eCampaign Support via Facebook Fandom
Filed under: Red Alert Dossier, Social Media
I read this article earlier that made me chuckle. Long story short, in Canada, there is apparently a looming Teachers’ Strike. So students from 11 Ontario Colleges planned a walkout at the same time in protest of this strike. So what did they do? They had a Facebook Fan Page, DUH!
So on this Facebook Fan Page they gained 22,000 fans. Quite a number. They than had petition, likely distributed through Facebook, that had 4,000 signatures. Of all these numbers, only 356 students agreed to the walkout. So the time arrives to walkout and protest and what happens? (Do you hear the chirping birds?) Nothing happened. The National Post’s Kelly McParland reported that,
“Graeme McNaughton, founder of the antistrike Facebook group, said he had found volunteers at 11 colleges who were willing to lead student walkouts. In the end, however, turnout was meagre, and in no case exceeded 20 people.”
Maybe it’s just me, but I find this incredibly funny. Here you have “activist” college students trying to fight a cause and get incredible online support. In reality though, only 18% of their fans were willing to sign a petition, 1.618% agreed to walkout and assuming the maximum quoted above (20 per location) a whopping 1.09% actually did anything. The National Post reported that one school had a whole student (yes, singular, it’s not a typo) walk out and deliver the petition to the admin offices. HA!
Lesson? Just because you have a lot of fans means nothing. I was actually reading from The Iowa Republican and the Bleeding Heartland and saw a comment by the same commenter that was bleeding with ignorance. He/She concluded that because one candidate had quadruple the numbers of anyone else running that he would win. The funniest thing is that he can’t add because one of the other candidates had twice as many as his beloved candidate.
When you’re running your campaign there are two things: Don’t think you lack support because you only have few fans on Facebook and don’t think you’ve got it in the bag because you have a gazillion fans. In a lot of cases you’d be better off having 20,000 gremlins become fans than having 20,000 actual fans. (Because gremlins are sneaky, just don’t put them in the microwave;)
So what’s the point of being a fan? Engagement. You need to engage. If I have 100 fans that I am constantly engaging versus someone with 10,000 fans they never engage, I am better off and have a stronger following. It’s not about fandom, it’s about engagement. So as you run your online eCampaig remember that even if you rise to the elite of Facebook Fandom, if it’s only based on quantity, not quality, you’re support is utterly worthless.
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