Most Engaged Brand Fans Drive Significant Earned Media

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Social media marketing software company Wildfire released data highlighting the importance of identifying and engaging the most influential fans for a brand.

The data showed that sharing on social media campaigns generates a significant amount of earned media. For every "sharer," an average of 14 earned media impressions were generated. Sharing also seems to have a strong impact on page engagement as well. Brands that are especially effective at engaging sharers and advocates through campaigns create three times more likes, shares and comments on their pages than other brands.

The data also concluded that for every 10 advocates a brand gets to join their social campaign, 13 new people will engage with the campaign through clicks, entries, or other interactions.

Wildfire, recently purchased by Google, based the data on an analysis of 10,000 social marketing campaigns that ran on Facebook over the past nine months. The top performing 10 percent of brands were then isolated and studied to find key differentiators that achieved success.

The 700 "super brands" that fell in the top 10 percent of the study were able to triple the number of advocates in their campaigns. By tripling advocates, the annual fan growth can grow by 13 times more than an average performing brands, said Wildfire.

The top performing 10 percent of campaigns analyzed showed a marked difference when it came to sharers and advocates. Compared to the average campaign, the top 10 percent garnered nearly 20 percent more sharers and over 3 percent more advocates.

"This data clearly shows that brands need to be focused on nurturing their most active fans, particularly their brand advocates," said Victoria Ransom, founder and CEO at Wildfire, in a press release.