How Many Facebook Fans Should We Have?
November 02, 2009 | TAGS: Facebook, Social Media,
Facebook has been referred to as an on-line popularity contest. Whether that is true or not, popularity is certainly a factor in the number of fans your organization has. Other factors include the number of constituents your organization serves, the amount of effort put towards marketing your Facebook Fan page, the geographic reach of your company (touring the world certainly helps), and how early your organization joined Facebook.
So how does your company stack up? Here is a quick look a sample of 22 orgs and their number of Facebook fans.
| Alvin Ailey Dance Theater | 26,194 |
| American Ballet Theatre | 25,959 |
| The Metropolitan Opera | 25,396 |
| New York Philharmonic | 11,784 |
| New York City Opera | 7,160 |
| San Francisco Ballet | 7,154 |
| Jazz at Lincoln Center | 6,272 |
| Steppenwolf Theater | 5,621 |
| Guthrie Theater | 5,093 |
| Merce Cunningham | 4,507 |
| The Public Theater | 4,672 |
| Martha Graham | 4,228 |
| Pacific Northwest Ballet | 3.827 |
| Lyric Opera of Chicago | 3,823 |
| Carnegie Hall | 3,784 |
| Houston Ballet | 3,432 |
| Center Theatre Group | 2,715 |
| Signature Theatre (DC) | 1,523 |
| San Francisco Opera | 1,422 |
| Paul Taylor Dance | 1,043 |
| Roundabout Theatre | 882 |
| New York City Center | 573 |
as of 11/20/09
Amanda McCormick
December 11, 2009
Thanks for this interesting list! One factor I am really curious about is how many of these organizations are using Facebook social ads to boost their fan base. Facebook's pay-per-click ads are an incredibly easy and cost-effective way to build an large fan base. It is a worthwhile spend, I think, even on a small budget, because these targeted ads can have such a quick impact, and once that base is large, an active "fan" base can be a stellar complement to an existing CRM strategy built around email marketing--a different way to engage constituents.
Kyle Clausen
December 15, 2009
Interesting! It would be helpful to also see annual attendance and/or subscriber numbers for each of these organizations and see how the Facebook numbers compare with that baseline.
