Last week, we posted a story about how KUTV in Salt Lake surpassed 200,000 Facebook fans across all its pages. This week, we look at WJW in Cleveland, which is just a handful away from 200,000 combined fans as well. In fact, “Fox 8 News” is the largest single Facebook page for a TV station in the country with 165,000 fans — and WJW is in the 18th largest TV market.
So how did they do it? Fox 8 declined to talk with Lost Remote, but we discovered a couple techniques that appear to be driving much of the station’s fan growth. The first is a franchise called, “Facebook Friend of the Day.” Fox 8 picks a new Facebook friend every day to feature in a short on-air bumper in the morning show, which is also posted as a screen grab and video online. (If you have any doubts that this is effective, a Topix post called “How to Become a Fox 8 on Facebook Friend” has over 600 comments.)
Then in September of last year — when Fox 8 had about 57,000 fans — the station held a Facebook campaign called “Save These Faces.” The station promised to donate $2,500 to a Cleveland animal shelter if Fox 8 reached 100,000 fans in a week. To the video:
How can you resist a puppy? However, the station didn’t quite hit the number, and it donated the $2,500 anyway. But it grew 44,000 fans over the period, which is illustrated quite nicely in this Wildfire chart:
If you do the math, that’s a little over 5 cents a fan, which is tremendously more cost effective than buying Facebook ads (which can cost $1 per fan). It’s even a better deal it you consider the research that puts the average value of a Facebook fan at $3.60.
After looking at WJW and KUTV, it’s clear that heavy on-air integration, contests and campaigns are the key drivers to ramping up Facebook fans. See any other successful techniques out there? Please drop us an email at tips[at]lostremote.com.
(Like stories like these? Follow Lost Remote on Facebook and/or Twitter.)
