PTAT – Remember This…
Interesting article sourced via @markjhenry which also confirms much of what Dena Walker was saying at her recent Refresh Dublin talk… when you’re next looking at PTAT (People Talking About This) remember that the figure contains initial liking; liking specific content on a page, posting to a wall; commenting; sharing a post or other content from the page; answering a question; photo tagging; check-ins or RsVPing to an event.
This study by Karen Nelson-Field and Jennifer Taylor stripped out the initial likes to see what the real level of PTAT was for 200 of the top brands on Facebook over a period of 6 weeks (in late 2011).
What they found was that:
- Less than 0.5% of fans engage with the brand
- Only 1 brand scored engagement of over 2%
- 20 brands reached 1%
The results, showing very limited levels of engagement, are predictable to those familiar with empirical patterns of buyer behaviour. Consumers don’t love their brands; rather, they are polygamously loyal to a small group of offerings in the category (Goodhardt et al, 1984). In effect, we are loyal switchers rather than brand loyals (Uncles et al, 1995, Ehrenberg et al, 2004).