Our Failed Facebook Experiment

The cobbler’s children have no shoes.  The hairdresser’s hair is a mess.  And for this web company that manages social media for its clients, the social media company had few followers.  We’d always been so busy doing work for our clients, that we’d neglected our own. 

Feeling that this was no excuse, I decided to do something about it, starting with our Facebook page.  I thought to myself, “What’s the quickest way we can get hundreds of fans?  I know, give something away for free to those who join our page!”  So we tried a Facebook page experiment.

Here were the rules: Anyone who got 25 of their friends to “like” our page would get a $15 Target gift card.  I figured it would be worth the expense.  How many hundreds of fans would we acquire with this ingenious contest?  Maybe even a thousand or more!  One could only hope…

Well, it turned out to be a huge flop.  We didn’t get hundreds of fans; In fact, we didn’t even get one hundred.  We ended up with about 40 new fans, mostly due to an employee’s promotions of our page.

Why did this happen, and what did I learn?  Asking people to promote a page they don’t know, for a relatively small incentive, just doesn’t work.  Had we offered $500 for this, no doubt the results would have been much better, but the cost would’ve been unreasonable.   It goes beyond incentive, however; For most people, promoting a business that isn’t theirs is outside their comfort level.  I don’t do it, so why did I expect others to be so willing to promote our page, for a mere $15 gift card?

The contest wasn’t really a flop, though.  I value those 40 new fans, and will do my best to provide them with quality information, tips, and contests that are easy and worthwhile.  And the lesson learned, well, that was invaluable.