Harquin's Facebook Scorecard

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May 22, 2012

Everyone is jumping on the Facebook bandwagon because it’s free and easy to use. It seems like a no brainer to ride the wave, but if you are a business or a personal brand make sure you have a strategy and something relevant to say. Writing status posts on Facebook isn’t difficult, but if no one is engaged you may be wasting your time. The silence after a post can be deafening! What does engaged mean? I used the following chart with a client looking to establish a new blog/website to explain the value of each level of interaction and establish what the ultimate goal is. Your brand needs a point of view and this is a quick and easy scorecard to assess and measure success.

1. Facebook like. Good. Easiest thing for your fans and your friends to do. Not too time consuming. At least they are listening. Builds up your fanbase and is definitely worthwhile.
2. Facebook comment: Better. They are listening and they care enough to actually type. Facebook will give you a better ranking for this.
3. Facebook Share: Getting better. They are sharing your brand with their friends and now you are exposed to an entire new audience via their friend list. You are getting viral mileage baby!
4. Facebook link to blog/website: Best. Your driving traffic to your portal and your audience cares enough to click and read. You are creating a community of like-minded individuals who visit your blog/website religiously. It's about credibility and creating a niche that is focused and defined. Search engines and advertisers start to notice this.
5. Blog comments and shares: Gold Star! You have regular readers and your audience is following your every move, comment, opinion and they are communicating back to you. They feel like they know you and you know them. They call you by name and you also answer them. This is when you can define who your audience is what they care about. We're talking revenue stream potential.