What can we learn from 262,985 Facebook Pages?

Recently Inside Facebook published some great commentary on the curiously titled “Gesundheit! Modeling Contagion through Facebook News Feed,” an April 2009 research article co-written by Facebook’s in-house sociologist Cameron A. Marlow.

The article explores some fascinating data on the patterns that drive Facebook Page growth. Working from a huge dataset of 262,985 Pages, Marlow and his team were able to uncover the following:

1) Facebook Pages grow significantly (in terms of new fans) because of the actions of a few identifiable Facebook networks (e.g., San Francisco residents or students at a small set of universities). Within these networks, 14% to 18% are “chain initiators” — i.e., those who, right from the get-go, share a given Page with their friends.

From the above, it’s clear that a significant number of catalysts are responsible for much of the growth of your typical Facebook Page. Practically speaking, then, the total audience that you should target on Facebook will probably be much wider and much more diverse than what some academics and industry players would have you believe.

2) Facebook members’ key demographic and usage characteristics seem to have little impact on members’ effectiveness in attracting new fans to a Page. Putting it another way, an enthusiastic high schooler and a stay-at-home mom are usually both equally capable of growing your fan page on behalf of your brand.

The findings above match very closely with our own analysis of thousands of Involver-powered fan pages. If we were to offer some concrete marketing recommendations based on Dr. Marlow’s research and our own research, here’s what we’d highlight:

From conclusion #1 above, we know that Facebook Page sharing is already a widespread phenomenon. So don’t stress out too much in trying to track down small and exclusive groups of advocates. If you focus on distributing great content and offering solid tools for sharing, you are giving yourself the best chance at generating engagement and viral fan page growth.

In regards to conclusion #2, you the Page Manager have an opportunity to use the sheer size and diversity of Facebook’s member base to your advantage. In doing social marketing, it’s absolutely necessary to define and reach out to your core target audiences, but at the same time it shouldn’t be surprising if other groups contribute to the growth of your Page as well. Expect to encounter all types of people, and make sure to engage them right when they hit your Page — strive to create and disseminate content that strikes a chord with as many demographics as possible, while staying true to your brand identity.

If you’re running an Involver-powered Fan Page, you know that our platform makes distributing fresh content easy: Involver’s marketing suite allows anyone to customize and continuously syndicate their headliner content, whether this is a video or photo gallery, a series of polls, a Facebook-only coupon, or something else entirely.

We hope you’ll take fifteen minutes to read Dr. Marlow’s research. It represents the kind of metrics-driven approach that brands can use in order to grow their presences on Facebook and elsewhere. After reading, let us know your thoughts at info@involver.com. We’d love to hear your ideas about how to improve social marketing using this data!

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