What Makes People Like a Brand on Facebook? [INFOGRAPHIC]

The Infographic of the day series visually expresses important stories from Asia and the world of technology.

What makes people want to follow a brand on Facebook and Twitter? The folks over at Columnfive and GetSatisfaction explored this question and presented the answers in a neat infographic.

Not surprisingly, the majority of the people who become fans of a brand on Facebook do so because of promotions and deals. Another large bulk of ‘likes’ comes from existing customers. Interestingly, only 18.2 percent become a fan of a page because of the actual content. It’s pretty much the same case on Twitter too.

While most of us say that content is king, it seems that deals have more of a pull factor to keep people engaged. Curious to learn more, I chatted on Skype with Preetham Venkky, a Facebook expert who also works closely with the Facebook team in India and Ireland, to seek his opinion:

“Offers and deals are always a motivating factor. It’s a digital adaptation of the ‘coupon’ culture. Even in Asia, most people ‘like’ pages because they think they might win something for free. But none of the leading pages actually offer deals such as ‘Here’s a 20%-off coupon for our fans here on Facebook.’ At least not in India.”

To support his point, Preetham showed me a couple of top Indian brands on the social network, including Tata Docomo, MTV India (which also is already on Google+), Fastrack, and Kingfisherworld. None of them offer exclusive deals for Facebook fans.

Preetham went on to explain that most Indian brands on Facebook used to run contests through their page wall to gain traction. That very action is against Facebook’s promotion guidelines (which state you can only run contests through applications and/or tabs) which also explains why we have witnessed so many brands in India experiencing sudden Facebook page shut-downs.

Preetham explained that to pull in fans on Facebook, brands will now have to do it under a tab or through an application. “Contests and promotions, if crafted sensibly, can be very engaging,” he said.

Besides such contests and promotions, content can still be a good source of engagement, but Preetham admits that it is difficult to create engaging content consistently for a long period of time unless you’re in the media business.

Personally, my take is that a brand should have a good mixture of both contests and content. A corporate blog is always good, but it is understandable that a business can’t churn out great content on a daily basis. At the same time, contests aren’t exactly relevant to every brand as well. So it is really all about finding the right mix for your brand, and displaying the strengths of your business on your Facebook or Twitter page.