Here’s something you knew even before you set up your Facebook fan page: A Like is a good thing—the first step towards having a nice off-site relationship with your customers.
But what happens after they’ve accepted your invitation to Like your page? Are you giving them a refreshing nibble and conversation, or are you giving them the silent treatment?
One of the keys to knowing whether they’re bored or not is to check out the number after “talking about this.” (It’s under your business’s name, next to your number of Likes).
Don Coqui seems to be doing a great job of engaging its FB fans. A quick scan of their page shows that not only do they do the usual “Come visit us, we’re doing xx tonight,” posts, they also share a fun assortment of items they think their customers will like, from local news bits and jokey e-cards to this “LOL” on men, women, and drinking:
Can you see a national restaurant chain doing this? I can’t. But Don Coqui probably knows their patrons well enough to know this would fly. Those who commented were amused, not offended. (For more on the importance of taking a stand on your brand, check out this thought-provoking post from yesterday’s MediaPost/MarketingDaily commentary: “Simply being liked is not really the point of branding.”)
CAVO Café Lounge also has a good number of people “talking about this,” and one of the ways they encourage it is by posting pictures of their patrons having a great time. People see their pic on CAVO’s page and then share it with their friends.
You don’t have to be a large place to have robust “talking about this” numbers. The Queens Kickshaw and Queens Comfort are pretty small, but they do a nice job of engaging their fans. Both get good press from local blogs, which encourage visitors both to their pages and restaurants. (I visited Queens Comfort last weekend, thanks to an amazing review by Bradley Hawks in WLA’s blog.) The Queens Kickshaw also often features live music—hurdy gurdy, anyone?—and the musicians tell their friends where and when they’re playing. Both Queens Kickshaw and The Queens Comfort allow “Recent Posts by Others” which encourages further sharing.
And then there’s SITE, a design shop on 34th Ave by the Kaufman Astoria Studios. Without the benefit of photos of happy revelers OR food porn, SITE has a good number of fans and fans talking about it. Why? Because the posts include, again, not just stuff about the store, but engaging posts like this one, which was shared, liked, and received 2 comments (not shown):
To recap: Likes are good. Likes AND “people talking about this” = even better.
Related post:
People talking about this is “a much more valuable metric than likes alone… When users engage in this brand-related activity, it becomes a mini-endorsement of the company or piece of content and offers immediate visibility to their friends.”—from “The World’s Most ‘Liked’ Brands” on CNBC.com. Post can be found here.)
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