Most major carriers have created at least one ‘official’ Facebook page, not counting the many unofficial versions, but how do you measure value and success? Without consistent social media ROI data, senior executives are demanding interim metrics and one such metric is fan count. This is founded on the reasonable assumption that who aside from customers, employees, investors, or analysts would become a fan.
For various reasons, fan count is flawed; not least, because different recruitment strategies attract different types of fan. Removing non-core business pages including pages dedicated to brand icons (Progressive’s Flo – 522,000 fans), pages focused on advocacy (Safe21 from Allstate – 34,000 fans), sponsorship pages (Nationwide’s NASCAR – 30,000 fans) and many others, we can start to compare business page fan counts. The growth rates are dramatically different which tends at this stage to reflect activity and to a degree an immature market.
USAA and State Farm have been the steady performers over a long period and continue to add fans. We are also recording a strong increase in core business functions built into to Facebook pages. GEICO are experiencing significant fan growth, in part due to previewing new commercials to fans only and integrating their athletics sponsorship tab on the main page (NASCAR and GOLF). Not included in the table is American Family but they are certainly worthy of mention. They have built 1800 agent Facebook pages based upon a central publishing model and if you add up all the fans of the agents that get to see company posts, this would come to 70,000. Given they now have 1800 agents recruiting fans, they may well host the top fan base very soon.
| Company | Fan Count | Quarterly Growth |
| USAA | 106100 | 36% |
| Geico | 73474 | 434% |
| State Farm Insurance | 23900 | 66% |
| Allstate | 19373 | 9% |
| Thrivent Financial | 16988 | 18% |
| Progressive Insurance | 13500 | 35% |
| American Family | 11396 | 12% |
| Vanguard | 9418 | 8% |
| Farmers Insurance | 6201 | 15% |
| Nationwide | 6161 | 19% |
| Gerber Life | 5451 | 9% |
| Northwestern Mutual | 5009 | 24% |
| AFLAC | 4866 | 20% |
| Liberty Mutual | 3927 | 52% |
| VALIC | 3324 | 1% |
| NewYorkLife | 2665 | 48% |
| Travelers Insurance | 2528 | 33% |
| The Hartford | 2329 | 22% |
| Safeco | 1323 | 11% |
| Principal | 1220 | 12% |
All major carriers need a business presence on Facebook. Consumers are already sending a great deal of time on the platform, able to book flights (Delta), buy consumer electronics (Best Buy) and get customer service (AT&T). Search from within Facebook will search the web and is attracting high volumes of traffic. It is possible that a Facebook page becomes a primary entry point, or possibly a replacement to your website.
A more detailed report is available on our website at http://www.customerrespect.com/Services/Social-Media.html
