the circle of friends, of all those fans who are already connected to the brand
• And Circle (C) is “rest of the world”

Any Social Media strategy has to think in terms of what to communicate to each of these 3 circles and how to expand A (that is the end objective)

Let us look at circle A.  If you, as a brand, have a  1000 fans on your fan page, you have 1000 people who are willing to receive information from you. How do you keep them engaged?  How do you ensure that they continue receiving your feed? There is always a possibility that a person is your fan but has turned off receiving your feed…..hence you continue to see him in your fan count but he is actually not there.

These are early days, and right now people are going to be joining all  kinds of fan pages, mostly out of curiosity and partly on account  of some tempting promotion or give-away. But as dust settles, consumers will  be more discerning . A consumer does not  want to be scrolling through 10 pages of FB updates on a daily basis. Primarily he want to receive updates from his friends . He wants to know what is happening in their lives…that is his primary reason to be on Facebook. At the same time he is  willing to allow a few brands to send him messages. Hence very soon brands will need to compete for attention from their fans.

In order to ensure that your fan is willing to receive your feed, it is important for you  to occupy some portion of your  fans (consumers) life.  In his daily life, you need to mean something to him. Hence start by identify what part of his life (or his needs) can you fulfil. And this thinking will need to be “outside-in” and not “inside-out”. Do not think “What do I make and how can I get my fan to buy it “. Rather, think: What does my TG (target group) really look for in their day-to-day lives and what part of their needs can I fulfil (which also in some way connects to what my brand stands for). E.g if you are manufacturer of soaps, you can fulfil the need of a beautician in your consumers life. If you are are an insurance company, you can fulfil the need of a financial planner…..and so on. Once you identify what part of your consumers life you can own (and mind you “go thin”. Don’t try to be everything to your consumer. Try to be something very specific…. that will give you the edge), engage your consumer around that.

Note, the word is “engage” not “sell”. While communicating to your fans by way of Facebook updates, follow the 80:20 ratio. 80% of the communication should be about fulfilling the consumers needs, not about promoting the brand.  If as brand, 80% of the time you talk to consumer about something  meets his needs, then maybe 20% time he will be willing to listen to your marketing communication.

This is how you work on engaging circle A and more importantly ensuring that the consumer remains with you and does not hide your updates from his Facebook feed. These are early days and brands that are able to occupy a part of the consumers Facebook timeline, will find it easy to leverage the asset base.

Circle B is the circle of all those people who are friends of  those people who are already your fans. If you have 1000 fans, and each of these fans is connected to an average of 300 people, then circle  B comprises of 300,000 people. And these 300,000 people are most likely the kind of people that you as a brand are looking for. E.g. If you were a medical brand and all my fans are doctors, then who are their friends likely to be ? Obviously more doctors…and these are exactly the kind of guys you are looking for. Hence the key focus for any social media practitioner should be to find ways to convert people from circle B to circle A.

And how does that happen ?  Via people in circle  A.  People in circle A need to be “motivated” to tell their friends in circle B, to join the fan page of your brand. And how does this “motivation” manifest itself :

• Provide shareable content: As someone said “I will not tell my friends about your brand because I like your brand, I will tell them because I like my friends”. So think, what is it that your fans will find worthy of sharing.  A text posting in not shareable on Facebook. Hence good content supported by visual communication (images, videos) will make the content shareable.
• Polls, quizzes, photo tagging, group activities are other methods of reaching out to your fans’ friends
• Facebook applications : This is one of the most powerful tools to leverage circle A to reach out the circle B. Application should be designed in such a manner that is involves your fans getting their friends to participate via the application. Hopefully while participating, lot of them may get motivated  join your fan page.

And then we come to circle C. This is the rest of the 400 million Facebook users (less people in circle A and circle B) reside. This is the biggest circle in terms of size but also one prone to high wastage in terms of rewards-to-efforts.  Ways to reach out to this circle would be by way of

• Participation on relevant Facebook forums and becoming a part of that community
• Creating virals that get forwarded and talked about
• Creating events and contests that can spread by word-out-mouth
• Advertising on Facebook. These are early days and cost of fan acquisition on Facebook is still affordable

A successful growth strategy has to able to create a ripple effect that percolates from Circle A to B and then to C

In my opinion one should focus one’s efforts as  follows

• Initially build  Circle A : Keep them engaged and involved. Ensure they don’t turn off the update feed that you send them. Try to become an important part of their lives
• Then get on to Circle B : This is the most relevant TG for a brand and perhaps the easiest the crack.
• And finally look at  Circle C : As a brand we need them but then this is like finding needles in a haystack. Facebook advertising or viral applications could act as a magnet to pull out the needles in the haystack.

What  is your opinion ?