One of the questions asked of Dr Karen Nelson-Field’s analysis of facebook fans engagement with their brands on facebook is whether the result is simply due to slack social marketing by the brands in question.
Given that Karen analysed the 200 brands with the most facebook fans it seems a bit of a stretch to say that these brands “don’t understand facebook”.
Some have speculated that brands that understand passionate loyalty probably do much better. But Karen’s analysis included brands such as Old Spice, Harley-Davidson, Ferrari, and Tiffany & co.
Finally, Karen’s analysis included facebook’s own facebook fans. In a typical week only 0.28% ‘talk about’ facebook on facebook. Maybe facebook itself doesn’t care much about fan engagement, after all they are clever marketers.
Marketing Science 
Reblogged this on Marketing & Innovation and commented:
Just before I post a 2 part piece on Byron Sharpe’s “brand that grow” marketing opus, here is a link to a facebook “fan” survey which shows that engagement rates are extrelmely small; a conclusion I’ve already made a number of times, underlying the “cyberbabble” effect on facebook.
I did my own review of 1700 australian facebook sites for 12 months until facebook shut me down – aparently i was searching too much which is somehow not what one is supposed to on facebook.
I found that basically engagement is a crock.
.28% is a good result compared to some i saw. The 2 items that created any spike in engagement were, unsurprisingly, free stuff, and funny pics. And it didn’t matter if the funny was unrelated to the brand, funny isnfunny no matter who says it.