Bud v. Coors v. Miller – Facebook Battle of (light) Beers

First, Happy Thanksgiving Everyone . . . go to your fridge, grab a cold one, and return for a beer battle royal!

For the holidays and to get myself deeper into the guts of Facebook, I shall pit three light beers against each other . . . who is the social media KING?

To start, I set metrics for comparison – a quantitative assessment. Valuable metrics must be tied to the primary objective, or outcome, of a corporation's presence on Facebook. Metrics must also supply actionable information – information the analyst can use to make positive change. Now, owners of Facebook pages have access to a rich set of metrics and tools for measuring success of their own pages. How can they best measure themselves against a competitor? . . . I'll try my best, starting with a generic objective:

Corporate Facebook Page Objective:

• Engage customer base that participates in secondary Facebook relationships; begin a conversation
• Increase exposure to a branded experience that enhances the corporate product(s)
• Gather market insight for R&D, market planning, and improved customer support

Next, selecting metrics that are publically available (let me know if I missed something you were expecting):

• Number of Fans
• Corporate Post Frequency; # per month
  • Based on an average of x months
  • % of fan base response to above recorded posts (# of thumbs + responses/# of fans)
• Fan Post (absolute number; no assessment of quality)
  • Months Represented in fan post #
• Publication of material to build engagement on, including:
  • # of Videos
  • # of Photo Albums
  • # of Favorite Pages
  • # of Interactive Applications Offered

I put these in a tentatively prioritized order: Absolute # of fans is the foundation, but just a start), actual conversation/interaction or posts and responses is key, and then material to continue promoting conversation adds value. If one had a Facebook page with a ton of material and no engagement – it should get an F grade. What you think; valid reasoning?

So. . . drum roll please. . . here are the results as of 11/25/09, 12:00 CST:

	Coors Light	Bud Light	Miller Lite
Number of Fans	288,345	348,053	194,865
Favorite Pages	1	0	0
# of Videos	3	14	3
# of Photo Albums	0	0	43
Interactive Applications	2	8	2
Corporate Post Frequency; # per month	2.6	3.7	4.8
average of x months	5	3	4
% of fan base response to above posts	0.47%	0.46%	0.41%
Fan Post (absolute number)	3	538	718
# of last 6 months Represented	2	4	1

 

And my takeaways:

• There is much more to each companies approach then these numbers. For example, Miller Lite has a much more transparent site where fans and non-fans can see non-corporate posts. The number and complexity of variables means we'll speculate in the blog post – you'll have to bring me in for my more in-depth analysis

• Coors Light does so much more around their primary sponsorship, the NFL, which is no surprise. However, that then becomes the theme of the page/community. There are benefits and possible challenges with that. Bud Light and Miller Lite fans are certainly not there for just the season. . .
• Some metrics above point to what we can't see. While I don't specifically record it because I can't entirely substantiate it, I believe the age of the sites by month are as follows:

  Coors Light: 6        Bud Light: 3        Miller Lite: 4

  It is interesting how that has limited to no correlation with fan base and postings

• Because I'm a Bronco fan, I'd like to say the Silver Bullet one. . . but it appears Miller Lite has locked in their audience. . . and I would not be surprised if their wall settings and posted photo albums have something to do with it. . . but that's part of the more in-depth analysis

I do hope I have given you something to mull over as you digest your turkey and stuffing! As you sip your cold one of choice, what is your speculation on these numbers?

Again, Happy Thanksgiving and Cheers!

Editor's Notes: I'm partial to Pabst, Negro Modelo, and Samuel Smith