If you have tried implementing a social media strategy, you have no doubt encountered the eternal Facebook challenge: how do you engage quality fans and how much should you invest in finding them? Unfortunately, there is no simple answer to this question.

Just as in the real world, not all customers in the virtual world are created equal. Every business has dream customers that follow all the recommended procedures, have few complaints, and continually come back for more of your products and services.

In a brick-and-mortar business, you seek out and cultivate these customers; you should do the same for your valuable Facebook fans. In every group of fans you will have the passive viewers, the people engaged just enough to provide the occasional “like,” and the die-hard fans that share every post with their entire network. While all of these fans have value, it is obvious that some have more than others.

So what does this mean for your business? Rather than focusing on the actual value of a Facebook fan, you should focus on their relative value. Let’s look at the three fan groups previously mentioned:

1. Passive viewers: You basically have a one-to-one relationship with these fans. You post a comment, they read it, end of story. Don’t be mistaken, there is value in these fans, especially if they make purchases or communicate by word of mouth, but the key to any social media strategy is that users repost your content on Facebook, so you will need to foster more customer engagement to succeed.
2. Moderately engaged: When a fan likes one of your posts, their friends see it, so the value of this fan increases dramatically, especially if they have a lot of friends. However, although a “like” or a comment on your wall is beneficial, the ultimate fan is even more proactive.
3. Actively engaged: These fans are not only nuts about your business, but they are also heavily engaged in social media. If you’re lucky, they retweet your Twitter posts, subscribe to your blog and engage in other social media activities around your brand. These are the most valuable Facebook fans you can possibly have. Identify them, find out what they respond to, and create campaigns around their behaviors.

You shouldn’t think of these as rigidly divided groups, however. Your goal should not only be to cater to the actively engaged users, but to promote more engagement from the first two groups. Most of your Facebook fans will fall under those first two categories, after all, so employ techniques that will get them more involved too.

One way to understand how much value you are getting from your Facebook fans is to work with Social Strategy1. Our in-depth analysis will show you which of your fans are most active, who they share information with and other details of their sharing habits. Identifying which Facebook fans are engaged with your brand is the first step to finding more of these valuable customers.