But just as marketers are feeling the pressure to boost engagement, Facebook is raising the stakes. In early October, the social networking giant introduced some new engagement metrics including People Talking About This. As the name suggests, PTAT (also known as just "Talking About This") measures user-initiated activities, like posting to a Page's wall, liking, commenting, sharing a Page post or content on a Page, answering a Question posed to fans mentioning a Page, liking or sharing a deal or checking in at your Place.
For Electronic Arts, PTAT offered a new opportunity to try some stuff out and see if it actually boosted engagement. More than three months on, the video game giant's Madden and Battlefield 3 Facebook Pages posted PTAT rates of 30% and even 44%. Is that good? Apparently, given the PTAT rates of other brands like Angry Birds (15%) and Coca-Cola (5%). (FanPageList tracks the brand sites with the overall highest engagements, but doesn't rank them by engagement rates. The rates are very dynamic and are constantly updated.)
Chris Thorne, senior director of marketing at EA, is clearly jazzed by the brand's PTAT score and says the higher engagement has led to a boost in sales as well, though he declined to discuss that topic further. But Thorne didn't mind talking about tips and tricks that EA used to get those PTAT numbers so high -- below are some lessons EA learned from PTAT.
1. Add a Charitable Component
In December, the team behind Madden 2012 gave users another reason to share those updates and likes: Every time they did, EA donated 10 cents to the Children's Miracle Network, an organization that raises funds for children's hospitals. "Fans really responded to that," says Thorne.
2. Use Polls
A status update doesn't have to be super witty or controversial to get a lot of engagement. In fact, as many industry pros will tell you, the best way to get engagement is to simply ask for it. Hence, some of EA's greatest engagement during the period came from running polls using Facebook's Questions tool.
"It's easy, light engagement," says Thorne. "You're just asking questions."
3. Use Paid Media Judiciously
EA took advantage of a feature that Facebook offers: The ability to increase or dial back on ads based on performance. That was especially important because rather than straight banners, EA relied on Sponsored Stories. Such ad units include implicit recommendations by friends in your network. If you like a comment on the Madden 2012 Page, for instance, members of your network (presumably ones that have a demonstrated affinity for video games and/or sports) will see your thumbs up.
Since some updates go over better than others, though, it makes sense to promote accordingly. A really hot status update is worth blasting to all your friends of fans, but you may want to let a so-so one wither on the vine.
4. Borrow Equity From Other Social Media Stars
In EA's case, that meant nabbing Freddie Wong, the YouTube director who has (at time of writing) 2.9 million subscribers. EA brought in Wong to make a commercial for Battlefield 3, which eventually ran on TV.
Though Wong is more popular on YouTube than he is on Facebook (his Page has around 500,000 fans), EA's Facebook fans lapped it up. "We put it [the video] on Facebook to see how the community engaged, and they absolutely loved it," Thorne says.
David Baser, product manager at Facebook, says while PTAT is so new that there are few case studies to draw on, he believes that EA did just about everything it could do to boost engagement. "There was a lot of really good content on the Page," Baser says. "They put up things that people cared about."
Did EA have a special advantage, though? After all, it's not so difficult to get fans whipped up about a product that's perceived to be fun. Can you generate the same kind of engagement for a Page about, for instance, floor wax? "We've seen highly engaging brands in the 1-2% [PTAT] rate," Baser says. "My guess is it's going to be an evolving process based on brand objectives."
What sparks engagement on your Facebook Page? Let us know in the comments.
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The Digital Marketing Series is supported by HubSpot, an inbound marketing software company based in Cambridge, Mass., that makes a full platform of marketing software, including social media management tools.